OT-Sci-Fi Book Review

[Targan]

(split from "10 Greatest" on the Military Channel)

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

If any of you have read Joe Haldeman's The Forever War you get a good idea of different tech levels encountering each other in combat. I remember one scene in the book where Mandella's lower-tech troop carrier is attacked by a Tauran ship a couple of hundred years ahead of it in tech -- Mandella's ship lost a good half of the crew and troops, his girlfriend nearly died, the ship was heavily dosed with radiation, the computers were almost totally toasted by EMP, and they had no communications -- after they got hit by something "all in a package the size of a grape."

The Forever War is one of the best books I have ever read. I read it the first time in my late teens and I have to admit (much as it pains me to do so) I had a tear in my eye at the end. Haldeman was himself a Vietnam vet and I think that explains in part his ability to realistically portray the psychological effects of combat veterans coming home and finding that their old world has changed while they were away.