‘d read this so many years ago (pretty much when it came out) that I finally remembered it about half-way through this pass. The “soap bubble” air defenses – I remembered that.
The Forever War was written by Joe Haldeman, a Vietnam vet, just after that pointless war ended. And it has a lot of the national angst that rocked us when it finally did shut down. Other than recent politics (and like the War in Forever, is comprised of half-truths and misconceptions), never had the nation been so divided. Haldeman captures that (hell, he was living it) in this classic of classics.
So a distant space war breaks out with some alien race we know nothing about. The problem is that in the time it takes to send a starship to some battlefield – months – in relative time for the universe, decades will have passed. And true to the time, the returning veterans find themselves on an Earth they no longer recognize. Hundreds of years have passed. Society has moved on.
And still they keep getting deployed, endlessly pitting their lives on very long odds of surviving. William Mandella, conscripted from college in a universal draft, ends up on the sharp end, watching people die and he fights several campaigns (and watches time drain past) as he attempts to survive. In the end, when the war finally ends, 1,166 years have gone by. Humanity is … something else. And the surprises don’t stop there.
This novel was a delight to read. I wish I’d pushed myself to read it sooner and it didn’t make the cut for “Best of 2024” only because I prepped too soon (if next year is a drag, I’ll probably add it them). But yes, it’s gritty and funny and sad, all in one. And for you younger readers who have no idea of what life was like in the years following that hot-mess in Asia, this will give you some sort of idea of the times. A great novel by one of the great masters, and you are doing yourself a disservice if you don’t read it. You don’t even need to be a sci-fi fan – this book goes beyond that.
I’m just sitting here, looking at the cover of the book as I wind this up, thinking “Wow. Just wow.”
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