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The Forever War
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The Forever War is a science fiction war novel by American author Joe Haldeman. Considered one of the classics of Military Science Fiction, alongside Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, the book is a post-modern, post-Vietnam take on the standard sci-fi war novel and as some critics note, a philosophical rebuttal/Deconstruction of Heinlein's work (though it's worth noting that Heinlein himself praised it). The book won the Nebula Award in 1975 and the Hugo and Locus awards in 1976 for Best Novel.Haldeman, after graduating with a degree in Astronomy, was drafted into the U.S. Army and served as a combat engineer in Vietnam, where he was wounded. His experiences — the terror of combat, the inhuman randomness of government bureaucracy, the sense of coming back to an unrecognizable world, and the futility of the war — are all reflected in the novel. In a re-publication in the 1990s, Haldeman, in a foreword, stated that writing this book was his primary therapy to cope with the after effects of the Vietnam War.The story is told from the point of view of William Mandella, a recent college graduate with a physics degree who is drafted into the United Nations Expeditionary Force (UNEF) and sent out to fight the enigmatic Taurans, who have been destroying human ships and colonies. The grueling training and enemy attacks are bad enough, but the worst part is the effect of Time Dilation caused by repeated travel at relativistic speeds, which causes the world around Mandella to age and change into something unrecognizable. Mandella's only remaining connection to his old life is his fellow soldier Marygay Potter, and the two must fight a hostile species to save a world that has been lost to them.The direct sequel, Forever Free, came out in 1999.There are two different versions of the middle section of the novel (Mandella's first return to Earth). When the two short stories that make up the beginning and end of the novel were to be collected he wrote a story to tie them together. He wrote a second version of the middle story after the first he submitted to his editors was regarded as too bleak. The author has said he prefers the original, more downbeat version, and more recent printings have the original version. | |
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Dropped link to Prometheus: Not a Feature - ITEM | |
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Non-Heteronormative Society | |
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Non-Heteronormative Society: After a world-wide famine, The Government encourages homosexuality ("homolife") as a means of population control. Gradually, as such people get drafted into the military and the practice expands, this makes Mandella one of the few straight men left in the service, and the human race. The work bizarrely self-subverts this trope when Charlie, by far the most prominent representative of all-homosexual Earth, accepts a heterosexualization treatment at the end of the novel, his cultural and technological distinctiveness absorbed into their own. Although it might be unfair to claim that that's representative of a gay-is-a-disease attitude on the author's part, since it's pretty clear that through biological and social engineering homolife-era Earth had turned sexual orientation into a more or less manipulable quantity anyway; it's hard to shout "Ex-gay programs are crimes!" when they're being consensually chosen by a member of an ex-straight society. However, in the sequel Forever Free it is mentioned that even after heterosexualization he had an affair with another man. And Marygay and Cat, the woman with whom she had a lesbian relationship during her final UNEF mission, still have strong feelings for each other even though Cat had herself heterosexualized as well. | |
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Instant Expert | |
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Instant Expert: Mandella learns military history and how to kill using all sorts of mundane objects and weapons by being hooked to a machine for a week or so. | |
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Does This Remind You of Anything? | |
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Does This Remind You of Anything?: The whole novel is pretty much one of these for The Vietnam War. In particular, the relativistic disconnect that the war veterans experience when returning to a world that keeps changing unrecognisably in what, to them, is an incredibly short span of time was intended as a metaphor for the ways that soldiers who'd spend years in Vietnam would experience significant culture shock on returning to an America that, in the 1960s, was rapidly changing. | |
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A Father to His Men | |
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A Father to His Men: Subverted. Mandella tries to be this but his 'deviant' sexual practises (he's hetero), and the fact that he is a stranger to their language and culture, as well as the suspicious death of a soldier who tried to assassinate him, all exacerbate the normal tension the grunts feel towards their Commanding Officer. Eventually most of his men end up getting killed because they ignore his order to evacuate a bunker. Mandella only succeeds in breaking down these barriers after he fights shoulder-to-shoulder with them against the Taurans and comes up with the plan that saves their lives (those that are left). | |
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Poor Communication Kills | |
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Poor Communication Kills: The entire conflict is the result of a misunderstanding with the Taurans, who are a clone-based species that (for unspecified reasons) cannot communicate with humans. That is, until humanity becomes clone-based itself, and the two sides figure out that the entire war was the result of miscommunication and some asshole humans eager to get their war on. | |
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Crapsack World | |
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Crapsack World: It starts as a Dystopia, and it gets crapsackier with every relativistic year. | |
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Knight in Sour Armor | |
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Knight in Sour Armor: Mandella. His psychological profile in his military file says he's a failed pacifist who shifts the guilt he feels for having to kill to the military. | |
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Adaptation Expansion | |
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Adaptation Expansion: The first part of the graphic novel version of the sequel Forever Free shows what happened to Marygay Potter during the final part of The Forever War, after she and William Mandella were assigned to different teams. This is in part because while the novel Forever Free is told from William's POV, the graphic novel Libre à jamais is told from Marygay's. | |
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Faster-Than-Light Travel | |
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Faster-Than-Light Travel: Falling through a collapsar will take you to another collapsar instantly, with no limit on the distance between the two. The whole galaxy can be crossed in this manner — if you don't mind driving through normal space for a couple of months or years to get from your exit collapsar to the next entrance collapsar. | |
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Ramming Always Works | |
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Ramming Always Works: Justified, since the ramming object is moving at 0.99 c. Close to lightspeed, it hardly even matters what it is that rams your ship, you're toast; aiming is rather more difficult, however, unless it's something big, like a planet. Of course, ramming something at near-lightspeed is also invariably deadly for the ship doing the ramming. | |
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Conscription | |
| The Forever War / int_31c4280 | comment |
Conscription: Often conscription ends up collecting those too poor or untalented to avoid it. Here, the "Elite Conscription Act" drafts only those people who are physically fit and have an IQ of 150 or better. Instead of a poor and ill-disciplined military protecting a rich and talented society, you have a rich and talented military protecting an increasingly poor and ill-disciplined society.Potter's father comments that the war is the reason why everything is so bad when they return after their first tour; "the very best fell to the Elite Conscription Act and wound up being cannon fodder." Even Mandella comments that wars in the past often accelerated technological and social progress, but this one was doing the exact opposite. | |
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Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism | |
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Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Very, very cynical about the world, rather idealistic for his main characters (though in a "holding out some dignity against all odds" style). | |
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Our Clones Are Different | |
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Our Clones Are Different: After thousands of years of war between Earth and its colony planets and the Tauran empire, Earth develops clone soldiers who — all of them being the same individual — use telepathy to fight as one. It turns out that the Taurans are "natural clones" and do not only have the same Hive Mind ability, but somehow extend that ability to other clones, like the new human soldiers. In their first encounter, both sides automatically connect, and seeing the conflict through the other soldiers' eyes as well, discover that millennia ago, the war started due to a giant misunderstanding. Thus ends the Forever War. | |
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Crapsaccharine World | |
| The Forever War / int_3b79029a | comment |
Crapsaccharine World: The population of Earth has been conditioned to be happy with their lives, despite massive overpopulation and a corresponding lack of jobs and housing, and health care restricted to those few who are useful to society. Note: This varies according to which version of the novel you read; others depict it as more a Crapsack World. | |
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Schizo Tech | |
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Schizo Tech: No energy weapons can work inside the stasis fields so swords, quarterstaffs, arrows and throwing darts are used. Also happens due to Time Dilation when you might find yourself fighting alien technology from decades in your future, or vice versa. | |
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Powered Armor | |
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Powered Armor: Just don't fall or take a hit to your back. | |
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A Tragedy of Impulsiveness | |
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A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: The whole war. When some ships are lost due to accidents, the old-guard military leaders jump to the conclusion that there must be an enemy out there destroying them. They arm the new ships and attack the Taurans at first sight. The Taurans hadn't done anything, having abolished war millennia ago, so every death in the story was completely pointless. | |
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Energy Weapon | |
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Energy Weapon: Each Powered Armor suit has a laser built into one of its fingers, which can melt through steel. | |
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Military Moonshiner | |
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Military Moonshiner: Forms the basis of an entire underground economy on board Mandella's ship; as commanding officer, he turns a blind eye since it boosts morale and the soldiers are generally good at not being drunk on duty. | |
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Action Survivor | |
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Action Survivor: It's debatable, but Mandella and Marygay. Despite being nothing less than an elite super soldiers in Powered Armor, their repeated survival in the unfathomably brutal combat zones is almost entirely through blind luck. | |
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Lensman Arms Race | |
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Lensman Arms Race: Played with; both factions develop increasingly sophisticated weapons and technology over the course of the war, but since it can take decades or even centuries to arrive at an engagement you can never be sure if you'll be facing an enemy with relatively much more or less advanced weaponry. | |
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Future Slang | |
| The Forever War / int_60441d9 | comment |
Future Slang: Someone or something that gets killed/destroyed is said to have gotten "caulked." When a hospital worker sees Mandella's image over the phone, and realizes she's talking to one of the few living veterans of the War, she says, "That's max!" | |
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Recruiters Always Lie | |
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Recruiters Always Lie: When Mandella and Marygay leave the military, they're told that they can return as instructors at their choice of location. They return and are assigned as instructors on the moon — for about an hour, at which point they receive a reassignment to combat duty. | |
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Deflector Shields | |
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Deflector Shields: Stasis field. Only problem is that nothing inside can go faster than 16.3 m/s, rendering most projectile weapons useless, and any living thing not wearing special armor dies instantly when inside of it. Which means that inside of the field, it's a Sword Fight. | |
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Death World | |
| The Forever War / int_63557923 | comment |
Death World. Charon. Outdoor temperature is just above absolute zero. If your Powered Armor cracks, you'll freeze to death before you have a chance to die from loss of oxygen. Ditto if your suit's heating unit is damaged. If you accidentally touch your heat radiator against a frozen gas "rock", it will vapourize with the force of a grenade going off by your neck. Even if the thing you whack your heat radiator against isn't frozen gas, a damaged radiator can broil you to death inside of a few minutes. If you stand on frozen hydrogen, it will instantly melt, creating a zero-friction surface, causing you to fall over, which will probably result in one or more of the above happening. If you run or jump too hard, gravity is low enough that you risk either exceeding escape velocity and disappearing into space, or crashing into a mountain at lethal speeds. | |
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Arm Cannon | |
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Arm Cannon: Well, laser fingers, anyway. | |
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In the Future, Humans Will Be One Race | |
| The Forever War / int_680a5252 | comment |
After a three-hundred year time skip, Mandella finds that [[In the Future, Humans Will Be One Race due to eugenics to reduce racial contention, almost everyone is homogenous blend of races. He does notice a few soldiers who seem to be more "pure" examples of specific races, and wonders whether their fellow soldiers give them a hard time over it. | |
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Hopeless War | |
| The Forever War / int_6b510ace | comment |
Hopeless War: The war's revealed to be this for the Taurans. Having outgrown war as a species a millenia before the events of the book, they have to relearn how to do warfare, do it badly, and would have eventually lost. | |
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No Heterosexual Sex Allowed | |
| The Forever War / int_7025ca2d | comment |
No Heterosexual Sex Allowed: Due to massive overpopulation, heterosexual contact and sex is entirely outlawed and considered lewd. Whatever reproduction there is occurs by artificial insemination. The heterosexual male time-traveller runs into problems with his preconceived notions of decency. At the war's end, since most people are clones, the soldiers can choose to have their preference changed so they can go be happy with whatever gender of soldiers they might prefer. | |
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Comic-Book Adaptation | |
| The Forever War / int_7c4f6612 | comment |
Comic-Book Adaptation: The novel was adapted into a three-part graphic novel for the Belgian publisher Dupuis by Joe Haldeman and the Flemish artist Marvano as De Eeuwige Oorlog (La guerre éternelle). This adaptation has been published in English as well. The sequel Forever Free was adapted and published by Dargaud as Libre à jamais.. | |
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Portal Network | |
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Portal Network: The collapsars form a naturally-occuring one. | |
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Compound-Interest Time Travel Gambit | |
| The Forever War / int_86e2d67b | comment |
Compound-Interest Time Travel Gambit: In force but ultimatedly subverted. The soldiers get quadruple pay for being away in a combat zone for the equivalent of twenty years. At the end of their first tour Mandella and Potter are quite well off and go on a spending binge, but it's nowhere near enough to retire on. When they recuperate from lost limbs on Heaven several objective centuries later they live the high life (along with everyone else on Heaven, with over-inflated prices). At the end of the novel, most other humans are clones in a group consciousness who do not use money, so all of their combat pay becomes worthless - but Marygay came back early enough to use hers and the pay of a few buddies to buy a ship. | |
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Badass Army | |
| The Forever War / int_8878f3be | comment |
Badass Army: The soldiers all have an IQ of 150 or over, and physical fitness to match. They have survived a grueling training regimen on a Death World (where many trainees die), and are equipped with Powered Armour and armed with high-powered lasers and tachyon grenades. Later recruits are genetically modified Super Soldiers with enhanced reflexes and intellect. Unfortunately, despite all this, they still have a casualty rate more in line with a Red Shirt Army. | |
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Living Relic | |
| The Forever War / int_89a98f45 | comment |
Living Relic: The soldiers who manage to survive their tours of duty find themselves in this situation. Few and far between due to high mortality rates, they return to their homes centuries later only to find entirely new and alien cultures. | |
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Dehumanization | |
| The Forever War / int_8ab096bd | comment |
Dehumanization: The soldiers are mentally conditioned to view the enemy Taurans as sub-human, by invoking false memories of Taurans burning cities, eating children, and raping women. The soldiers know the images are fake, as no one has even seen a Tauran before their battle, but they still work to send them into a bloodthirsty frenzy, to the point that their mission to capture a Tauran fails because the soldiers slaughter them all. | |
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United Nations Is a Superpower | |
| The Forever War / int_8c4b72dd | comment |
United Nations Is a Superpower: Over the course of the novel, the UN evolves from a fledging One World Order to a transhuman polity. | |
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| The Forever War / int_8c732f20 | type |
Time Dilation | |
| The Forever War / int_8c732f20 | comment |
Time Dilation: Of the "traveling near to the speed of light" variety. When Mandella and Potter return after their first tour of duty they find that decades have passed on Earth while they only experienced months, expanding to centuries on their following tours. | |
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Future Food Is Artificial | |
| The Forever War / int_93c04c8a | comment |
Future Food Is Artificial: Soy-based food is the norm, although regular food is still available. When Mandella returns home after his first tour of duty, he buys some real beef for a celebration dinner with his mother; it costs over 20 times what the artificial soy equivalent would have cost. | |
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The New Rock & Roll | |
| The Forever War / int_9558599b | comment |
The New Rock & Roll: Mandella says that all art in the future — music, movies, literature — sucks. | |
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| The Forever War / int_97b5e1f9 | type |
Bug War | |
| The Forever War / int_97b5e1f9 | comment |
Bug War: Possibly deconstructed, depending on whether the Taurans can be considered "bugs." | |
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Eternal Prohibition | |
| The Forever War / int_97e55231 | comment |
Eternal Prohibition: Averted. Marijuana cigarettes are commercially available, and at the end of his first tour Mandella finds heroin being sold in the officer's mess. | |
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| The Forever War / int_9ba53911 | type |
Stranger in a Familiar Land | |
| The Forever War / int_9ba53911 | comment |
Stranger in a Familiar Land: Played to devastating effect. Mandella and Potter's return to Earth after their first tour of duty. Mandella's father is dead; his mother is dying of cancer which The Government's medicine system refuses to treat because she is not considered worth it, and she has taken a lesbian lover. Potter's parents are forced out of their home for defying government regulations, and end up on an agricultural commune under assumed identities. They are killed while Mandella and Potter are staying with them by raiders looking for food. Needless to say, the two re-enlist in the Army and get off the planet. Note that they only re-enlisted with the assurance that they'd be stationed on the Moon as instructors. On arrival at their new station they are immediately reassigned to fight in another star system. | |
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| The Forever War / int_9ce377f1 | type |
Cure Your Gays | |
| The Forever War / int_9ce377f1 | comment |
The work bizarrely self-subverts this trope when Charlie, by far the most prominent representative of all-homosexual Earth, accepts a heterosexualization treatment at the end of the novel, his cultural and technological distinctiveness absorbed into their own. Although it might be unfair to claim that that's representative of a gay-is-a-disease attitude on the author's part, since it's pretty clear that through biological and social engineering homolife-era Earth had turned sexual orientation into a more or less manipulable quantity anyway; it's hard to shout "Ex-gay programs are crimes!" when they're being consensually chosen by a member of an ex-straight society. | |
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| The Forever War / int_9d94dcfd | type |
Persecution Flip | |
| The Forever War / int_9d94dcfd | comment |
Persecution Flip: After a three-hundred year time skip, Mandella finds that [[In the Future, Humans Will Be One Race due to eugenics to reduce racial contention, almost everyone is homogenous blend of races. He does notice a few soldiers who seem to be more "pure" examples of specific races, and wonders whether their fellow soldiers give them a hard time over it. Mandella earns the nickname "Old Queer" due to his being the only heterosexual on the ship. | |
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Unrealistic Black Hole | |
| The Forever War / int_9de3b377 | comment |
Unrealistic Black Hole: Collapsars used for FTL travel. The book was first published in 1974, so it may actually 'predate' the astronomical use of the word. | |
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| The Forever War / int_a1c5e0cc | type |
Trigger Phrase | |
| The Forever War / int_a1c5e0cc | comment |
Trigger Phrase: The poem Scots Wha Hae by Robert Burns, seemingly the words of Robert the Bruce to his troops before the battle that would win Scotland's independence. It's also the trigger for a hypnotic suggestion showing "Taurans" killing men and raping women to get the soldiers ready for combat. | |
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| The Forever War / int_a5d92fce | type |
Celibate Hero | |
| The Forever War / int_a5d92fce | comment |
Celibate Hero: Mandella after Marygay's reassignment, though not through choice. The one closet heterosexual female who gets drunk enough to consider doing it with him passes out before things can get going. | |
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| The Forever War / int_a8c7bf13 | type |
Sickbed Slaying | |
| The Forever War / int_a8c7bf13 | comment |
Sickbed Slaying: The soldier who tried to frag Mandella dies on the operating table (after he attempted suicide) under the care of a doctor who has a covert attraction to Mandella. Unfortunately the suspicious timing of this death offsets the morale problems he avoided by not having him Thrown Out the Airlock. | |
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| The Forever War / int_a96b8b63 | type |
Space Marine | |
| The Forever War / int_a96b8b63 | comment |
Space Marine: They're technically Army, not Marines, but close enough. | |
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| The Forever War / int_acf33d00 | type |
Nice Job Fixing It, Villain | |
| The Forever War / int_acf33d00 | comment |
Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: While the Taurans aren't exactly "villains," their alleged attack on a UN spaceship not only started the war but also sparked humanity's return to militarism. It's mentioned that up until that point, Earth was in the process of growing more pacifist. Ironically, the war also provided a justification for unifying humanity. As it turns out, the initial "attack" likely never happened, and the inevitable accidents that occur in spacetravel were instead trumped up as Tauran attacks by Earth politicians and generals to justify a war (and thus, extend their power over the whole population). | |
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| The Forever War / int_ad2943a2 | type |
Inertial Dampening | |
| The Forever War / int_ad2943a2 | comment |
Inertial Dampening: To avoid being liquefied while aboard spacecraft that can pull accelerations of up to 25g, humans use the immersion in a fluid method. Since the spaceships tend to change velocity at high speeds, support for internal organs is needed as well. This is accomplished by injecting the characters with special substances and placing them in special suits, wherein they are then surrounded by extremely high pressure fluid, equal to several kilometers underwater. The results of the pressure failing are not pleasant. Marygay almost dies from a badly-fitted pressure suit. | |
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| The Forever War / int_ad459d78 | type |
Write Back to the Future | |
| The Forever War / int_ad459d78 | comment |
Write Back to the Future: Cleverly done by Marygay. She leaves a note for Mandella at the front of his army record, knowing that this will be kept safe to give to him if he survives the war, even though near-lightspeed travel has caused their personal timelines to diverge and therefore from her point of view, he won't be back for hundreds of years. She corrects this problem by staying aboard a starship at high relativistic speeds going out and back. | |
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| The Forever War / int_b53077b3 | type |
Take That! | |
| The Forever War / int_b53077b3 | comment |
Take That!: Some considered the novel to be an attack on Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers. However, The Old Man himself once went up to Haldeman and congratulated him for writing "the best future war story I've ever read!" | |
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| The Forever War / int_b5581324 | type |
Sub-Lightspeed Setting | |
| The Forever War / int_b5581324 | comment |
Sub-Lightspeed Setting: Ships take shortcuts through "collapsars" but it takes several years Earthside to reach them at relativistic speeds. | |
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| The Forever War / int_b663974e | type |
We Will Spend Credits in the Future | |
| The Forever War / int_b663974e | comment |
We Will Spend Credits in the Future: When Mandella returned to Earth, a famine had resulted in the adoption a Global Currency based around food rationing: the kilocalorie, or "K". One dollar in 1997 money was worth about a hundred K. | |
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| The Forever War / int_b7c85c86 | type |
Free-Love Future | |
| The Forever War / int_b7c85c86 | comment |
Free-Love Future: By law no-one can be conscripted into the military unless they are already promiscuous, and in basic training all recruits have a 'sleeping roster' where they're assigned a different partner every night (which leads to grumbling that you always get the dead-tired ones when you're horny, and vice versa). By the end of their first tour everyone has settled into a regular (though still not strictly monogamous) relationship with someone, so they don't like it when a rumor spreads that the roster will be resumed. After the soldiers return from their first tours, however, due to Time Dilation, human society has changed vastly since they left; promiscuous heterosexual relationships are discouraged due to overpopulation. With homosexuality the norm, such behavior is regarded (at best) as a quaint anachronism and at worst outright perversion. | |
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| The Forever War / int_b9af5ef3 | type |
The Film of the Book | |
| The Forever War / int_b9af5ef3 | comment |
The Film of the Book: Currently in Development Hell, but progressing: Originally set for 2013, directed by Ridley Scott. [1] "I've got a good writer doing it" has been reported to be David Webb Peoples. [2] Unfortunately this was a misunderstanding. Currently, Warner Brothers and Sony are in a bidding war for the film. Ridley Scott's rights deal has expired. Jon Spaihts ("Promethus") is working on the script, with Channing Tatum in the lead role. [3] | |
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| The Forever War / int_bf72d5e8 | type |
The Spartan Way | |
| The Forever War / int_bf72d5e8 | comment |
The Spartan Way: three recruits die in training on Earth. The survivors are sent to continue their training on a Death World, Charon (not Pluto's moon, which had not been discovered when the novel was written, but a Pluto sized body orbiting half again as far from the Sun as Pluto), where the slightest mistake (or just bad luck) can be (and is) lethal, and any disobedience or insubordination is punishable with summary execution. The final test involves surviving a surprise attack with live missiles. Not everyone passes. Their instructor says he'd be happy with a 50% graduation rate, at a point where the only way not to graduate is to die. | |
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| The Forever War / int_c0b6ded | type |
Lie Back and Think of England | |
| The Forever War / int_c0b6ded | comment |
Lie Back and Think of England: During his stay on Stargate, Mandella mentions that military women are compliant and promiscuous, by military custom and law. | |
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| The Forever War / int_c5237d05 | type |
Slow Laser | |
| The Forever War / int_c5237d05 | comment |
Slow Laser: In part I/chapter 7, Mandella only sees dots from the recruits fire on a bunker (indicating no visible beams), but is able to identify a random pattern in the return fire while hiding behind a rock (indicating the opposite). In part II/chapter 6, there seem to be visible beams when he sees an enemy laser rake across the base. | |
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| The Forever War / int_c58a2047 | type |
Brain Drain | |
| The Forever War / int_c58a2047 | comment |
Brain Drain: The UN's policy is to conscript those with an IQ of 150 or higher. As a result, the war doesn't contribute to technological and social advances as previous wars have, since the best and the brightest are serving as cannon fodder on distant planets. | |
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I Will Wait for You | |
| The Forever War / int_c8d6d621 | comment |
I Will Wait for You: Mandella and Marygay, who have stuck with each other through firefights, injuries, and the loss of everyone and everything they've ever known, are separated by being given different military assignments. The death toll in the war is horribly high, and Time Dilation caused by near-lightspeed travel means they can never expect to see each other again. Mandella mourns for her as if she's dead, but doesn't take up with anyone else because in the future that he's been thrust into by the time dilation, everyone else is gay. Marygay, on the other hand, leaves a note for him to find if he survives, assuring him that she will wait forever, tells him where she's going, and buys a ship which spends the next two hundred years going backwards and forwards at near-lightspeed, stopping every five years, during which time she has aged about a month... leaving her still in her late twenties when William, aged thirtysomething, catches up with her. Now that's an optimistic lady! | |
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| The Forever War / int_caf8c66c | type |
The Chains of Commanding | |
| The Forever War / int_caf8c66c | comment |
The Chains of Commanding: Experienced by Mandella's previous commanders and eventually by him. The situation would be tolerable if only there was someone he could relate to, but by then everyone from his era is gone. | |
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The Forever War / int_caf8c66c | |
| The Forever War / int_d31da2e3 | type |
If It's You, It's Okay | |
| The Forever War / int_d31da2e3 | comment |
If It's You, It's Okay: The ship's doctor makes a drunken pass at Mandella, despite being a lesbian. However, it's unclear if she's attracted to him specifically, or just curious about heterosexuality in general and he's the only straight man with which to experiment. | |
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The Forever War / int_d31da2e3 | |
| The Forever War / int_d525f857 | type |
Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale | |
| The Forever War / int_d525f857 | comment |
Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The tachyon bombs that the troopers are hurling around in Mandella's first assignment are "microton" weapons. A microton device would be an explosive with the same yield as one one-millionth of a ton of TNT, or about 1 gram of TNT. This is about the same explosive yield as an old M-80 firecracker; it wouldn't be enough to blow open a locked wooden door, let alone excavate a crater. The bombs they use are described as several hundred microtons, however, which equal a total yield of... a stick of dynamite or so at best. This of course assumes that they still use TNT as the basis. Microtons of antimatter, for example, would be a significant amount of explosive power. | |
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The Forever War / int_d525f857 | |
| The Forever War / int_d99af77b | type |
Breathable Liquid | |
| The Forever War / int_d99af77b | comment |
Breathable Liquid: They use liquid immersion and breathing to survive high-g acceleration. | |
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| The Forever War / int_da12bcfb | type |
You Can't Go Home Again | |
| The Forever War / int_da12bcfb | comment |
You Can't Go Home Again: Due to Time Dilation, every time Mandella returns from a combat mission he has to deal with a military, government, and society that is virtually alien to him. | |
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The Forever War / int_da12bcfb | |
| The Forever War / int_db911ee | type |
Field Promotion | |
| The Forever War / int_db911ee | comment |
Field Promotion: Mandella starts as a private, and ends the war as a major commanding his own ground force. Not because he's particularly suited for command, but because he's adaptable, and it looks odd for someone who's been in the military for 500 years not to be an officer. Oh, and he has the seniority thing down to the max! | |
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The Forever War / int_db911ee | |
| The Forever War / int_dcdde3b | type |
Inherent in the System | |
| The Forever War / int_dcdde3b | comment |
Inherent in the System: Upon returning to earth in 2023, Mandella has a discussion with some people who are angry at the high taxes that the war requires and are convinced that Taurans are not a danger to earth, but at the same time recognize that half of all (very scarce) jobs are tied to the war effort, and if the war ended the system would collapse. | |
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The Forever War / int_dcdde3b | |
| The Forever War / int_ddcc22c3 | type |
Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age | |
| The Forever War / int_ddcc22c3 | comment |
Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: The first stasis fields slow down anything faster than 16.3 m/s, forcing people fighting within them to use melee weapons or bows and arrows. | |
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Speculative Fiction LGBT | |
| The Forever War / int_df6a6ad3 | comment |
Speculative Fiction LGBT: has this as an unintended side-effect. Sending an army several light years away to fight a war then retrieving the survivors afterwards means, inevitably, that the time-dilation effect applies and those soldiers have returned to an Earth several centuries older than the one they left. After the second or third jump to and from a war-front, heterosexually inclined veterans realise in their absence that the social mores of the world have reversed - being gay is now the norm and a small population of diehard hetros are now the "queer" ones. The inevitable happens and several formerly hetero ladies travel on their next jump into time and space as active lesbians. | |
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The Forever War / int_df6a6ad3 | |
| The Forever War / int_e10cdc1c | type |
Gay Best Friend | |
| The Forever War / int_e10cdc1c | comment |
Gay Best Friend: Charlie Moss, Mandella's executive officer. In a weird way, this is an inversion of the trope. By that point in human history, pretty much all humans are homosexual. So it's more the case that Mandella is Charlie's Straight Best Friend. | |
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The Forever War / int_e10cdc1c | |
| The Forever War / int_e409de66 | type |
Manipulative Editing | |
| The Forever War / int_e409de66 | comment |
Manipulative Editing: Mandella is interviewed on his return to Earth and asked silly questions like "What do the Taurans smell like?" He replies that you can't smell anything inside a spacesuit. The press (which is controlled by the UNEF) reedits the footage to make him say that the Taurans smell so awful they make you want to throw up. They also remove all reference to the soldiers being conditioned to kill. | |
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The Forever War / int_e409de66 | |
| The Forever War / int_e4d9e13b | type |
Mars Needs Women | |
| The Forever War / int_e4d9e13b | comment |
Mars Needs Women: Subverted. a Mind Probe produced by the Earth military and set off with a Trigger Phrase portrays Tauran soldiers raping human women with gigantic purple members, an entirely fanciful depiction as at the time the film is made nobody on Earth has the slightest idea what a Tauran looks like, in order to get the human soldiers angry enough to kill. The hero is aware that it is totally false but his subconscious makes his teeth start grinding in readiness to kill! Ultimately the Taurans turn out to be an androgynous clone species who have no interest in human women. | |
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The Forever War / int_e4d9e13b | |
| The Forever War / int_e9e35e8f | type |
Exact Words | |
| The Forever War / int_e9e35e8f | comment |
Exact Words: After their first return to Earth, Mandella and Marygay agree to re-enlist if they are assigned to training positions. They get the desired assignments — and are then immediately re-assigned to combat. | |
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The Forever War / int_e9e35e8f | |
| The Forever War / int_f1d6144a | type |
War Is Hell | |
| The Forever War / int_f1d6144a | comment |
War Is Hell: The main theme of the book is that militarism is very bad, and that blind trust in/glorification of the military results in horrible things happening to society for no logical reason. So, we're fighting them because they are fighting us because we are fighting them because etc. That's not even mentioning the 50% plus death rate per mission. | |
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The Forever War / int_f1d6144a | |
| The Forever War / int_f32d85ab | type |
20 Minutes into the Future | |
| The Forever War / int_f32d85ab | comment |
20 Minutes into the Future: At least in the beginning of the novel; however, there are vast time skips due to the Time Dilation of near light-speed travel, and it ends in the distant future. | |
| The Forever War / int_f32d85ab | featureApplicability |
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The Forever War / int_f32d85ab | |
| The Forever War / int_f56aeb67 | type |
Alien Invasion | |
| The Forever War / int_f56aeb67 | comment |
Alien Invasion: Deconstructed. The Taurans never get close to Earth, but the effects of the Forever War turn Earth into a Crapsack World. | |
| The Forever War / int_f56aeb67 | featureApplicability |
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| The Forever War / int_f5c6409a | type |
Military Academy | |
| The Forever War / int_f5c6409a | comment |
Military Academy: Subverted. Officer Training is done via Upgrade Artifact. | |
| The Forever War / int_f5c6409a | featureApplicability |
-0.3 | |
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The Forever War / int_f5c6409a | |
| The Forever War / int_f64a9cf7 | type |
Earn Your Happy Ending | |
| The Forever War / int_f64a9cf7 | comment |
Earn Your Happy Ending: It takes 1,143 years, but Mandella does. With the only other surviving member of his original squad, Marygay. And Babies Ever After. The End. | |
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| The Forever War / int_f7cee9b | type |
Last Stand | |
| The Forever War / int_f7cee9b | comment |
Last Stand: 126 Humans against 600 Taurans backed up by a cruiser. Then the cruiser got whacked by a rogue missile. After the final melee, it's closer to 28 Humans against 300 Taurans. To prevent another melee and eventual Tauran success they pull out the last nukes (not actual nukes, but they have a similar effect) and detonate them just outside the stasis field | |
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The Forever War / int_f7cee9b | |
| The Forever War / int_fa73ee9d | type |
Explosive Leash | |
| The Forever War / int_fa73ee9d | comment |
Explosive Leash: The soldiers are outfitted with explosive equipment to ensure that they will never be captured alive by the Taurians. | |
| The Forever War / int_fa73ee9d | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
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The Forever War / int_fa73ee9d | |
| The Forever War / int_fbb54ba6 | type |
Forever War | |
| The Forever War / int_fbb54ba6 | comment |
Forever War: Not the Trope Namer, but a shining example. In this case, the title has slightly more to do with time-dilation making the war seem endless, but only slightly. | |
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The Forever War / int_fbb54ba6 | |
| The Forever War / int_fdbb6993 | type |
Ridiculous Future Inflation | |
| The Forever War / int_fdbb6993 | comment |
Ridiculous Future Inflation: When Mandella returns to earth, he is unpleasantly surprised to find that, due to inflation and soaring food costs, the accumulated pay and interest of a couple of decades are nowhere near enough to retire on. | |
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The Forever War / int_fdbb6993 | |
| The Forever War / int_ffad4e9f | type |
Shown Their Work | |
| The Forever War / int_ffad4e9f | comment |
Shown Their Work: Haldeman has a degree in astronomy, first hand experience as a soldier in wartime, and does the calculations on any math he deems important to the story. | |
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| The Forever War / int_name | comment |
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The Forever War |
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