Joe Haldeman "Forever War": FACT reading group discussion

9 people attended a discussion of Joe Haldeman's "Forever War". Everybody in the group had read a book, most of them decades ago, and most of those people had not reread it recently.

Depressing, except for the love story

A few of them did not remember much about the book except that it was underwhelming. "For me there wasn't much "there" there, even though I had friends who died in the war," said a reader. Another reader, who generally doesn't enjoy war novels (with exception of "Ender's Game") didn't like this book because he happened to pick it up when he wanted to read something with the sense of wonder, but this was too depressing. He also saw no reason why the guy who survived the war should be the only one to do so, when he was nothing special.

Most people agreed that it was rather depressing. Some thought the only thing that saved this book was the main characters' happy ending. As a story of love that endured despite their being separated by space and time without much chance to get back together, it was uplifting. Even after decades of reading it, one reader still remembered a character's words: "I want to be your lover, but if I can't be your lover, I'll be your nurse", and thought there's no greater love than that.

An out-of-the-blue ending

The ending may have been satisfying in terms of certain individuals' fates, but in the global sense it was found to be logically unjustified, at least according to some readers. There is no satisfactory explanation of how the conflict was resolved: "oh, it was those clone things, you wouldn't understand it, the clones just worked it out." One reader also observed that the clever use of the bombs in the last battle would have been something any military group had gamed out. The protagonist wouldn't have to have that clever idea, because anybody would have figured it out long ago and ended the war.

Not just the ending was found problematic: some readers noticed several other plot twists that were poorly thought out. When the soldiers land on a Tauran planet, they run into telepathic natives that look like teddybears, who follow them around and fry their brains. The soldiers never found out what those creatures were or what part they played in the war. It's a proverbial gun on the mantelpiece that's supposed to fire but doesn't, and there are more of them in the book.

The book feels dated

Personally I found the whole book more than a bit dated, science and technology-wise, in the same way that many science fiction books are. They show a society that has unimaginably advanced technology, such as faster-than-light drive, yet the rest of its technology is stuck in the 1950s and worse. In the middle third of the book people plow the fields with manual plows. It is as if invention of FTL did not produce a whole slew of "byproduct" technologies that revolutionized huge swaths of industry. There's also some screwy thinking about economy. The war plunged the Earth into a global recession, yet people are reluctant to end the war because they think it's the only thing stimulating the economy?

Things "Forever War" got right

On the other hand, "Forever War" received praise for the things it did well. If the book was depressing, it was so for the right reasons, since it reflected accurately what goes on in the military. The protagonist gets drafted, trained, and sent to places without having a clue why he's being made to do all that. The absurdities of the military life are highlighted from the very beginning when the new soldiers, as soon as they get trained for low temperature work, are told that they're really going to a planet that's much hotter. Some people pointed out that's the standard operating procedure in the army. Similarly, the brief, meaningless appearance of telepathic bears in the story may not be an example of poor plotting, but something that makes perfect sense in a soldier's life. In the military you are transferred from place to place and meet a lot of people and see things you will never meet or see again, some readers explained. So it is with telepathic bears: the soldiers never got to find out what they were. From the brutal and extremely dangerous training the grunts are subjected to, to being forever torn from everyone they know and love, to the impossibility of integrating back into the society, the honest potrayal of the reality of war was acknowledged to be the strong suit of the book.

"Forever War" as an antithesis to Heinlein's worldview

So in general people thought the book was good enough, but some didn't think it was so good as to deserve both Hugo and Nebula awards. They were a bit puzzled why "Forever War" has a reputation as one of the most important science fiction novels ever (one reader said that people who don't read much SF list "Forever War" among one of the few science fiction books they've heard about, along with works by Asimov and Heinlein). In response to this, some group members reminded us about the political context in which "Forever War" first came out. At that time the society was polarized between those who supported the Vietnam war and those who opposed it. Science fiction writers and fandom were just as divided. "There were ads in Analog signed by people opposing the war, and ads signed by people in favor of the war. They were mostly not talking to each other. Fandom was as caught up in this as everything else. People saw this as a direct attack on Starship Troopers," said a reader. ""Forever War" was one of three novels that were direct responses to the worldview Heinlein had back then. For a lot of people this was fresh and counter to the prevailing tone of the SF, a whole new way to introduce downbeat fiction into SF. A lot of people were beginning to see the world more in that way, rather than the way they were socialized by Asimov and Heinlein, where service is good and the government will do all the good things for you."

One younger reader, though she could relate more to the current war in Iraq than to Vietnam, found this book relevant to today's situation. The part where the military command uses a code word on soldiers that turns off their brains, making them into killers, really resonated with her. She saw it as a parallel of what the army does to soldiers in our times: by not taking proper care of them psychologically, it allows them to commit atrocities against civilians.

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Robert Heinlein "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress": book review

I read "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein because it was on FACT reading group's schedule. I ended up not being able to go to the discussion, which was just as well, because I had read only 2/3rds of the book by then. Now that I've finished it, it's time to write a review. Actually, my opinion of the book had not changed much after reading the final third.

To quote from amazon.com, this is a story of "revolution on the moon in 2076, where "Loonies" are kept poor and oppressed by an Earth-based Authority that turns huge profits at their expense. A small band of dissidents, including a one-armed computer jock, a radical young woman, a past-his-prime academic and a nearly omnipotent computer named Mike, ignite the fires of revolution despite the near certainty of failure and death. "

Ideas: interesting. Characters that spout them: rather flat.

I liked the story, though I wasn't too impressed by characters. The characters are believable, but perhaps too simple for my taste. The radical young woman, Wyoming, and the Professor are more or less cardboard cutouts. The only reason for Wyoming's existence seems to be to make rash, immature statements so as to give the Professor a chance to say: "no, dear lady, we can't do that, here's why..." and then expound on one of his theories. But I didn't mind because his theories were quite interesting. It was worth reading the book just for them. It was interesting to see how Luna's revolutionaries put those theories into practice. I was intrigued to find out what kind of leverage the Loonies will find in their negotiation with Earth. Luna's economically and technologically disadvantaged position should have made it near impossible, and yet they found it. That was interesting. Still the story would have pulled me along much better if there was some character development, some interpersonal drama.

Exquisite worldbuilding, based on shaky premises

To me the most interesting aspect of this book was Heinlein's portrayal of Lunar society. The community of Luna started out as a penal colony. At the time period the story is set in, Earth has been shipping its criminals to the Moon for many decades. Over several generations the Lunar population came to consist mostly of descendants of the original "settlers", with an influx of new convicts constantly trickling in. Since most convicts were men, the initial demographics of the Lunar population suffered from a huge gender imbalance; even after all those decades men still outnumbered women 2:1. This society has no laws; rules of behavior are enforced by nothing more than people's mutual consent.

The book is sprinkled through with little incidents that help us get a feel for Lunar reality. For example, there is the episode where the protagonist, Manuel, is asked to be a judge in a dispute between a bunch of local boys and a visitor from Earth. I found it very exotic, since it is unimaginable to us that a dispute involving possible capital punishment might be left for any random citizen to arbitrate. While those episodes had an authentic feel (possibly because of Lunar slang used heavily throughout the book), they did not convince me a society could function without laws. Heinlein's explanations of how such a society works are a bit too simplistic. For example, he says: who needs laws to enforce contracts, when a person's reputation should be sufficient? I think while fear of loss of reputation might work in very small societies, in bigger societies it is impossible for everyone to have accurate knowledge of everyone else's reputation. As far as allowing random citizens to act as judges and make arbitrary rulings not based in any laws, there is so much room for abuse of power. I think what would have happened in a completely anarchist society (especially one that was made up primarily of criminals), is that this society would have devolved into a dictatorship of gangs. I also don't believe women would have enjoyed a special status because they were a minority. I don't think men would leave all the freedom of choice to women and quietly abide by women's decisions. Most likely they would put women in burqas, lock them up, and sell and trade them like chattel.

So, Heinlein's picture of an anarchist paradise seems quite unrealistic to me. Another dubious premise on which the book is based is that a sentient computer (Mike) would remain in service of people who think millions of times slower than he. Wouldn't he find human affairs to be intolerably tedious? Wouldn't such a computer pursue goals of its own, which may differ greatly from humans' goals?

Overall, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is an interesting speculation about societies and revolutions, though I didn't find it convincing. But it's easy to sympathize with a story of a small, ostensibly powerless entity like Luna breaking free from an immensurably more powerful authority. To pull it off required no small amount of cleverness. All in all a worth read.

(As an aside, I really like the main character's manner of speech in which he often drops pronouns, articles and auxiliary verbs. I loved the Lunar slang too, it's quite charming. It gave the harsh setting an oddly cozy feel.)