Continuation of a Classic
Twenty-five years ago, Joe Haldeman published his first -- and still most famous -- science fiction novel, The Forever War, a grimly ironic account of soldiers subjected to the brutalities of interstellar warfare and the distortions of relativity. As a result of those distortions, the soldiers who survive the war age very little, despite the fact that the war drags on for nearly 1,200 years. By the novel's end, those same survivors are faced with a choice: to align themselves with the static, homogeneous, hivelike society that has evolved in their absence or band together with other members of the human minority and build a new home. In Forever Free, a belated sequel to his classic original, Haldeman tells the story of a group of men and women who choose the latter course.
Forever Free, which is set approximately 20 years after the concluding events of the earlier novel, is once again narrated by The Forever War veteran William Mandella. Mandella, together with his longtime lover Marygay Potter, has settled down on a harsh, earthlike planet known as Middle Finger (or, as its inhabitants call it, MF). He is now the father of two almost-grown children and earns his living by fishing and by teaching part-time in the local university. As the new novel opens, he is 54 years old and has grown increasingly dissatisfied with the strictures and conditions of his chosen life. Along with many of his fellow exiles, he particularly resents the subservient role that humans play in a society dominated by that hivelike species known, ironically, as Man.
Convinced that he and his kind represent nothing more than a "genetic insurance policy" -- a fallback position should the grand evolutionary experiment called Man eventually peter out -- Mandella concocts a desperate plan to set his species free. Together with 150 volunteers, Mandella proposes to occupy an interstellar starship called The Time Warp, and to pilot that ship on a round-trip journey that will last for ten years of subjective time but which, with the aid of relativity, will bring them back to Middle Finger some 40,000 years later, by which point the world will have changed in unimaginable ways. When Mandella's proposal is rejected by the ruling consciousness called The Whole Tree, he and his fellow rebels hijack The Time Warp and head out into the future.
Shortly into that journey, things go seriously -- and permanently -- wrong. The antimatter fuel that powers the starship inexplicably evaporates, forcing the pilgrims to return to their home planet in a series of interstellar lifeboats. They return to Middle Finger eight years after their departure to find that everyone on the planet has disappeared, leaving clothing and possessions behind. The search for a solution to these interrelated mysteries -- the disappearance of the fuel and the disappearance of the populace -- dominates the second half of this novel. In time, that search leads Mandella and a select group of survivors to the equally desolate planet Earth. There, they encounter a bizarre, shape-shifting entity called an Omni. Shortly after that encounter, both humans and Omni come face-to-face with the nameless, underlying power that governs the physical universe, a power that provides them with some unexpected answers to the novel's central mysteries.
Forever Free is an eccentric, playfully speculative book that frankly lacks the narrative immediacy and sheer visceral impact of its award-winning predecessor. It will be interesting to see just what sort of response it generates. (In a possible foretaste of things to come, one anonymous reviewer virtually foamed at the mouth while reviewing this book. Guess it wasn't what he or she was looking for.) To my mind, though, it would be a mistake to dismiss this novel, which offers a number of significant pleasures, most of which are considerably different from those on display in The Forever War. Forever Free is a quieter, more contemplative book and is clearly the product of an older, more meditative man. From beginning to end, it is much more a novel of ideas than action, examining, from its own unique perspective, the complex dynamics of family and community; and reflecting, with humor and intelligence, on the limits of our understanding of the great cosmological experiment in which we find ourselves. It is also a novel about people who are growing older but who have managed to retain their exploratory spirit and to resist the inertial pull of age, fate, and circumstance. All of this is delivered in a clean, clear, deceptively effortless style that is richly nuanced, frequently quite funny, and always eminently readable.
Readers expecting a more conventional successor to The Forever War may find themselves puzzled or disappointed. More flexible readers will find much to admire here and a great deal to enjoy. Forever Free may not be the landmark work that Haldeman's followers have hoped for, but it's a solid, intelligent entertainment that is infused, at least periodically, with the inimitable Haldeman magic.
—Bill Sheehan
