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title = "The Forever War - Joe Haldeman"
date = 2014-12-05
[taxonomies]
tags = ["books", "joe haldeman", "reviews", "scifi", "the forever war"]
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[GoodReads Summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21611.The_Forever_War):
The Earth's leaders have drawn a line in the interstellar sand—despite the
fact that the fierce alien enemy that they would oppose is inscrutable,
unconquerable, and very far away. A reluctant conscript drafted into an elite
Military unit, Private William Mandella has been propelled through space and
time to fight in the distant thousand-year conflict; to perform his duties
without rancor and even rise up through military ranks. Pvt. Mandella is
willing to do whatever it takes to survive the ordeal and return home. But
"home" may be even more terrifying than battle, because, thanks to the time
dilation caused by space travel, Mandella is aging months while the Earth he
left behind is aging centuries.
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After I finished this book I had to ask myself why I never read anything else
by Haldeman.
In a way, this book seems to be the counterpart of Heinlen's "Starship
Troopers": While Heinlein shows how smart the army can be, Haldeman seems to
show how the army can be pretty stupid sometimes.
It follows the story of William Mandella, who gets in the very first war
against an alien race that suddenly destroyed a colonizing ship. Due the way
humanity uses to travel the unverse, what happens in just a few days/weeks to
soldiers in-route, the everyone on Earth it takes years if not decades. So, in
the end, although Mandella gets into only 3 battles, his time on the
battlefield (well, on the way to the battlefield and back) goes around 900
years.
Also, there are some very clever things Haldeman did. At the very start, I
thought the story was a bit sexist. It turns out it was a very well thought
point Haldeman did to make a very long arc -- more like a criticism of the
sexism in the 70s than some hidden agenda towards sexism.
If I didn't had just read yet another book about wars, I'd probably keep going
through the series. But I guess I deserve a break after going through two
different wars.