The Forever War is a 1970 sci-fi book set in what was then the near future, in which an interstellar war is beginning. As an early draftee in the armed forces, William Mandella embarks on a military career. However, due to the relativistic time differences, during what is a short turn of duty for him, many years pass at home. As the war drags on and the world changes, he find himself more distanced from the world he grew up on.
This is definitely one of those books that is trying to make a point, and is definitely not a simple book to read although it is well written and well thought out. The central issue to this seemed to me to be the futility of war, with the central character bumbling his way through the war only to realise that his experiences, so different from the people not involved in the war, make it very different to comprehend what has changed in the world.
But first to the story, and that is something that I enjoyed. It was a good read, reasonably well paced and mostly quite believable (ignoring the dates!). My only real criticism would be that it sometimes misses out on some details - it almost seemed too short in places, and perhaps a little long winded in others. But these are small things; perhaps the one or two too many sentences in some places, and one or two too few in others, but no more than that. Other than that, the pace was usually very good and managed to give a good sense of urgency in the moments of action, with the right amount of build up around them. The love interest also worked well, and the characters were all very realistic - you can see some of the military background of the author in it! All in all the story was a pretty good story, well written and worth the read.
Which leaves the philosophy. I've tried to avoid reading too much of the introduction and other information and such to keep the book at face value, but one of the things it did mention was about the futility of war, and this comes across very well. You can feel the resignation of the main character when what seems an impossible challenge is put forward, and the stupidity of the situations they find themselves in due to the impossibiltiy of planning and naive assumptions by governments. It does make you think about what might change in the world, too, given time; issues with population control are discussed for example.
There is a philosophical line that didn't work so well for me, though, which was the exploration of sexuality and homosexuality - many times Mandella is faced with people or groups of people that are homosexual which clearly makes him uncomfortable. I'm not quite sure what the end purpose of this angle was; as a plot device, it works very well in putting the main character into uncomfortable situations and distancing himself from the world he's fighting for, so there may have been no philosophical point to make. But I feel that, perhaps now we're in a more liberal age, a lot of the portrayal of homosexuality feels very false, and that made the plot device seem a little bit ham-fisted.
But that aside, would I recommend this book? Yes. It isn't the best book I've ever read, but it has some good ideas, a decent story, it makes you think and it's well enough written to be enjoyable. And although it has its foibles and some of it's points are perhaps a bit far-fetched, I never said you have to agree with all the ideas put forward!
Buy The Forever War from Amazon.com
No comments:
Post a Comment