The closest I’ve delved into science fiction, in terms of literature at least, would be Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers, which despite featuring extraterrestrials, is most definitely a horror story whichever way you cut it. My problem with sci-fi has always been the fundamental similarities the genre has with fantasy, a genre that I have always struggled to get into. So when a friend of mine recommended The Forever War, I was immediately sceptical.
As it turns out, it now ranks as one of my favourite books. It deals with the very nature of light travel and the repercussions of relativity in terms of travelling from one side of the galaxy to the other through wormhole like gateways named colapsars. In essence, although our protagonist is enlisted in the war for what feels like four years, back on earth well over 1000 years have past. In that time, the human population has grown out of control and, as a way of birth control, the world governments have actively promoted homosexuality to the point where being heterosexual is considered abnormal.
I loved it. It reminded me of a more anti-war version of Starship Troopers without the bugs. The scenes of war are brutal and intense (as is the initial training regime that opens the book) and the ramifications of coming back to such a radically changed world is just fascinating.
It’s bleak and is quite openly anti-war (Haldeman himself is a veteran of Vietnam) but I don’t think I have read a book quite so engrossing and brilliantly written since Stephen King’s Wizard and Glass.
It is up in my top five books of all time for sure.
5/5
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