The Forever War (The Forever War, #1) - Joe Haldeman Page 0,2

fiction literature that readers and reviewers simply assumed a) that I had read it of course, and b) that my own novel of military science fiction was riffing off of yours to some greater or lesser extent. When I admitted to people that, in fact, I had not read your book, I usually got one of two reactions, depending on whether they liked my book or not.

Here’s the one for if they liked the book:

Reader: I liked your book, man. I really like how you played the changes off of The Forever War in it.

Me: Well, thank you. But I have to admit I haven’t read The Forever War yet.

Reader: Really?

Me: Yeah.

Reader: Have you been, like, trapped in a box for the last 30 years?

And here’s the one for when they didn’t like it:

Reader: Jeez, Scalzi, I sure hope you’re paying Joe Haldeman royalties for how much you ripped off The Forever War.

Me: Well, actually, I haven’t read the book.

Reader: Uh-huh. So you’re not only a thief, you’re also a liar.

So it went, for a few years, until, in fact, I actually did start lying about whether I’d read the book, because I was tired of being told how I needed to read it. I knew I needed to read it, you know? But I was busy. Writing my own books. And, um, being distracted by shiny bits of foil. Yes, that was it. That was it exactly.

Finally, for various reasons, this last year I came to a time and place where I was ready for The Forever War. I took it down from the shelf (where it had been, actually, for a few years—did I mention that I am easily distractible?), closed the door of my office, and settled down for a good read.

When I finished it, this was the thought I had about it: Wow, I’m glad I waited until now to read this.

Really, I was—and am.

There are two reasons for this. The first is a simple and practical writing matter: If I had known going in about all the plot and character choices you made in your novel, I probably wouldn’t have ended up making the same basic choices in mine, because, you know. As a writer I have an ego, and I wouldn’t have wanted to step in your footprints, and walked a path you had, even if it were better for my novel to have done so. I would have been self-conscious of it; I would have danced around certain footfalls, and I suspect my own novel would have not been the better for it. There’s a whole other letter I could write, unpacking this statement and what it means, but I won’t get into that now; suffice it to say for the moment that I would have felt like I would have to be original, even to the detriment of being good. It’s easier on the finished end of the writing process to be compared to The Forever War (flattering, too); on the writing end, it would have been an elephant on my head—too much pressure; thanks, no. I'm happy to have missed that. The second reason is that I believe that The Forever War was a novel of its time, and its time, for better or worse, has come around again.

It’s no secret, to you or me or most of the people peering over our shoulders here, that The Forever War comes out of the crucible of the Vietnam War, in which you served, and which as I understand marked you for its own, as it did with many who served in it. Science fiction as a genre has the benefit of being able to act as parable, to set up a story at a remove so you can make a real-world point without people throwing up a wall in front of it. You’d already essayed your experience in Vietnam in the contemporary novel War Year, (which I had actually read, and gave to my father-in-law, himself a veteran, as a gift), but The Forever War was another, bigger bite of that apple—your chance to explain to people who hadn’t been there the confusion and bureaucracy, the muddled aims and random horror, and the alienation that those who went felt when they came back home to a nation and culture that they no longer quite fit into, because both had changed.

I grew up as part of the fortunate generation between Vietnam and 9/11, the ones whose cohort didn’t have to experience what war