Read 1981, 2012, reviewed 5/19/2013
4 stars
This is one of the books I first read for my SF class in
college. I enjoyed it then and enjoyed
it now. It is a brilliant interpretation
of the Viet Nam
war: frustrating, unwinnable, and pointless.
The brilliance of the novel is in the change of the society
while the main character, William Mandella, is at battle. Since the war is so far away, the paradox of
time dilation causes time to move slower for Mandella than it does on the
earth. So whenever he returns to Earth
on leave, hundreds of years have passed and society has changed dramatically,
leaving Mandella feeling like a stranger in his own home.
My favorite change is when the Earth becomes predominantly
homosexual. It is portrayed as matter of
fact, with no moralilty approving or condemning it. It just is.
And it emphasizes how difficult it is for a soldier to readjust to being
home after being at war.
The characters are well-developed. I cared about the main character and his
girlfriend and their relationship. It
wasn’t soapy, although it had the potential for leaning that way. I particularly liked the sequence where they
are at her home farm and must survive a marauding gang. I didn’t remember this from my original
reading, which may be because it was a later edition with some restored
material.
I give this book 4 stars, particularly for the time dilation
aspect, and because of my affinity for the main character feeling like an
outsider. It is a great novel about the
futility of war and its affect on the lives of the soldiers who must deal live
with it.
Good review! I really enjoyed the story, and liked the part where it was revealed that the entire war was a mistake that was capitalized on by unscrupulous profiteers. How like life. :)
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