"The Forever War," by Joe Haldeman

FM's rating:

1.      Premise 8

2.      Prose 8

3.      Plot 8

4.      Characters 9

5.      Overall 8

Comments (optional - but try to keep it under 3000 words!)

This book is touted as one of the great classics of the Science Fiction genre, and it’s easy to see why.  If anything, it’s TOO classic – almost formulaic to a person who has read sci-fi extensively over the past several decades.  That is not to say “predictable” – in a story like this, literally anything can happen, and here, it does.  Returning to Earth after traveling at near the speed of light, your subjective time would have gone by much more slowly, your years equaling many years on Earth.  This is not an uncommon concept in sci-fi, but Haldeman adds some really nice twists on the theme; notably, that heterosexuals, at one point in history, have come to be considered aberrations!  The description of how the returning warriors feel totally out of place on their home world is rendered nicely, and the Taurans – the enemy race – are described with just enough ambiguity to emphasize their alien-ness.  The twist at the end is a beautiful touch – one of the best in literature, perhaps – always a great way to wrap things up.  Many would give this book a 10 rating overall, for its importance to the genre.  I wouldn’t argue the point; but taking it at face value, for me, the relatively high 8 rating does it justice.