Reviews with content warning for Homophobia - The Forever War

I wish all books that make you a more thoughtful member of society had been serialised initially. The short chapters really keep this one clipping along. The battle scenes had me sweating, cheering, and sometimes wanting to puke.

It starts off with grievous training and first blood where every death is a gut punch, every war crime a sick feeling in your stomach, then tosses in time dilation - how every battle is going to wrench Mandella further into the future, away from what he's fighting for - and you realise you are going to experience whole new dimensions of loss. The times he tries to fit back into a culture that has moved on are a chilling glimpse at how alien we must seem to returning combat vets. I could never understand before what would possess someone to do a second tour.

If I had any lingering romantic delusions about soldier life after Slaughterhouse 5, this held their heads under until the bubbles stopped. Where Slaughterhouse was a more intellectual critique, this one just plain shows the inescapable daily terror, boredom, and general suck of being recruited.

Can't give full stars due to the homophobia and subtle misogyny. Wild to say that for a book that contains more women and gays than any other type of character but see content warning for light-spoilers details.

Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, War, and Violence

Moderate: Homophobia

Minor: Misogyny and Sexual harassment

The homophobia is whack because you can easily read the rise of homosexuality as shorthand for the world's decline, which - don't threaten me with a good time. Especially because there is an element of the end that implies hetero = turning back to the Good Path. However, you could also read it more sympathetically as the shock of a Vietnam vet coming home to find that Pride is a thing. The hero does make an effort to accept it and his romantic interest chides him when he is resistant. He is never hateful or rude. In one situation, he is even the only straight guy in the room and looked at as a deviant for it. If only this in-their-shoes experience had made him reflect on his prejudices. ------ Some people use tha/ther/thim pronouns in the future. It is not remarked upon negatively, just curiously. However, the hero does 'flip a coin mentally' to decide between using he and she when they come into contact with someone androgynous instead of using those. ------ A veteran who has had to have a mechanical lower half after an explosion claims it has made him 'not hetero...a cyborg' and is referred to an asexual cyborg which, badass, but yeah. ------ The main form of misogyny is that army women are legally required to sleep with the dudes. This feels like it is meant to shock readers and count against the military, and it does, buuuut it feels like Haldeman wants to have his cake and eat it too. The women are at worst a little tired by this requirement, none ever speak against it, and certainly none rebuke our hero. He doesn't seem to dwell on it like he does the homosexuality either. That said, the book is teeming with women soldiers. At times it feels like he's joined a hyper-competent women's sporting team. Not sure if this was just so he could fuck them all or if that was incidental. They get personalities and proficiencies outside wanting to fuck him too, and some even outrank him, though I don't recall any at the very top echelons. I only wish he hadn't picked the least interesting one for his romantic interest.

erikwmj's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Content Warnings

booksthatburn's review against another edition

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reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

THE FOREVER WAR is a story about a never-ending war against a barely-understood enemy, fought by soldiers who are removed from their own time and can never really come home again.

Mandella begins as just one of a hundred men and women (evenly distributed), tapped for an off-planet tour of duty. He’s casually intimate with the whole group, partly because of an assigned bedmate rotation, though he’s a bit closer with Marygay Potter by the time the story starts. The change in their level of emotional intimacy is apparent when he switches from calling her “Potter” (as he does in the beginning) to “Marygay” as he does starting from their brief return to Earth and lasting the rest of their time together. After their attempt to return to civilian life goes badly in the early 2020’s, they gradually become each other’s only connection to the 20th century, as everyone around them was born much later and in an increasingly unrecognizable society.

A large part of what makes all future iterations of human society so unrecognizable to Mandella is that, beginning in the early 21st century, a government program makes first most and then all people homosexual. As a queer person this felt unrealistic to me due to a complete lack of any idea of bisexuality or pansexuality, and the only reference to “asexuality” being in reference to a particular amputee’s physical inability rather than lack of desire (the only thing discussed is homosexuality, so I’ll refrain from attempting to list the full list of possibilities omitted). Both the overwhelming heterosexuality of his past and the mandatory homosexuality of the future are socially reinforced in a way that makes them both feel artificial. In this setting being one or the other is as simple as flipping some switch, and yet most people prefer to stay on their original setting. However, within the story the point isn’t whether it correctly projected the future direction of queerness. It is rather that when Mandella, a heterosexual protagonist, is already ripped away from his society through the dilated progression of relative time, the gradual switch to having him completely surrounded by gay people even when he’s deployed means that he went from the enforced intimacy of assigned bedmates to a frustrating lack of intimacy and connection. The only person capable of understanding him is his fellow 20th-century lover, Marygay. Mandella’s speech is antiquated, he has no common cultural touchstones, and even the intimacy of touch is unavailable because the women he’d possibly be interested in are all uninterested in him, and he is neither willing nor able to accept other avenues of connection. The past is a foreign country, but unfortunately it’s the only one he knows.

Content Warnings

samantha_randolph's review against another edition

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2.0

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midgardener's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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