What I am reading

Forever Free is the sequel to Haldeman’s The Forever War, written with a time lag of 25 years. It features the same protagonist as in The Forever War as well as some other characters from the first novel, but unfortunately, their common history doesn’t really matter since the latter function as secondary characters only and are of no real importance to neither the story nor the protagonists general emotional well-being. On the other hand, maybe that’s exactly what the novel is trying to convey – that in the end everybody is expendable, interchangeable?

The stories’ premise goes as follows: a bunch of veterans of the Forever War went back to civilian life on a wintery planet lovingly called Middle Finger, which they share with some of their former enemies, now allies: the Taurans as well as with a number of Man (yes, with a capital M since this is what mankind has become in the future – a group minded clone species). The veterans cannot seem to settle neither into their everyday life, nor into the coexistence with Taurans and Man, so they plan to escape. But it wouldn’t be a science fiction novel if they simply went to a different point in space, for they are trying to escape to a different point in time, the future.

The one thing this novel lacks the most is character development since everybody (but one hardly featured character) stays exactly the same as they were presented in the beginning, assuming they didn’t explode in the course of the novel. By itself Forever Free is still entertaining, but it is not even coming close to the quality of The Forever War.