Customer Reviews

Forever Peace

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(25)
2 star:		(21)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I don't read a lot of science fiction, but something about the title made me pick it up. I haven't read anything else by this author, but if Forever Peace is an example, I may have to try some of his other books.

The book is about a new kind of warfare that I found very believable. The advanced nations of the near future are using remotely controled androids known as "soldier boys" to fight the smaller "Bosnia" type wars of tomorrow. The soldiers who control these androids through brain implants can't stay plugged in too long, or they go insane. Which is one of the secrets the book unravels. The main character, a soldier/mathematician named Julian is the heart of what makes an intricate story work so well. This character is very well written. He is complex, and multifaceted person (which is to say very real). The story is political thriller set in the future, with an intellectual 'everyman' as its hero. It was one of the best books I have read this year.

I found it so believable I did a little snooping and I think I know why it rings so true: not only was the author a soldier (Vietnam) but he has been involved in think groups for the Pentagon on the weapons of tomorrow. He knows of what he speaks. I find the fact that an author with such a macho pedigree could write such a moving anti-war book to be facinating. Maybe what they say is true: nobody hates war more than a soldier.

My advice? Try the book.

Unlike "Forever Free", "Forever Peace" is not a sequel to author Joe Haldeman's award-winning landmark novel "Forever War". Some view it as an ideological sequel, if not an actual one. I'm not sure I agree with that, as "Forever Peace" is a vastly different story with different characters and a much earlier timeline. The only similarities lie in the books respective disdain for war. "Forever Peace" is not up the level of quality of "Forever War", but it is still a good book.

The story of "Forever Peace" centers on a full-time college professor and part-time combat soldier named Julian Class. Julian is part of a new breed of soldier that doesn't physically fight the battles themselves. Through robotic and biological advancements that bear many similarities to the methods used in the "Matrix" movies, soldiers are now operators whose minds are 'plugged-in' to the warrior-robot machines (called 'Soldierboys') they control and the platoon members they control these robots with. While not putting the soldiers in any imminent physical danger, the control of the Soldierboys does bring about the high risk of mental and emotional wounds. These Soldierboys are used primarily to put down uprisings in Third World countries. These uprisings are caused primarily by conflicts over control of a technology called nanoforges, which are machines capable of designing and creating almost any physical product necessary for survival and prosperity. In the midst of the strife caused by uprisings, there is also the planned unveiling of the most ambitious and massive scientific experiment ever conceived. A superconductor designed around Jupiter's moons is set to be activated so that scientists can create and observe the exact conditions of the Universe's creation at its earliest possible moment. Julian is attached to both of these major events and his actions will play a major role in determining their outcome and future impact. There is a danger from the continued uprisings that can only be resolved by implementation of a plan based on the Soldierboy technology that can make Earth a peaceful place indefinitely. The other danger exists in the form of a governmental and religious conspiracy that goes all the way to the stop is hell-bent on concealing evidence that shows that the superconductor experiment may be dangerous enough to threaten the galaxy's existence. The race is on to see if these threats can be defused and Julian holds the key to them both.

Conspiracy theories, fatalistic prophecies, not to mention, overt sexual themes, are common elements of Haldeman's "Forever..." series. They are as prevalent as ever in "Forever Peace". Julian is an empathetic character whose own breakdowns and relations with his female academic colleague are full of the tension and sensuality readers come to expect from Haldeman. The threat and danger of the government conspiracy to conceal the truth about the superconductor project is well written and full of suspense. While I don't feel that Julian is quite as compelling a character as William Mandella from "Forever War" or that his relationship is quite as touching, he still brings a strong presence to the table. Overall, "Forever Peace" is a good book. I don't think it is quite worthy of Nebula and Hugo awards (which it did win, but its not nearly the quality of other winners like "Forever War", "Ender's Game", and "Speaker for the Dead"), it is still a valuable piece of science fiction and worth spending the time to get to know.

This is one book that starts off well. Let's be clear about one thing: no one, and I mean no one, writes about military science-fiction with the sense of versimilitude that Joe Haldeman commands. The opening portion of the book is definitely military in nature, then Haldeman does the unexpected by deepening the book with moral and practical dilemmas that take it to a whole new level, all the while ratcheting up the tension and complexity of the story.

I don't think that I've ever felt this much stress when reading a story. I found the characters compelling and engaging and I was impressed that Haldeman didn't pull any punches at throwing problems their way. If anything, it almost seemed like he was trying to destroy them.

By the time it reaches its conclusion, the story is moving along like a bullet train -- sleek, beautiful, and fast -- and then it hits a big, marshmellowish deus ex machina. Worse, the ending *literally* takes the form of "and over the next two years, X happened".

It was a real let-down. I think that Haldeman realized that he was 300+ pages into the story and, dammit, there was the end coming up! I can understand that, but he should have made this into a trilogy. There was certainly enough story potential to turn it into one. As it is, we have a truly brilliant book that's crippled by a truly sallow ending.

I think that it's worth picking up. I really do. The ending is poor but the rest of the book is filled with so much brilliance, energy, and passion that I really think that it deserves to be read. Just... flesh out the ending in your imagination when you get to it.

I find myself always coming back to old Haldeman books when I am looking for something to read. Long after other science fiction novels have been hauled off to a library book sale, my tattered Haldeman books remain on the bookshelf because they are almost all worth re-reading. `Forever Peace' is no exception. It is in some ways a revisiting of the themes found in the "Forever War": of how a soldier of the not-too-distant future deals with war. However the author is 30 years (or so) older now and the mind of this soldier reflects that change.

Haldeman brings to the table his fine story telling ability, his background as a scientist, and his background as a soldier. There are few writers out there who can tell a story like Haldeman can because of where he has been in life. I think that is what brings me back to his books. His stories work, his science feels real-enough, and his violence is drawn from memory, not from fantasy. A rare, difficult, and ultimately intriguing combination.

The Forever War is my favourite SF novel, so to discover that Haldeman had written a companion novel was no small matter. While Forever Peace is not a sequel (it's not even set in the same `universe'), it is a companion novel in the sense that it explores the same issues, with the benefit of the new technology and ideas that have surfaced in the last twenty years, when Forever War was first published.

Being a big fan of futuristic war type stories, I liked the way this novel started, and there was a very similar feel to Forever War. However, Forever Peace goes into much different areas, and the story line becomes rapidly unlike the original. This is not a bad thing at all. I didn't want to read the same story again, or roughly the same ideas. This novel is about a man caught up in war, and how it affects him, and this is the common thread between the two, but beyond that, they are more or less totally different.

A very clever narrative device in this novel, which I haven't seen elsewhere, is the constant change between first and third person perspectives. We see sections of the novel through the eyes of the main protagonist (a la Forever War), but these are interspliced with third person narratives, sometimes involving the main character, but other times not, allowing us to learn of events that the main character is not witness to. I liked this style of writing a lot, and I hope to see it done more often.

Overall, this was a very enjoyable book, and I recommend it to any fan of the genre.

i remembered reading a book called "all my sins remembered" (AMSR) as a boy of 11 or 12. at that age i was pretty much into SF what with star_wars (later to be retitled 'episode IV a new hope'), 2001 a space Odessey Battlestar Galactica on TV, Star Trek - original series, close encounters of the 3rd kind. AMSR struck something like a bell in me, it was to me a different sort of SF, very well remembered sort of SF.

getting back to 'Forever Peace'. fast forward to some 20 years on i read it after 'Forever War' which i first came across on a dark horse comic publication. this was a long time ago - about 4 years ago. so what business do i have writing a review about it now? i can talk about the impression FP had on me just like AMSR did. like drinking good hot coffee.

the message is often the same: the numbing senselessness of war on the very immediate personnal level. fighters fought because they had to. call it fate or karma. there is often no right or wrong but there are the fortunate and the unfortunate, the quick and the dead, the smart and the stupid, and caught in between the rough stuffs and the really rough stuffs is love, um, isn't it like in the office this morning? maybe not and well, i'm not a soldier but i don't have to be one to appreciate books on the subject or know what the writer is saying.

Thematic sequel to The Forever War. The U.S. wages war against third-world countries using robots remote-controlled by soldiers whose minds are jacked into a neural network. One of these soldiers, Julian Class, also works as a physicist. When Class discovers that a particle acceleration project he is involved with is capable of destroying the galaxy, one of his colleagues reveals that the process of networking minds can eliminate the human tendency toward violence. This sets off a struggle between forces bent on destroying the world, and those resolved to create eternal peace. The story felt a bit rushed, it contained a lot of ideas for a 300-page novel. Haldeman could have developed his concepts with more patience and detail. Satisfying as an adventure yarn with fun political intrigue and ambitious themes. The twists of the plot seemed a bit too convenient and implausible at times. Seems like it won the Hugo & Nebula based on its politics, thematic ambition, and Haldeman's reputation, rather than its level of execution.

We've all read (or seen movies about) insidious conspiracies in which some sort of sinister force starts taking over people's minds. Usually the heroes are racing against time to stop the conspiracy before it takes over the world completely. Haldeman manages a new angle on the genera by actually placing the protagonist on the inside of such a conspiracy, where he works to help insure that everyone in the world will be subject to a surgical procedure that renders the person perfectly docile, unable to kill, and generally very cooperative with the group.

It's an interesting premise, but Haldeman's implementation suffers from some major flaws. Although his writing is stylistically excellent, he throws in a few too many sub-plots than a book of this length is able to reasonably handle. We've got tele-operated robot soldiers, a fanatical doomsday cult that wants to destroy the world, the aforementioned brainwashing conspiracy, nanomachines that can create anything on demand, and a colossal physics experiment that threatens to blow up the solar system. That's all just a bit much to cram into a single, relatively short book. The subplots are all intriguing, but none of them really get explored in the depth that they deserve. There seem to be enough creative ideas here for several books, or at least a much longer book, and it often seems as if major new plot elements are thrown in haphazardly and crammed together.

The book's hero is an interesting, well-developed character, but he also seems to be a virtual carbon copy of William Mandala, the protagonist in Haldeman's 'The Forever War.' He's exactly the same sort of physicist who doesn't like fighting and has trouble dealing with its psychological consequences, but none the less is really, really good at it.

In the end, though, my main problem with this book is that it's hard to really support the people we're apparently supposed to be rooting for. While it's interesting to see Haldeman's take on how this sort of 'brainwash the world' conspiracy might unfold, it's hard to root for the bad guys in the way that we're apparently supposed to.

A really intriguing question is whether to not Haldeman actually believes that forcing people to under a surgical procedure that leaves them docile and cooperative would be a good idea. Although it's pretty obvious that this sort of thing should horrify any right-thinking person, Haldeman really seems to set the conspirators up as the book's heroes. He even throws in some laughable philosophical justifications for why this sort of thing might be a good idea, like the risk that some rouge group might develop a world-destroying technology if we aren't all forcibly pacified.

Despite it's flaws, this book is probably worth the time of military sci-fi fans, or anyone who likes Haldeman's work.

I have been reading Joe Haldemans books since I was twelve years old, when a copy of Forever War fell into my hands. Of course at that age Forever War reads the same as any other grand space adventure, but the fundamental issues underlying Haldemans book weren't wasted... The only way to truly understand the horrors of war is to see them through the eyes of the soldier as it is revealed to him the pointless nature of the entire affair. Written by a soldier who fought in Vietnam, and reading it just at the age when I was becoming aware of Vietnam, I can honestly say that his book played an important part in my understanding of mankinds most primative and violent pastime. His call to peace is so well articulated and deeply felt by the end of his tale that you wonder why anyone would wish to continue engaging in the travesty that is War in an effort to bring about the trivialities of policy.

With Forever Peace Haldeman shows us that the traumas of ones youth reverberate throughout the rest of your life. Once again he presents us with Goya inspired landscapes of war and a central character who is deeply involved and who has come to an emotional and ethical impasse concerning his role in the affair.

Julian Class is one of the hot new high-tech soldiers who fights incredible battles from the safety of a control booth thousands of miles away (a truly horrifying concept that seems to be the direction our modern military would like to go... combat that is all to real to our enemies but no more dangerous than a virtual reality simulator for our military). Julian, an educated man, has always skirted the ethical delimna within himself by not being involved in the most violent or bloodthirsty campaigns (these are saved for the Hunter/Killer squadrons who seem to be populated with the futuristic versions of the Columbine High School gunmen... kids who are turned on by death). But when Class is involved in an operation that goes terribly wrong and results in the deaths of hundreds of civilians the emotional wire he has been so carefully balancing on finally breaks. It is at this point that Haldemans novel begins to explore the suggestion of changing mankinds fundamental propensity towards violence. As the main characters happen upon a scheme that could permanently alter the human urge to act out in a violent fashion towards one another. The idea is attractive but the realization of it is, unfortunately, all too fictional.

Our violent history is something to be gravely considered on a daily basis as we work towards a more peaceful coexistence but the dream of erasing our violent natures at the touch of a button is now, and will likely always be, a dream. So, like Orson Scott Cards book Pastwatch (a novel that suggests we could alter the violent history of the Americas with a few minor changes in the events surrounding Columbus's discovery of the New World) I have to say that Forever Peace is a tremendous read but it chooses to resolve a monumental dilemma far to easily for my taste. I do, however, give it four stars since Mr. Haldeman seems to be chanting a prophetic refrain taught me in my youth .... What if they called a war and nobody went?

As others have pointed out, this is not a sequel to The Forever War--it's not even set in the same "future history." But it's a much worthier sequel than Forever Free, the actual sequel and a truly awful novel. My recommendation: Read Forever War and Forever Peace, and leave Forever Free on the shelf. Forever Peace has good characters, an interesting plot, an unusual (sometimes frustrating but usually interesting) structure. Overall, it has much the same feel as a "ripping yarn" by Heinlein, Niven, or Haldeman in his earlier days, while venturing into "transhuman" territory.