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JulesJones: Two books which examine in different ways what happens to the recruits in an interstellar war who by the very nature of their service can never go back to their home culture.
Very sciencey, very military-y. Writing is fine but not great. Book was written in the 70s and is sorta dated and sexist and homophobic in a well-meaning kind of way. ( )
It was almost enjoyable... just... not quite. It was very narrative - the main character just described everything as if it were the, ah, author speaking. It's usually more enjoyable to read books where the characters are at least pretending to be fictional, and not just an author-cutout. That, and, there is some quasi-social foolishness about sexuality and an underlying misogyny. Women are there for a specific purpose and while the author writes it as if the sexes are equal, his females were just men described in text as women - I am fairly confident that women aren't going to be okay to be "assigned" mandatory sex partners on their downtime. ( )
Overall good with some interesting ideas, but I think I saw the book hyped too much before I read it. I expected more ... feels kinda rushed and as if more could have been made of the good ideas. Maybe the second and third book will enrich the story a bit... ( )
Drawing on his own experiences in Vietnam war, author gives a very good picture of how getting enlisted for a long war with the enemy nobody understands gets that person estranged from his homeland and people he lived with. How time mercilessly goes by and soon that same soldier, drafted by his government gets back to his homeland to find it completely changed and incomprehensible. He cannot manage to handle that level of change and becomes for all means and purposes unfit for civilian life.
All of the above happens to our main character. Enlisted to fight the war against the alien race mere distances that his unit needs to cover in near-to-light-speed ships means that what seems like years to him subjectively on Earth it becomes decades and then centuries.
Very soon society as he knows it does not exist any more and his ability to function in new environments decrease - his fellow men and civilization in general become more and more exotic very much like distant aliens and space battlegrounds he fought them on. So he returns back to the fray because people in the military still resemble what he remembers (at least some of them) and in case of any differences they still share the same goal - to survive in the brutal war - and on the battlefield this is the link that bonds the people. Through all that time our hero tries to avoid bloodshed as much as possible and finally sees the light at the end of the long, long tunnel.
Excellent book about trying to keep ones sanity in the war and estrangement between society and those that very same society sent out to fight for it to the point that these others are no longer even considered normal parts of the society.
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
For Ben and, always, for Gay
Primeras palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
"Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man."
Citas
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Relativity propped it up, at least gave it the illusion of being there...the way all reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity. Or Buddhism. Or get drafted.
I feel asleep and dreamed that I was a machine, mimicking the functions of life, creaking and clanking my clumsy way through a world, people too polite to say anything but giggling behind my back, and the little man who sat inside my head pulling the levers and clutches and watching the dials, he was hopelessly mad and storing up hurts for the day--
"One cannot make command decisions simply by assessing the tactical situation and going ahead with whatever course of action will do the most harm to the enemy with a minimum of death and damage to your own men and materiel. Modern warfare has become very complex, especially during the last century. Wars are won not by a simple series of battles won, but by a complex interrelationship among military victory, economic pressures, logistic maneuvering, access to the enemy's information, political postures--dozens, literally dozens of factors."
The most important fact about the war to most people was that if it ended suddenly, Earth's economy would collapse.
Heaven was a lovely, unspoiled Earth-like world; what Earth might have been if men had treated her with compassion instead of lust.
Desperate fun, as I said. Unless the war changed radically, our chances of surviving the next three years were microscopic. We were remarkably healthy victims of a terminal disease, trying to cram a lifetime of sensation into a half of a year.
War is the province of danger and therefore courage above all things is the first quality of a warrior, von Clausewitz maintained.
Últimas palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
I handed the bartender my empty glass. "I just found out where we're going."
En esta novela el tema gira en torno a la guerra y al amor.
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Descripción del libro
La guerra interminable, galardonada con los premios Nebula, Hugo y Locus, es la más famosa de las novelas de Joe Haldeman, y a menudo se ha interpretado como una réplica a la ideología subyacente en Tropas del Espacio de Robert A. Heinlein. En ella aborda dos de los grandes temas de la literatura de todos los tiempos, la guerra y el amor, pero es sobre todo por la perfecta creación de personajesy por el tratamiento dado a sus motivaciones por lo que esta novela ha gozado de un sostenido éxito. El protagonista, Mandella, es posíblemente uno de los antihéroes más inolvidables que jamás haya creado Haldeman, y la exposición de sus relaciones con los otros personajes tiene momentos muy brillantes. Una gran novela que nadie debería perderse.
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The Forever War? Ugh.
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