Forever War reprinted

Joe Haldeman’s masterpiece has returned as a six-part comic book series. I vaguely remember seeing the graphic novel version in the early Nineties. Titan Comics found a good way to separate the story into logical chapters. I also know that this story has been in movie development limbo for a couple decades. I think Mayfair made a war-game too.

The story starts in the near future. Humanity begins to travel interstellar distances but quickly runs afoul of an alien race dubbed the Taurans (the attack happened in this constellation’s main star Aldebaran). Allegedly, the majority of earth demands the world governments retaliate. So the UNEF is formed. It drafts 50 people with IQs over 150 to be the first wave. One of them is the story’s narrator William Mandella, a guy who just wanted to earn his PhD in Physics.

The soldiers go through basic training on Earth and then travel to Cerebus (about twice as far away as Pluto) to learn how to survive nuclear attacks, practice combat drills and avoid the dangers of when the temperature is near Absolute Zero. Since they’re practicing with live weapons, a few are killed in horrible ways. The remainder fly out to confront the Taurans on an alien world.

Despite our ability to travel interstellar distances in seconds through collapsars, relativistic effects still occur because the journey to the collapsars require vessels to accelerate near the light speed to get there. This is a key element to Haldeman’s story. It’s also where the “forever” part comes from. Another major hazard is future shock, mainly whenever the Taurus are encountered. The enemy’s technology may be really ahead of us or seriously behind, unlike Star Trek battles, the war is very asymmetrical.

The allegorical part in how Forever parallels the Vietnam War, which Haldeman fought in, is how alienated the UNEF veterans are from the rest of humanity every time they return. The first time, several decades passed while the soldiers only aged a couple years so many didn’t get to say goodbye to their parents, younger siblings are senior citizens, etc. Plus the media does everything it can to keep everyone pro-war, including the falsifying of Mandella’s answers in an interview. Given few options, Mandella re-enlists as an instructor only to be shipped off as an officer in another wave. Should he live, he won’t know anyone on Earth when he returns.

There are other aspects of Earth culture which make Mandella uncomfortable with each sabbatical; homosexuality is the norm to discourage overpopulation, unemployment is very high due to automation, language drifts into something unrecognizable and the human race amalgamates all its ethnicities into what will be just called Man. In Haldeman’s defense, he did write this in the Seventies so attitudes were very different about homosexuality and how dire overpopulation seemed.

I won’t ruin the ending. You have to see how things shake out but it’s a dark tale. In my opinion, it’s a very anti-war story and I think Haldeman makes his personal criticisms about how the American forces are organized through the main character.

Maybe one day Forever will get its movie. It would work better as a modestly budgeted miniseries like SyFy did with Dune before they resorted to bullshit psychics and wrestling.