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Forever Free
Forever Free
Forever Free
Audiobook6 hours

Forever Free

Written by Joe Haldeman

Narrated by Peter Berkrot

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

From Joe Haldeman, the all-time master of military science fiction, comes the new novel set in the universe of his Hugo and Nebula Award-winning classic The Forever War. An epic story about war, peace, and the price of freedom, Forever Free reintroduces readers to William Mandella--who has been living peacefully on the planet called Middle Finger, a refuge for humans who refuse to become part of the group mind known as Man. But after decades of this peace, Mandella and others are tired of living like zoo animals. So they steal a starship--and embark upon a voyage that will forever change their understanding of the universe...and themselves.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 21, 2016
ISBN9781501938795
Author

Joe Haldeman

Joe Haldeman began his writing career while he was still in the army. Drafted in 1967, he fought in the Central Highlands of Vietnam as a combat engineer with the Fourth Division. He was awarded several medals, including a Purple Heart. Haldeman sold his first story in 1969 and has since written over two dozen novels and five collections of short stories and poetry. He has won the Nebula and Hugo Awards for his novels, novellas, poems, and short stories, as well as the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Locus Award, the Rhysling Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. His works include The Forever War, Forever Peace, Camouflage, 1968, the Worlds saga, and the Marsbound series. Haldeman recently retired after many years as an associate professor in the Department of Writing and Humanistic Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He and his wife, Gay, live in Florida, where he also paints, plays the guitar, rides his bicycle, and studies the skies with his telescope. 

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Reviews for Forever Free

Rating: 3.404530655339806 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

309 ratings11 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It's nothing remotely as good as The Forever War. The first part of the book was boring. The second part was downright ridiculous. I'm thinking whether I should continue reading the series.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I really enjoyed forever war and forever peace. But this one isn’t great. If you’re looking for more military genre, try starship troopers.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    did not like it. kind of felt like this is a triology and we don't have a second book.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I remember that same sense of disappointment when I was reading the Philip J. Farmer 'Riverworld' series. The first couple were very good, but they steadily got worse. As if all the ideas were used up. I didn't read the 2nd book in this series, but it's probably just as well. As in 'Riverworld' the focus of the book gets larger. To involve all manner of space and time. I think Haldeman had created enough potential future human stages in the first book. The idea in this book was to go father into time to see what would happen after 40,000 years. Thank goodness in one sense that it didn't do that, but on the other hand the reveal at the end wasn't worth the read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a direct sequel to The Forever War. Twenty years have passed since William and Marygay were reunited on Middle Finger, the "garden planet" where Man resettled the heterosexuals at the end of the Forever War. They've raised a son and a daughter, and they are restless, unhappy with Middle Finger (which has very long, very cold winters), and unhappy with Man. With some of the other war veterans, who are now a small minority of the population on Middle Finger, they plot to steal the ship that served as the time shuttle to reunite separated couples after the war. (It's still in orbit around Middle Finger, after a forced sale to Man, who has never done anything with it.) They have some excitement in the process, and make the interesting discovery that Man has more individuality amongst its members than Man would prefer to have anyone believe. And then the weird stuff starts happening. Disappearing antimatter. Whole populations vanishing. As in, whole populations of planets, such as Middle Finger and Earth.

    Unfortunately, the explanation for the weirdness turns out to be not one deus ex machina, but two. This was an enjoyable visit with an old friend, but if you're expecting a story with any substance or punch, you will be disappointed, and might endanger breakables and small animals with a high-speed book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A few remaining true humans, veterans of the Forever War, live along with their offspring on the planet of Middle Finger near a collapsar called Mizar. Most of humanity has become Man, a hive mind similar to that of the Taurans, their former enemies. The inhabitants of Middle Finger live in a kind of sufferance, their activities monitored by a Man sheriff and a Tauran. As in The Forever War, relativistic effects are important in this universe. Radio messages from or to Earth take 80 years to arrive but faster messaging and travel can be achieved via a collapsar jump.Tired of their existence, a few inhabitants of Middle Finger plot to take a spaceship on a forty thousand year trip round the galaxy. The Tauran and Man hive minds refuse permission but they steal the ship anyway. While only a few months out weird things start to happen.At this point we seemed to lurch into a different book entirely. The tone may not have altered much but the background did. Forced to turn back to Middle Finger our adventurers find the population there and on Earth has disappeared. They use the collapsar to return to Earth to find out what's happened.Even before this story shift the characters were far from convincing, being almost indistinguishable one from the other. After it the narrative failed to suspend disbelief and in the denouement, two dei ex machina popped up in quick succession as Haldeman off-handedly pulled the rug from under the scenario underpinning his Forever War/Peace setting - not to mention all of human history.While Haldeman's The Forever War was an important milestone in the history of SF Forever Free most certainly isn't - unsurorising given that it's a 25 year later (second) sequel. It's not tripe nor exceptionally badly written but neither is it a good example of the satisfactions that the genre can deliver.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    It's been twenty-some years since the last survivors of the Forever War set up home on Middle Finger which serves as sort of a genetic preserve run by the smug and superior clone groupmind known as Man. William Mandella, wife Marygay, and many of the other old veterans are getting tired of their relatively primitive life on that planet. And they find Man disconcertingly alien and fear that the clones will someday decide to rid themselves of their inferiors. They hatch a plan to fly a starship fast enough to take advantage of relativistic effects and return to Middle Finger 40,000 years in its future. A future where they hope Man will be absent or have evolved to the point of leaving them alone. Tauran representatives and Man put obstacles in their way, but old human cunning wins out, and they embark for the future. But things are just getting under way when very odd things began to happen. Antimatter begins inexplicably disappearing from their ship. And even odder things have happened to the people back on Middle Finger and Earth . . . Haldeman can't be faulted for not wanting to make this sequel to The Forever War (Vintage) a war story. Instead, he gives us a mystery story. Unfortunately, the novel is unbalanced by the payoff he gives us at the end. It's too glib, too metaphysical to justify the length of the story before it nor is the idea that new. On the other hand, Haldeman could have explored the consequences of his solution more fully which would have lead to a better and longer novel. The novel opens with a poem about men assuming the powers of gods to bring about peace. Haldeman doesn't really develop that theme much or make any coherent thematic statements about war and violence and freedom as I hoped he would.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is one of his best books. I read it in one sitting.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A good coda to the excellent Forever War, but feels more like an expanded final chapter than a stand-alone story. This wouldn't be so bad, but the first half of the book is dull, with little or nothing to recommend it or keep you interested. We spend chapters and chapters listening to unexciting family melodrama, and adults feeling the need to 'escape' from something the reader never truly feels. It's only within the last 100 pages that Haldeman's inspired mind comes to the forefront and we're given an interesting, if unnecessary, end to the overall story.As the title suggests, the theme of the book is freedom. Freedom from ourselves, from society, from the universe. How can we truly become autonomous and, if it is actually possible, what does it mean to be completely free? Unfortunately I didn't find this theme particularly emotionally gripping as, after knowing what the main characters have already been through in The Forever War, anything they find themselves in seems like an improvement. The reader never truly feels their sense of confinement, or their need to escape from it, and without that it's difficult to care about the first two thirds of the book or the suggested theme.Thankfully, overall, Forever Free is a worthy and interesting read, just don't expect the levels of greatness its predecessor achieved.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Haldeman should have left well enough alone.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Sequel to the classic "Forever War". Not as good as the original