Books like Forever Peace

Welcome to the future...where the final war is being waged\ \ ....against war itself. There is such a bounty of wonderful, insightful and important ideas stuffed into this novel that I find myself seriously bummed that weak storytelling and plodding central plot flow marred my enjoyment enough to keep me from awarding this a 4th star. Still, from a component standpoint, this is a collection of gems. THE POLITICS:The Haves:The Alliance, led by the U.S., but including most of what we would consider the elite industrialized nations (e.g., U.K., Japan, France, Germany, Russia) is engaged in a bloody, relentless guerilla/terrorist/revolutionary war against the Ngumi (see Have Nots below). The Alliance's primary weapon is the soldierboy:\ \ \ All ten people in Julian Class’s platoon had the same basic weapon-- the soldierboy, or Remote Infantry Combat Unit: a huge suit of armor with a ghost in it. For all the weight of its armor, more than half of the RICU’s mass was ammunition. It could fire accurate sniper rounds to the horizon, two ounces of depleted uranium, or at close range it could hose a stream of supersonic flechettes. It had high explosive and incendiary rockets with eyes , a fully automatic grenade launcher, and a high-powered laser. Special units could be fitted with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, but those were only used for reprisal in kind. \ FYI, the photo above is the frontispiece from my Easton Press copy of the novel so I thought it was the best representation of the RICU. However, before I found that I had already set aside the following pic and so I will go ahead and share rather than waste it because I thought it was pretty cool. \ \ Each soldierboy unit is controlled from 1000s of miles away by an engineer who is "jacked-in" to the machine via an advanced neurological link that can not be duplicated or hacked. War as VR video game...*shudder*...is it just me or do you just sense that something like this is right around the corner and it’s only a matter of time. While jacked, all ten humans in the platoon share each others consciousness, memories and thoughts and Haldeman does a very good job of addressing the issues of gender, sexuality and intimacy that result from such a merging of male and female identities. Another unusual aspect that Haldeman brilliantly employs is that most of the humans “jacked” into the soldierboys are pacifists by nature. They are professors, doctors and scholars who hate what they are required to do and usually attempt to limit loss of life to the enemy...though they still kill boat loads the size of the titanic. The psychological effect of the war on these people is a central part of the story. The Have NotsThe other side of the conflict are the Ngumi: a loose confederation of 54 rebel groups comprised of (1) the majority populations of most of the underdeveloped nations, (2) strong minority factions within Alliance member states and (3) untethered revolutionaries fighting the resource distribution disparity. Not having the resources or the technology (see Societal description below), the Ngumi can't muster anywhere near the firepower of the Alliance. They are more like:\ \ They are severely outgunned but highly motivated to the “cause.” This “cause” has nothing to do with ideology, religion or cultural differences, but rather is centered around wealth and the access to resources (specifically, the nano forges discussed below). Again...is it just me or is a version of a have vs haven’t conflict also slouching towards Bethlehem the near future to be born. While not a central aspect of the conflict, Haldeman does introduce significant racial elements into the plot which I thought he handled well. The majority of the Alliance members are white, the majority of the Ngumi are not. Ironically, the main character, Julian, is African-American and confronts issues of discrimination and prejudice during the course of the novel. THE SOCIETY:The great divide between the Alliance and Ngumi stems from the Alliance’s possession of nano forges.These devices can manufacture just about anything with sand, water and trace chemicals (the exception to this being certain items like nuclear weapons which will still require components like uranium to be included). The nano forges have changed the Alliance into a proto post-scarcity society and the government has been reformed as a socialist state in which people are provided the necessities of life in exchange for 3 years military service. The nano forges allow for construction of all of the soldierboys needed to conduct the war and the only restraint on the numbers in the field are that only a small percentage of the population can successfully undergo the “jacking” procedure. The rest of the population gets to live vicariously through the soliders by turning on CNN and watching 24/7 coverage of laser guided bomb slamming video game-like into far away targets renting edited versions of the mental recordings made by soldierboys in the field. In addition to the central "war story" thread, the book also has another major plot thread involving a scientific experiment being taken on an orbital platform orbiting Jupiter that is designed to provide definitive answers to what happened at the “Big Bang”...if it doesn’t destroy the universe in the process. This story-line intersects with the main plot in a kind of Childhood’s End moment that sets the stage for where humanity goes next as a species. THE ALLEGORIES:If you have clued into it yet, let me say plainly that this novel is absolutely dripping with allegories and eerie parallels to our world. First, the Iraq War with its video game-like conflict shown on TV 24/7 and vicariously experienced (and enjoyed) by civilians safe at home. Second, 9/11 and the War on Terror in which a shocking terrorist attack (claimed by the other side to be the work of the Alliance itself) is used as the justification for a global war against the loose-never-entirely-defined enemy that is everywhere. Given that this book was written in 1997, the prescience of Haldeman’s foreshadowing is scary to the point of AHHHHHHHHHH!!!MY THOUGHTS:This story, while not a sequel to Haldeman’s classic The Forever War, is part of what Haldeman refers to as a triptych (the third piece being 1968 Co which I have not read yet). As Haldeman so eloquently puts it, the three novels define \ a surface as, in mathematics, three points define a surface. It’s a philisophical surface that everyone of our age has been concerned with all our intellectual lives: the problems of war and pacifism...Why has any of this happened?\ .There are important matters being examined here and SF fans interested in these issues should check this out. There is much to make your brain swoon. The world that Haldeman envisions is fascinating. It’s both hopeful and yet extremely troubling. The obvious parallels to current events adds an even greater degree of hair-raising to the narrative. His ability to idea generate in impressive. His story-telling, in this instance, not so impressive. I am a fan of Haldeman and generally enjoy his plot deliveries. However, in this case, I found it merely okay and was periodically disengaged from the story by bouts of boredom with the scene choices or impatience with the pacing between events. It wasn’t horrible, but it was weaker than I would have liked and it decreased my enjoyment of a story that had oodles going for it. The worst flaw in my opinion was the poor characterization. While not caricatures, the players were too wooden and lifeless for me to engage with to any significant degree. This will usually kill a story for me as it makes scenes appear to go on for much longer than they actually do. When you don’t care what happens to person A, than person A talking about a bad thing happening doesn’t exactly keep you riveted to the page. This lack of character connection is even more troubling in this story because this novel is, at its core, a psychological examination of the human species and its propensity for aggression. Much of what occurs is reactive to the stresses placed on the soldiers by the requirement of their job. The reader needs to be able to connect with them and feel their internal struggle. Sadly, I didn’t. I understood it intellectually but was never vested in the personal well-being of the protagonists. As you might guess, this led to a less than enthusiastic reading experience . Despite all of the books story-telling flaws, this is a book I recommend to SF fans and fans of military fiction. There is so much win in the world-building and the ideas peppering the story that it makes the lack of a page-turning plot worth the trouble. Creative...original...important...a bit of a slog. 3 out of 4 isn’t too bad. 3.5 stars. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!Winner: Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction NovelWinner: Nebula Award for Best Science Fiction NovelWinner: John W. Campbell Award for Best Science Fiction NovelNominee: Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel