Rating: 🌕🌕🌕🌖🌑

I know this is hard for you to accept, but heterosexuality is considered an emotional dysfunction. Relatively easy to cure.

One of the things I enjoy most about Sci-Fi is how it makes you think about—and question—the present state of the world in ways you might have not considered before. I read The Forever War about 6 months ago, but it’s taken me this long to write about it due to laziness on my part. You can say it…. took me forever.

The Forever War is about the experiences of soldiers in an interstellar war that lasts for more than a thousand years. The story follows one soldier, William Mandella, who, with luck and time dilation on his side, manages to stay alive for the entire duration of the war. Due to the nature of interstellar travel at near light-speed, a few years for the soldiers can be equivalent to a few decades, or centuries, of elapsed time on Earth.

The author himself is a Vietnam veteran, and in a way this book is also about his time in Vietnam.

It got me thinking about the ridiculousness of war, and about how we’re terrible at communicating with each other as a species.

Tidbits:

I was disgusted with the human race, disgusted with the army and horrified at the prospect of living with myself for another century or so…Well, there was always brain-wipe.

We rose and, without enthusiasm, chorused, “Fuck you, sir.” Idiotic custom.

But artists to some extent have to reflect the temper of the times. Paintings and sculpture were full of torture and dark brooding; movies seemed static and plotless; music was dominated by nostalgic revivals of earlier forms; architecture was mainly concerned with finding someplace to put everybody; literature was damn near incomprehensible. Most people seemed to spend most of their time trying to find ways to outwit the government,….

Only emotionally stable people are drafted into UNEF. I know this is hard for you to accept, but heterosexuality is considered an emotional dysfunction. Relatively easy to cure.

The fact was, Earth’s economy needed a war, and this one was ideal. It gave a nice hole to throw buckets of money into, but would unify humanity rather than dividing it.