Forever Peace

Joe Haldeman
1977

Joe Haldeman says that Forever Peace is not a sequel to The Forever War in the traditional sense, but that it does allow him to examine some of the original novel’s problems from a point of view that didn’t exist when he wrote The Forever War.

The war of the day is fought remotely, with mechanics lying in couches in a base, controlling soldierboy robots in the field. Or at least, that’s what the wealthy nations like America do, the poor nations they fight just use people. The wealthy nations have nanoforges, which can produce anything at all with a few simple resources, perfect every time.

This novel explores a number of issues, it touches lightly on the issue of race, in that the main character is a black man involved with a white woman, and occasionally there are references to people reactions and interactions with him. It also explores the idea of empathy being a discouragement from violence.

Some of the mechanics who operate the soldierboys are part of hunter/killer squads, and they display a complete lack of empathy toward any living thing. There are fanatic villains in the novel, who use their religion to justify murder. There are peaceful and gentle people who aren’t capable of violence because they relate so strongly to other people.

Joe Haldeman has managed to create a plot which utilises all these ideas and strings them together coherently. While this may not technically be a sequel to The Forever War, in that it does not use the same environment or characters, much of the philosophy is similar, to my mind at least.

This is one of those rare scifi novels that challenges the mind and inspires the reader to think seriously about the issues he has discussed. Issues such as the validity of war, the nature of the human spirit, and whether or not we can ever truly be peaceful without changing ourselves completely. There are many questions raised in the course of the novel, and some of them are answered, but not quite all.