Forever Peace Mass Market Paperback – October 1, 1998

A very interesting yarn, waiting for it to unravel, then trying to follow the skeins as they spin off in several directions. It all comes back together at the end and the world has changed. It's worth the read - I couldn't put it down.

Julian Class is a physicist working at a university in Texas. But for a week and a half every month, he is also a mechanic in the army. Julian and his platoon of mechanics remotely control advanced robotic infantry devices known as soldierboys via a direct neurological connection at the base of the neck known as a jack. But when the platoon is connected to their soldierboys, they are also connected to each other on a very intimate level. As is pointed out early in the book, each of the ten members of the platoon, five male and five female, are privy to the most private of emotions and memories. When jacked to others, there are no barriers, no walls, no facades, who a person is on the deepest levels is an open secret.But being jacked is not just available to military personnel. A sizable minority of the civilian population is also jacked, the author believably postulates how this may affect society at large. From potential discrimination and bias of those that are jacked, to a broadening of possibilities for prostitution, to religious organizations sculpting jacked culture to serve their own purposes, the author explores many facets of a jacked society and the use and misuse of the jack within that society.But Julian and his platoon don't just idly ramble through jungle for the fun of it. For more than a decade, the Ngumi, a loose coalition comprised of many third world countries has fought the industrialized Alliance nations because they control the secret to the nanoforge, an industrial device that allows the creation of anything imaginable given the appropriate materials are fed into it. The Alliance refuses to give up the secrets of the nanoforge and instead doles out strictly controlled allotments to Ngumi nations. So for more than a decade a war has raged against the haves and the have-nots.The nanoforge not only makes life on Earth easier for many of its people, but it has also been used to create the Jupiter Project. Humanity's largest particle accelerator, literally orbiting the entire circumference of the planet Jupiter. But during the time when Julian is not jacked into a soldierboy, he is part of a small group that discovers something about the Jupiter Project that could threaten Humanity's very existence in the cosmos...Joe Haldeman deserves a heap of accolades for creating a society where the jack is enmeshed within its culture at every level. Haldeman does a phenomenal job of constructing this society and then placing the reader within it. From the seamy underbelly to the heights of power, the jack is integral and the story simply could not exist without this creation. Haldeman further does an amazing job of showcasing Amelia's (Julian's girlfriend) unabashed curiosity of the jack and the life he shares with his platoon-mates because of it. Haldeman's display of Amelia's envy of the connection he has with those in his platoon (and their connection with him!) is one of many things that makes this story worth reading.So many good things to say about this story! And yet, only four stars? Unfortunately, while Haldeman's jack and its place within the society he creates is second-to-none, I can't say the same for overall plot. The ending lacked the deep satisfaction a really, really good story should have and the build-up to the end...I wanted to see more of it...not have it described to me as it happened in some distant place. So...Forever Peace may not have the denouement of all denouements, but, it is more than recommended as a study of how something like the jack could alter people and the environment they live in. Overall, with a few caveats, I would definitely recommend this book to others who enjoy reading about different kinds of societies, and, of course, anyone who is a fan of Joe Haldeman but somehow hasn't managed to pick this one up yet.

Haldeman is amazing when narrating military encounters, war seems to be his element. When it comes to interpersonal interactions, his limit seems to be two people, which becomes a problem when he has a cast of half a dozen characters interacting, talking, talking over and over and over. The characters themselves, apart from the protagonists, could be interchangeable, you may find yourself in the last portion of the book, trying to remember who this guy was who's just done something important, who you know has been there for a while, but who you can't, for the life of you, tell apart from any of the other secondary cast members. Or maybe that was just me.I did like this book, and the "big idea" at its core is very interesting, especially when seen as the complete opposite of the same idea as contemplated by other of my favorite authors -ahem, Peter Watts, ahem-. But I have to say the execution left something to be desired, at lest for me. First there's the shift between first person and omniscient third person; on the face of it, there should be no problem with this alternating style between first and third person, I've seen it done well before. But in this case I believe there is a problem with the fact that the third person narrator is omniscient. The narrative flow thus becomes bumpy, when you go from Julian Class' telling of his story, full of things he doesn't know, to the third person narrator who knows everything and insists on either giving you explicit details about things Class will never know, or on winking at you about the things he, the omniscient narrator, knows and which will be revealed to you later on. I don't know, I just don't think ending a portion of third person narrative which describes the assumptions of the main characters with a "but they were wrong" or a "or so they believed", it's the best possible choice in this kind of alternating narrative style.A lot of facts and characters suddenly come up on the story, with only the barest preamble, and you find yourself getting a crash course on this or that new character's motivations and personality at the same time you see them do what they're there to do and then be done. In one particular case, one of this sudden appearances just vanishes, having existed only, apparently, to show a point which is never even really a plot point in the story as it is, and only maybe becoming something to keep in mind in the world after the story ends, that is if you remember that character at all.You also get crash courses on the nature of certain facts or situations just as they become necessary for the story to progress. It sometimes feels like characters suddenly rise their hands and point out how, hey, they just happen to have this device that will save us all, sorry not to have mentioned it before, didn't occurred to me, nevertheless, day saved -this may not happen just like I've stated it, but that's the feeling you get sometimes-.There is also a very sharp turn almost exactly at the middle of the story. Almost like this are two different novels in one. Which under certain perspective may make sense, given the subtext of loss, but nonetheless can leave you feeling like everything you read up to that middle point was not as important or necessary as it had seemed to be.Apart from all of the above, this can be a very enjoyable book, with very interesting and worthwhile ideas.I'm not a guy who likes sagas anymore, this days when it seems there cannot be any more stand alone genre novels and that all science fiction and fantasy must be part of at least a trilogy, I'm getting fed up with all that, I miss the good old days of stand alone books. Which becomes very ironic in this case for two reasons, one: This book is definitely a stand alone, it in no way is a sequel to The Forever War, doesn't happen in the same universe, different story exploring different issues. Two: I kind of which this book had been at least two, each exploring in depth the implications of each half of this book, because the way it is, you're left wanting to know more about the aborted issues of the first part, and wondering about the consequences of the second part. It could be seen as if the very complex problems visited in the first half, get a deus ex machina solution in the form of the second half, or that the second half could have happen anyway with any of a wide variety of scenarios for the first half.

Completely unlike “the Forever War,” not even a sequel, but a tour de force in its own right. War tension from page 1, and then it gets better. About halfway through, Haldeman reveals the true theme of the book, to create forever peace. From that point, every action is focused on those who will try to stop it and finding ways to counter them.

Haldeman transforms the concept and even the structure of Forever War into peace through the linking of (almost) all humanity into one mind. The best novel based on this theme that I have ever read is Theodore Sturgeon's "To Marry Medusa," but other greats, notably Vernor Vinge, have played with the concept. Anything by Haldeman is, of course, worth reading, but especially the writing that came out of his experiences in Vietnam.

This book starts like any normal science fiction, and then blows your mind. It makes you search for hope, find it, lose it again and then...?