2012 books
3) Joe Haldeman, The Forever War, 1975
I'm far more predisposed to reading about the Vietnam War these days than, say, when this first came out when I was a teenager. It's not the circumspect way Haldeman addresses it that has somehow kept me from reading The Forever War for so long - far from it, it's more the label 'military SF', a sub-genre I tend to avoid. Haldeman explored this novel's themes through the lens of personal experience, drawing several analogies between the lives of post-war combat veterans and the repeated alienation experienced by time-dilated soldiers returning from the frontline of an interstellar war; there are also neat elements of farce, such as with the highly-advanced military technologies of mobile-suited humans and aliens being so evenly matched that resorting back to spears, bows and arrows is just about the only way to win in combat. I like particularly the jaundiced and cynical tone that comes through because its origin in the American experience of Vietnam, ie. fighting a losing battle with an enemy you just don't understand, still comes across loud and clear; also the approach Haldeman took with the gender and sexual issues he chose to raise in the novel are still creditable. About the only thing that doesn't work reading it today is the original time setting: 1997 was way too early for humanity to be capable of fighting an interstellar war even with the whole world on a war footing, but in Haldeman's defence he needed to make his story as connected as possible to the memories of readers with a lost and wasteful war recently behind them. I'm now looking forward to the two sequels, which I know are each very different in tone.