Sorry for the bombastic title, but you have to admit, it's a little more attention-grabbing than "Book Review: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman." It was actually Haldeman that drew my mind back to Heinlein; a bunch of friends and I were discussing sci-fi war movies, and, naturally enough, Starship Troopers came up. This led to a discussion of sci-fi books of the same theme, and someone brought up The Forever War, "the one where everyone on Earth turned gay." Due to some conversational error, the group accidentally attributed this novel to Heinlein, instead of Haldeman. It's an understandable mistake; Haldeman has a lot of the same habits as Heinlein: a masculinity deeply connected to individualism, an ear for dialogue, and a gift for bold, forceful characters. And while I haven't read or seen Starship Troopers, (which didn't give me a lot to do in the conversation described above) the book's military focus felt like Heinlein, like a war in space.
So, let's look at plot, then. We've reached the point in human history when sending colonizing ships into space seems like the best idea. A bunch of ships go missing, and eventually, a probe gets sent out of a ship's last stand against an alien vessel. The Earth government's war machine (The UNEF--United Nations Exploratory Force--you can tell the book was written at least thirty years ago since it even imagines the UN holding this kind of power)gears up, and starts retaliating against the aliens, quickly nicknamed the Taurans. Any attempts at communication have proved futile; at the start of the novel, no one has ever even seen a Tauran personally. The best and the brightest young minds on Earth have been forcibly drafted into space army (I suppose that's a little redundant; drafting pretty much assumes they're not there by choice. But the 'forcibly' denotes that they're really, really unhappy about it.). The story follows the military career of William Mandella, as he rises through the ranks. The book is divided into sections based on his advancement: Private covers boot camp and first direct, on-ground combat with the Taurans; Sergeant covers the development of the romantic subplot, the space battle, and Mandella's return to Earth; Lieutenant covers his first mission in the upper ranks; and Major details his first command.
This is also one of those space books where faster than light speeds are not permitted; the ships can move close to light speed, but that causes relativistic time to creep in. Moving at near light speeds, a few days on a ship means a few months on Earth. Then factor in the change in technology: given the rate of advancement, by the time the first ships have been going for a year or so, (relative to whichever group you like) the next bunch gets a little closer to near light speed, and catches up to them. Now put in the final factor: the war. You're not only constantly mixing your own technological history, your confrontations with the enemy are doing the same thing. During any encounter, Mandella might be going up against Taurans who had centuries to prepare for his arrival--or he might run into Taurans that have never even heard of humans.
From this description, it may be no surprise that the Taurans (in this book, at least, I can't speak for the sequels) are largely McGuffin villains; the real antagonists are the military superstructure and time itself. The time factor starts to really play a role when Mandella and his remaining war buddies return to Earth--a difference of about two years for them, but twenty-six years on earth. Imagine, for a moment, if you were to play Rip van Winkle and slept until the year 2035. How many of your friends would still remember you? Mandella has his family, but his father died while he was gone, his mother is now in her late sixties, and his younger brother is his much older brother. The changes to society reflect some of that individualism: under the one-world government, overpopulation has reached a critical point where it's socially unacceptable to live alone, or to even express a desire to, and approximately three billion people are unemployed and on welfare--the competition for jobs is pretty fierce. And this is just the difference in 2007. By the book's end in 3143, every living person on Earth shares a group mind and is a genetic clone of a man named Kahn. (See what Haldeman did there? Genghis and such?) And by 2458--well, we'll get to that. The only long-term relationship the army people can form is with each other, and any re-assignment to another ship is essentially a death sentence. Aside from the astronomical rate of mortality (no one has ever survived more than four consecutive missions), the relativistic rates means that at one or the other of the couple will be dead of old age before they can be reunited.
And the army does what it can to exploit that isolation. I've read speculation that the novel is an anti-Vietnam book, and that certainly makes a lot of sense. When you start looking that sort of rhetoric in the novel, it’s almost inescapable. From the draft itself to the forced orgies, to the the boot camp that almost claims more fatalities than the missions, it’s a toure de force of the war machine breaking down anything that gets in its way. Negotiations with the Taurans are rendered completely impossible, as soldiers are routinely brainwashed to enter killing frenzies immediately on entering a war zone. When Mandella returns to Earth for the first time, the military essentially forces him back into service; not with the Catch-22 method of the ever-rising mission quota, but by making damn sure that no ex-military person will be granted employment. The treatment of enemy soldiers is almost an ignored issue; what is at stake here is how a military sees its own people as tools above and beyond all else.
Which brings us, at long last, to our blog title. Faced with exploding population growth, the UNEF turns the world gay. Just as they made it socially unacceptable to live alone in 2007, by 2458, they’ve finished making it socially unacceptable to be hetrosexual. Because, apparently, homosexuality means that people will have fewer children, AND be willing to accept the government as the controlling entity for when to have said children. Note that this also solves the nature vs cultural upbringing debate; since the government can apparently pressure you into being gay, it must be culture, right? But for those of you who, like Mandella, feel very, very strongly that your homosexuality is being threatened, don’t worry, Khan’s got your back:
“If this society is too alien for you, you may go to one of these planets. ... Many veterans ask me to change their polarity to heterosexual so they can more easily fit into these other societies.”
That sound you just heard is the sound of gay rights activists’ heads exploding.
Some credit should be given to Haldeman here. Yes, Mandella is plainly homophobic, but the last portion of the book works a pretty good reversal with this, as his homosexual crew refer to him as “the old queer” behind his back, as he is the only heterosexual they’ve ever seen. And like with Heinlein, the opinions of a character are not necessarily the message of the book. Haldeman is clearly aware of these potential issues, as demonstrated in a conversation between him and his “Temporal Orientation Officer.” Mandella states that he is perfectly tolerant of homosexuality, and the officer agrees that “your profile shows that... you think you’re tolerant”--but that he’s certainly not ready for a world that views heterosexuals as deviants away from the norm. On the other hand, you have to remember that the book’s focus is not a queer theory statement but an anti-military message. Thus, the homosexuality is something, in the book’s terms, that has been forced on humanity, like mandatory military service or mental conditioning or stress-relieving, participation-required orgies. In other words, it’s a bad thing, and that’s why it’s “fixable” by the novel’s end. And that... is kinda problematic.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, there’s a cat in this novel as well. It’s the ship’s mascot for Mandella’s commanding days, and he bonds with it over being the only two heterosexuals on the ship. Then he leaves it to die on the planet during the Taurian attack. Because he’s scum.
But hey, at least he doesn’t put the move on any eleven year olds. So he’s got that going for him.
Bottom line: an interesting, if controversial book. Fairly short and light, and worth an afternoon or so.
Later Days.
No comments:
Post a Comment