Forever Peace is good but not great--read The Forever War

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	• Forever Peace (Remembering Tomorrow) Joe Haldeman Ace, 1998 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 114 reviews view larger image
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Future shock and awe

The decade since the publication of "Forever Peace" have, if anything, enhanced the validity and currency of its imagined tomorrows. Future wars are conducted from afar by "jacked-in" operators of disposable (but almost indestructible) "soldierboys"; the human operators are squirreled away in a safe zone while shock-and-awe campaigns target guerrilla rebels and inflict pitiless damage on innocent civilians. The soldiers are jacked in not only to their corresponding warbots but also to each other; feeling the emotions and thinking the thoughts of their fellow platoon members. Meanwhile, citizens of First World nations live luxuriously on rations provided by a welfare state and produced virtually cost-free by nanotechnology, work only to supplement their rations, entertain themselves on live broadcasts of continuous warfare featuring their favorite soldierboys, and rarely stray from gated communities because of the dangers from urban blight or religious kooks known as Enders.

Similar only in subject and inspired by his own experiences in the Vietnam War, Haldeman's "Forever War" (the predecessor to this novel) dealt thematically with the use of soldiers as cannon fodder by heartless, bungling military commanders; it was like "Catch-22" in its cynicism. "Forever Peace," however, deals with war's collateral damage, both the outgunned populations on the other side and the psychologically compromised "heroes" who begin to question their role in the all-too-easy slaughter.

The novel is, then, about empathy: empathy on the part of the soldiers for each other and on how empathy is the first casualty of war. It's on this theme that Haldeman establishes the storyline: scientists who win a military "contract to study empathy failures, [that is,] people who crack out of sympathy with the enemy," realize that this human "failing" could just as easily be used to fashion a utopia. And, on top of all this, another group of researchers plan to build a giant supercollider around Jupiter to perform experiments that might elucidate the beginnings of our universe--or of the next one.

War, terrorism, physics, nanotechnology, psychology, religious fundamentalism, utopianism, and an action-filled chase across the North American continent--Haldeman has bit off almost more than he can chew in a relatively short novel (and the jarring, alternating use of diary-like first-person narrative and textbook-like third-person omniscience sometimes enhances the kitchen-sink qualities of the story). But he somehow pulls it off. I found this novel just as satisfying as "Forever War," but for different reasons. On the one hand, the satire and themes of the earlier novel are far more powerful, while this book toes the line between allegorical optimism and touch-feely romanticism. On the other, the storyline of "Forever Peace" is more cohesive and gripping, and it is impressive how Haldeman connects all the subplots and loose ends in the book's quasi-apocalyptic closing chapters.

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It's okay...

...but I wasn't really thrilled with it. Some interesting concepts introduced, but that's a about all.

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straight flowing powerhouse of SF

One interesting note on this book is that it lacks chapter numbers. No big deal really, but when you read the end of one passage and the beginning of the next, the two passages butt up right next to each other. Therefore, it reads just like one story, unhinged and unadulterated, from beginning to end. It flows, it sings and its entirely powerful on many levels.

Everything from technology and characters were all meaningful and original. Relationships between all involved spun a deep, complex plot that unraveled itself page by page. Solid - my kind of book.

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Not Free SF Reader

Class war is part-time for some.

The main character here is an academic, but also a part-time soldier, who assists in fighting wars by proxy against the third-world to ensure that their use of nanotech doesn't affect the profits of wealthier nations.

He is researching cosmology in a big way on top of that, so is where the action is in many cases, as a large scale project in the outer solar system has his input.

3.5 out of 5

Forever Peace is good but not great--read The Forever War

Forever Peace is the second book by Joe Handelman to win both the Hugo and Nebula awards. He also achieved this doubly prestigious honor before with his book The Forever War, which I have previously read and reviewed and greatly enjoyed.

Unfortunately, Forever Peace is not as well-written as The Forever War, although it is as inventive. That's part of the problem. There are two great ideas in The Forever War: the notion that some percentage of humans have the ability to be "jacked" so that all sensory input can be shared between two or more people AND the discovery that a long-running astrophysical experiment to recreate the Big Bang will actually destroy a significant portion of our Galaxy and there is a secret society that has infiltrated the Government that believes that it is God's will that the Universe be destroyed.

Either one of these ideas would have been enough to make a pretty decent sciemce fiction novel. However, in Forever Peace I think that Haldeman over-reaches and tries to include two ideas that really don't have much to do with each other. In general, I am a fan of sci-fi books that are brimming with ideas but there's just something ill-posed about the way the ideas in Forever Peace seem to unspool. I was quite surprised, because most reviews seem to think that it is at least as a good as The Forever War but I had difficulty finishing it (and was not really invested in the main character's well-being) which was not the case with The Forever War, which is really a collection of short stories and novellas that feature the same character.

Forever Peace and The Forever War are not really sequels, their similarities are in their author and they both are told from the first-person perspective of a soldier in aseemingly unterminable war. Forever Peace does not distinguish itself in a head-to-head cmparison between the two, but is still worth a try (after reading The Forever War).

OVERALL GRADE: B+.
IMPACT: B-.
IDEAS: A.
WRITING: B.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

In the year 2043, the Ngumi War rages. Limited nuclear strikes have been used on Atlanta and two enemy cities, but the war goes on, fought by 'soldierboys' -- indestructible war machines operated by remote control by soldiers hundreds of miles away.

Julian Class is one of these soldiers, and for him war is truly hell. The psychological strain of being jacked-in to his soldierboy -- and the genocidal results -- are becoming too much to bear. Now he and his companion, Dr Amelia Harding, have made a terrifying scientific discovery, which could literally take the universe back to square one. Except that for Julian, the discovery isn't so much terrifying as tempting....

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