Forever Peace

If you have read and enjoyed this novel, then please skip over this review. If you haven't yet read it, then press on. My apologies in advance to the author and his fans.

The novel isn't really a science fiction novel. It is a story masking an exposition of the author's perceptions of race, war, sex, religion, and culture. Based on 1960s thinking in these areas, but set in the middle of the 21st century, the attitudes of the characters were not believable. Worse yet, the trite anti-western themes telegraphed where the story was going and led me to predict how it would end by about page forty.

"Forever Peace" fell short in other ways as well. There were a host of characters, none of which had sufficient development to make them sympathetic. The antagonists were unbelievably dangerous and the protagonists seemed to give the antagonist's assassins every chance to kill them. To describe the protagonists as naïve would be generous, especially in light of the fact that many of the protagonists were soldiers, or reformed killers, and could draw from a collective life experience of "one thousand years."

The only area where the author really seemed to have any insight on the future was in identifying the odd effect that killing people from a very long distance, using tele-operated equipment, would have on the soldiers who had that assignment. Fighting from remote safety, and then stepping out the door to a peaceful, normal environment brings an emotional dislocation already being experienced by service personnel. This aspect might have been a worthy subject for a short story.

Essentially, this is a standard, politically correct tract that says the US, corporations, the military, and, apparently, most whites are ... and that if we all get together we'll teach the world to sing and live in perfect harmony. In other words, it's tripe. The premise is silly and the way they go about trying to implement the premise is jaw-droppingly stupid. Adding insult to the injury of a bad plot is the bad writing. The frequent switching from first person to third person is the big thing there that kept grabbing my attention. Every time it happened, I'd back up through the pages to see if there was some reason for it. There never was.
Don't bother reading this book. It's not worth the effort.

Not incoherent, but incohesive. The narrative leaps from first to third-person roughly every other page--why Haldeman did this, I don't know, since it adds absolutely nothing to the effect. It doesn't even achieve a stylish jarring effect, it's just...annoying.
The plot verges on the plain silly, and logical problems peek out from several corners of the text. (For example: ten days in a group mind-meld month after month after month is just fine, but FOURTEEN days even once? Well, obviously that will remove the ability to kill "except in self-defense". Er...yeah!)
The prose is competent, however, and it's a decent book to kill a couple afternoons with.

I heard about Haldeman from my brother about 6 months ago. Since then I have read almost all of his books and been captivated with every single one, and Forever Peace is no exception. This book is extraordinarily moving and meaning full. Though defiantly not a sequel to Forever War it is extremely profound and has insight that rivals Charles Dickens. His main character Sergeant Julian Class is both complex and interesting. I almost get the feeling of Clancy when I read this but with more of a profound sense of the way our world is. This book is a great and intriguing read for anyone.

I really wanted this to be a good book.... really I did. And I can honestly say that it was very hard to put down for the last hundred or so pages.
Still, I've read better. I can understand the possible need to switch from first to third person, but I really don't think it helped the book. It made the first hundred pages very hard to read and I think, kept me from completely enjoying the book.
Too bad really. It started off really well. i loved the soldierboy concept.... Just wasn't enough.

It may be tempting to assume that Joe Haldeman has cynically chosen a title for this book because the title resonates with the title of his famous work "The Forever War", despite the prologue which explains the two books are unrelated except in common themes. This is NOT the case. This is NOT a cynical coattails ride on that earlier work's fame. The title of this book is perfectly apt. Give it a read!

Science Fiction at its best. Flavors of Heinlein and William Gibson. Focused writing, good characters, brilliant, imaginative concepts that reminds you how rare really good SF is. Neuromancer meets Starship Troopers. The Dean would be proud.

Should be titled: The Forever Piece of $#!@%. I threw it away with less than 100 pages to go. A forced march through a grim landscape of mind-melding and sexual equality. A stinker. Stupid plot, boring characters, heavy-handed, plodding, and lifeless. Blech! And this won the Nebula!

Class war is part-time for some.

The main character here is an academic, but also a part-time soldier, who assists in fighting wars by proxy against the third-world to ensure that their use of nanotech doesn't affect the profits of wealthier nations.

He is researching cosmology in a big way on top of that, so is where the action is in many cases, as a large scale project in the outer solar system has his input.

3.5 out of 5

Haldeman tries to convince us that if we could all just feel what every other person feels, there would be no more war, no more poverty, etc. You get the feeling that you're reading a novella-length version of John Lennon's "Imagine". Unfortunately, he elides the portions of the book that might be most interesting - what happens to people who are just evil and cannot be incorporated into his magical fairy land? Overall, it just comes off as some sort of half-baked hippie dream. I strongly recommend that you skip this one and read instead Haldeman's "The Forever War".

I think both "Forever Peace" and "Forever War" are at best interesting but boring reads. Haldeman is a good character writer but a bad story teller - although there are interesting plot twists, you are never engaged. The ending to "Forever Peace" is straight from the script of a bad B movie. Overall, this book would be an absolute waste of time if it were any longer than 300 pages.

Haldeman " Forever War" took the 10 for the best in science fiction. His new book "Forever Paeace" comes in a close second. Itunique characters bring to life different attitudes of the world. Julian is a deep thinking character with a troubled mind. It also shows the barriers of the human mind and how it works. This is a book worth reading.

A Hugo that really disappoints me. Too much "stream of consciousness," messy point-of-view (either you write in first person or you don't), bland plot, oh-so-intellectual and detached genius-like characters . . .. Could have been written fifty years ago, in the best pulp tradition. Please! SciFi can do better than that.

Don't look here for another classic of the caliber of The Forever War. This is just another uninspired book among many that are out there. The soilderboy concept has promise but it was never developed in a way that captures the imagination.

Great Haldeman book -- his classic mixture of warrior-healer is very much in force here (i.e. first he kills you then he heals you). Also has one of his classic assassin type characters: sexy, religious zealot.....don't miss this book -- not a sequel but a lot of fun and adds some new dimensions for this important writer.

Worst then being plain bad, is being forgettably average. The plot line of Forever Peace was not strong to begin with, and the lack of flow only made it worse. Almost the entire first half seemed to be devoted to nothing, then suddenly things pick up, fast. So fast that reading the ending is like running into a brick wall.