Customer Reviews

A Separate War and Other Stories

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A Separate Piece of Haldeman's Sci-Fi Anthology


A Separate War and other stories is an attempt by the old sci-fi writer, Joe Haldeman (The Forever War) to represent stories of his full range as a writer. This is an interesting concept, as he starts his first tale as one of the stories he ever first submitted, to his last one, a funky tale written like a movie script!

Listing all the stories and analyzing each would be hard not only on this writer but on the reader as well -- so here are the ones that impacted me, good or ill.

The intro written by one of my favorite writers, Connie Willis, was entertaining enough. Usually I skip these prefaces, but she gushes about the eloquence of Joe and her excitement at meeting him. I can relate, regarding meeting celebrities. Moving on...

The first story, A Separate War, was the best one. It takes up where The Forever War leaves off. It's military science fiction at its best -- an alien/human war where one must compensate for the great distances traveled, the impossibility of relationships, and he writes a gay element into the story to give it some interest and perhaps shock value.

I find this in several stories where his characters have some character flaw, are in the military, are gay to some extent or are impacted by a cold and ruthless social norm.

Finding My Shadow was a sad love story about Boston after its annihilation by a virus bomb. The government has declared the area a disaster area. The protagonist however, who left her lover to the virus, defects and joins the victims, only to find that the disease has long been dissipated. She tries to tell her government that with surprising results.

For White Hill is another 'alien war' story. A team of artists are on the planet Earth, which is uninhabitable except for a few stations where you can get the virus that wiped out all life flushed out of your system (in a gruesomely painful manner). It's really about love, about environmental disasters and about self-sacrifice. It's long, too!

Giza reflects on Man's attempt to bio-engineer himself to be able to mine the asteroids. Except his new creation rebels and the results are not pretty. I was not impressed with the last story, Fantasy for Six Electrodes and One Adrenaline Drip, which was written as a movie script where you could key in emotions and sex stimulation.

Haldeman makes his political views well known with an alien "child", Braxn, who becomes the President of the United States in order to know the feeling of power and his father who tamps down his power to teach him some humility. These are in the related tales Power Complex and Out of Phase.

Overall, an entertaining piece of work. I have yet to read Haldeman's novels but his short stories are hit or miss. I would probably go ahead and read his novels The Accidental Time Machine and The Forever War, but his shorts, well, are not bad at all.

Joe Haldeman's A SEPARATE WAR AND OTHER STORIES gathers, for the first time, some fifteen tales of Haldeman's best works, from his first short story to later favorites, and will delight and surprise fans who know him best through his full-length award-winning novels THE FOREVER WAR and others. These retrospective stories come with in-depth author notes and provide a strong chronological assessment of the changing skills of a young writer who became an award winner in his genre.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Joe Haldeman is one of my favorite writers. This is a great book of short stories that give you a glimpse into the breadth of his writing talent and also a look at his thinking and writing over time. Very interesting compilation. Worth your time to read!!

I enjoyed some of these stories very much. I have now bought some of the older stories on the Forever Way, for the craftsmanship and imagination, although I still find war stories dreary and forced, much like war.

If you enjoy the Science Fiction of Joe Haldeman...I guarantee you will enjoy this collection of his essays and short stories!

Writing as someone new to Haldeman, this reviewer found this collection... largely unimpressive. A pall of melancholia hangs over much of the material, which may be a good enough thing in small doses, or in the service of some political aim, but more often came off as merely depressing for depression's sake. A lot of the shorter pieces seemed mere sketches, begging for someone to write a full-blown story about them someday. On the other hand "For White Hill" seemed positively endless. The title story was pretty good, even if you haven't read Haldeman's "Forever" series, but one can't help but suspect that it would have a lot more impact if you had. Still, it possessed the elements of action and energy that too many of these entries lacked. No doubt there are enough decent stories here to please Haldeman's many fans, but the rest of us might be better advised to start our explorations of his oeuvre somewhere else.

While this collection is subtitled "36 Years of Award-Winning Stories," 12 of the 15 short stories included span the years from 1995 to 2005. Of the newer stories, "Finding My Shadow" and "Civil Disobedience," stand out from the crowd. The stories are angry, disenfranchised, and examine the the state of America during the Bush administration by looking into the future. Short stories, even from a writer as talented as Joe Haldeman, can be hit-or-miss--for instance, the "hard SF" piece "For White Hill" didn't work for me, since I'm not a big fan of "hard SF." Based on the shorts that I enjoyed, I'm definitely going to pick up some of his past collections (all out-of-print), including None So Blind: A Short Story Collection, Infinite Dreams, Dealing in Futures, and War Stories.

This fifteen story collection showcases award winning Joe Haldeman, for the most part, at his best. Especially of note for fans of THE FOREVER WAR is the title tale, A Separate War; this time he tells the climax from the viewpoint of Marygay instead of from William as he did in the original novel. This reviewer reread the novel except substituting instead Marygay's finish for the William ending and found it still as strong. Most of the other fourteen tales can be found in recent (since 2000) publications while two entries, "Out of Phase" and "Power Complex", are over thirty years old, displaying a relative newcomer getting his legs underneath him (the plots were better used later in CAMOUFLAGE). Many of the other excellent tales portray a bleak future. A SEPARATE WAR AND OTHER STORIES is a strong compilation of one of the best science fiction writers of the past few decades.

Harriet Klausner

Haldeman has won all the awards possible and these short stories well illustrate why.