The Forever War (1974)
Joe Haldeman (1943)
266 pages
What are the consequences of a militarized world prone to a policy of ‘shoot first and ask questions later,’ both for the soldiers who most leave home to fight and for the societies they leave behind? In the novel The Forever War, couched in the techniques and devices of science fiction, author Joe Haldeman provides his reflections on this question. Written in 1974, the story opens in 1996, which would seem to date it for a modern reader; however it serves Haldeman’s purpose perfectly: as the Vietnam veteran explains in the Author’s Note to the edition published in 2008, he wanted the story set in a time when military (and to some extent political) leaders would still be products of the Vietnam War. This choice of starting points turns out not to be a distraction, even for a reader in 2013, and is at any rate quickly left behind by the rapid progression of time in the story.
As the novel opens, a group of draftee soldiers struggle though basic training on Earth. Soon enough, however, they ship out for further training on a planet far outside Pluto’s orbit. It turns out that portals in space have been discovered that allow ships to jump instantaneously to distant points in the galaxy. This has led to shiploads of colonists traveling out to earth-like planets around far-away stars; when one such ship ends up destroyed, political and military leaders quickly put the Earth on a war footing. A planet-wide military command is created, and the best and brightest among all nations are drafted into a fighting force to counter an alien race known as the Taurans.
Through the eyes of the main character, William Mandella, we get an intimate view of this war of the future. Though the technology may be new, and the locations exotic, Mandella experiences the personal and organizational confusion of being a foot soldier in a conflict that he feels little direct stake in. The disorder and contradictions arise even before the first battle: though they have trained on a planet that has the near absolute zero temperatures the military leadership expected to encounter in the war, the new soldiers’ first engagement is on a jungle planet, against an enemy that no one can even tell them the shape or look of. That the confusion of the battle scenes and the camaraderie between the fellow soldiers feels so convincing would seem to reflect the experience Haldeman brings to the story from his time fighting in Vietnam.
The novel’s title comes from the time dilation the soldiers experience as they travel at near light-speeds across the galaxy from one battle to the next. The story spans a little over a thousand years of Earth-time, though Mandella ages only about a decade during that period, participating in only a handful of battles. When his first two-year period of military service ends, he heads back to Earth, on which thirty years have past. Once back, however, Mandella and his fellow returnees struggle to re-integrate into a society that has changed dramatically during their absence. He and many of his former colleagues soon end up back in the service, returning to the one home where they feel, if not exactly happy, at least a part of something they understand. As his time in the war continues, Mandella’s degree of separation with society back on Earth only widens, eventually impacting even his military life and relationships, though he himself remains far from Earth.
Haldeman’s style and some of his themes reminded me a bit of the science fiction stories by Robert Sheckley, in Store of the Worlds (reviewed here), particularly Sheckley’s depiction in Morning After of an economic system on a future Earth in which there are not enough jobs for everyone; and his description in If the Red Slayer of the life of a soldier in a future war, in which the wounded are able to be repaired no matter what their injury, and are then sent back into battle. As does Sheckley, Haldeman wraps his story in a science fiction structure, but at its heart this is a tale of the chaos and confusion of war, and its impact on both the soldiers who go off to fight, and the society on the home front built around its demands. As but one small example, Haldeman’s imagined solution to the issue of men and women serving together in the military will certainly surprise many readers.
The Forever War stands as a rousing novel of science fiction, with a fascinating imagination of our future. At the same time it provides social commentary relevant even today, forty years after it was written.
Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
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