The Forever War by Joe Haldeman Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Forever War
Book Review: Great idea, with strange ending
Summary: 4 Stars
The book is based on a really great idea.
It's kind of a Vietnam war story in space, but what I liked most is how the author adresses the problem of time dilatation and what it does to human relationships.
Just the ending was kind of disappointing, because it's really to far fetched.
All together a must read!
Book Review: Great story with a memorable main character.
Summary: 5 Stars
I really enoyed this book. I am not going to sit here and give a blow by blow account of this book but I will say that I am not the biggest SF fan and I loved this story. You don't have to be a big SF reader to enjoy this. Like Starship Troopers, there is more focus on the characters and the situations they are in, than the technology.Book Review: I'm having a moment. . .
Summary: 5 Stars
When this title popped up on my Amazon "Things you might like..." I almost dislocated my finger hitting the go button.
I read this book when it first came out in serial form in Analog? Science Fiction and Fact? It was too long ago to remember the book, but I will forever remember the story. Some people got one thing, others got enother about this book of war. I, for the first time, got to see in writing, females treated as equal citizens, free to love and make love and die as they wished - for their world, country, whatever. This was not the cutsy, girl just there to be pretty and, maybe, brillant, if the author felt like thowing them a bone, but always a second-class citizen. When I read, for the first time, Joe Haldeman's take on the women in his fiction world, I cried. OK, so I'm a female - we do that sometimes.
Thanks, Joe.
Book Review: Maybe It's Me
Summary: 3 Stars
The Forever War is about a soldier, drafted to fight in a war against an alien enemy. Since the war is being fought light years from earth, and since he is shipped out and returned to earth or other bases repeatedly and at relativistic speeds, his subjective time becomes seriously compressed relative to the passage of time on earth. With each return to earth or to a base, he is growingly out of touch with earth culture.
The metaphor is the VietNam War experience for US soldiers in the 60s and 70s, and the author, Joe Haldeman, was a VietNam Vet.
So far, so good, and interesting. And I did get into the book -- it was a fast, engaging read. But I don't think, beyond the mere fact of the VietNam metaphor, I am going to be thinking about this book a month from now. Haldeman's character is thin -- I don't feel like I knew him that well -- and, I suspect as a consequence, the disorientations he experiences just weren't that deep or detailed for me.
I understand there is a movie in the making. I'd see the movie, now that I've read the book. A good director might make something more of the book than my experience in reading it (the movie, for me at least, could actually be better than the book!).
The book won numerous awards for science fiction, so maybe others saw something I didn't.
Book Review: Military Science Fiction
Summary: 5 Stars
This excellent science fiction novel is a joint 1976 Hugo/Nebula Award winner and deservedly so. It has been, along with Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein, identified as the best military science fiction novel in existence.
The author, Joe Haldeman, is a Vietnam veteran, and his experience in that conflict can easily be seen in this novel chronicling a never ending conflict between Humans and Taurans, driven more by economics and the military industrial conflict than by any animus between the two species.
Of particular interest are the technological advances throughout the term of the conflict and interpersonal relationships, made more fascinating by the time continuum that results in vast differences in the passage of time between starship travelers and others. The method of travel, the weapons used, equipment, medical advances and interesting Tauran characteristics all display outstanding imagination.
Labeled by most as an anti-war work, it certainly demonstrates the futility of this particular conflict, which is conceded by the author to be an allegory for the Vietnam conflict. However, the book is at its core, simply fascinating without beating the reader over the head with its political message. Highly recommended.