The Forever War by Joe Haldeman Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Forever War
Book Review: Not as good as I had hoped
Summary: 2 Stars
With so many stars and good reviews, I expected a really good story, but I was disappointed. I thought if I kept reading it might get exciting at some point, but it didn't. It also was too out of date for my taste. I guess if you bought the book and read it in the 70's you'd think differently, but I just couldn't get into it.Book Review: Old Man's War Is So Much Better
Summary: 3 Stars
After reading Old Man's War by Joe Scalzi, I decided to read The Forever War as everyone always says that this is the "original. I also like other works by Joe Haldeman, like the Accidental Time Machine.
But, I was so disappointed. The story was so lame and unsatisfying compared to Old Man's War and when I compare the two, the story and writing of Old Man's War is so much more interesting and entertaining.
The central problem of The Forever War is a common one shared by all works written in the early seventies - the hippy slant and the sad believe of the times that somehow the hippy "culture" (if you could call it that) would survive more than the few years that it did.
After reading too many "cool man" sex scenes, and pot smoking, and the terrible use of seventies slang, the story gets old fast. I am so grateful that in the 1980s (the far future for 1974 I suppose) or the 2000s we are not go around saying "hey man" to everyone and living in communes. Hippies in reality did not survive beyond 1976 - or thereabouts - and it is still unbelievable (and yes I lived through the 70s) that anyone could believe for a second that that culture deserved to survive longer than other times - a real sad head shaker. The 1980s wide boy culture survived longer.
In contrast, Old Man's War does not suffer from this anachronistic style, nor try to force a tired, and short lived, current day culture onto the future. That is the sign of truly great scifi fiction - stories that survive the passage of time. A great example would be "Dune" - also written in the 1965 but remains plausible and easy to read even today.
If you read Old Man's War first, then you will be sadly disappointed by The Forever War, as only unreformed hippies could like it- and there are not many of those left.
Book Review: One of the Best (But First Published Version Better)
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an excellent novel - hard-hitting, lean, and inventive, while also psychologically deep. A friend gave it to me in high school, before I even knew what the Nebula and Hugo awards were, and not only was I taken right in by it, but it's remained a favorite.
The other reviews cover the story and its worth better than I can, so I'll just focus on the different editions. I was given the original version, in the 1976 paperback. This is the version that won the awards, and the edition on this page is the third version, the definitive author's edition. I bought it for my nephew and was surprised at the change.
The difference is that the middle section - when Mandella returns to Earth between tours of duty - used to be ten pages. Now it's forty pages and tells a very different story. The first version worked well as a calm between the space battles, but now Mandella's blowing away rapists and thieves with shotguns.
It's as if Ender, in Ender's Game, when he's taking a break on Earth between sessions at Battle School, didn't lounge out by a lake, but got into a forty-page battle with raiding outlaw gangs. It'd not only be a long tangent and distraction from the story, but it'd make it seem as if the Earth wasn't even worth saving. That's the way this section plays out, and perhaps why Haldeman's editor, Ben Bova, cut it.
The earlier, ten-page version presents Mandella's break from duty as boring and bureaucratic, which is much more accurate for a soldier returning to civilian life. There's also scenes that are much more meaningful to the story, such as when Mandella's words are twisted by the media.
I admire Haldeman a great deal, and I even admire how he stuck to his guns and put out the version of the story he favors, but in this case I have to agree with Ben Bova's idea to cut that section out.
Still, you can always skip those forty pages and read it later as a short story of the world gone wrong.
Book Review: Outstanding exploration of the relationships between war, warrior, society, perspective, and love
Summary: 5 Stars
This book appeared on my radar when I found out one of my favorite movie directors Ridley Scott was going to do a movie based on this book. What a treat! While the immediate "future" dates are not true, the subject matter (war, warrior, society, perspective, love) is timeless - do NOT pardon the pun because I think that is one of his points. I can't wait to see the movie!Book Review: Prescient!
Summary: 5 Stars
Great science fiction, but also prescient in it's discussion of the future of civilization as it is going today.
Written in the 1970s, Halderman speaks to what is happening to day in Western civilization when the principal characters return from their first campaign and go on 'leave' to visit family and friends.
The socialization of medicine, the off-market communes that develop because all the official jobs are managed by the corrupt government.
Look at what's happening today around you. The 'home invasions' described in the communes are frighteningly accurate compared to what has been happening recently in Argentina.