The term “forever war” first appeared as the title of a 1974 science-fiction novel. Its author was Joe Haldeman, a Vietnam veteran who drew on his own military experiences to recount a war between humanity and aliens that lasts for centuries. His narrator, a soldier named William Mandella, lives through the entire conflict, because he travels in starships that approach lightspeed, and therefore, thanks to the relativity effect, ages only a few years while many lifetimes pass on earth. Mandella is a draftee and a deeply cynical, unenthusiastic soldier who nonetheless rises high in the ranks because of the enormous seniority he compiles over these hundreds of years. At the end of the novel, he discovers – spoiler alert! – that the entire war had begun by mistake. But the military-industrial complex had seized on the opportunity with glee and rejected all opportunities to end the bloodshed. “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.”
If splitting conventional differences of opinion is an art, this takes the form to a very high level. Considering that polarizing clichés are the hallmark of our time, we need more stuff like this.
If splitting conventional differences of opinion is an art, this takes the form to a very high level. Considering that polarizing clichés are the hallmark of our time, we need more stuff like this.
Thank you!