Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman

This book can roughly be divided into two halves.  The first half is basically a tale of a soldier who fights jacked into a cyberspace - type system, interacting completely with other members of his platoon and the large fighting machines that are actually at the battlefield.  It also explores this soldier's personal life.  I found this half to be boring and seeming to go nowhere. 

Yet things abruptly change.  Small tidbits of information that seemed so pointless in the beginning now began to come together to create a more lively and exciting plot.  A clash between a possible attempt at global peace and an attempt to destroy the world emerges, and the main character finds himself in the middle of it.  Haldeman brings up some interesting points while telling this story. 

Although it is not the best book I have read, I do suggest it.  Just remember, it does get more exciting.

Dissapointingly, despite the title, this is not a sequel to the forever war.



However it is a fine book in its own right.



Imagine a war where troops cannot get hurt because they are merely machine

operators or Mechanics as Haldeman dubs them.



The machines in question are imensely strong remotely controlled fighting waldos,

bristling with weaponry and requiring some serious explosive power just to dent them.



Now imagine that because of the expense, only rich countries could afford to

deploy these weapons.



Haldeman takes this concept and depicts a world in which they hold true, sometime in the near future.

Being Haldeman, he takes the concept further. The machines are effectively mentally controlled through a jack

direct to the neural system.



Once 'jacked, the machine opperator is effectively mentally linked to everyone else in his platoon.



Telepathy in one sense, but more so because the feeling is that of *being* the other people as opposed

to simply communicating without words.

These concepts create a world of hypotheses to explore. The jacked vs the unjacked.

The religious theme. The shock to the system effect if the platoon is injured while jacked.



... and more.

Haldeman throws in an lots of action as well. A BIG secret that the US military machine wants to keep secret.

An ultimate weapon that could end everything, and a smaller secret which could save everything.

The action, the human side, the characters, the pain, the futility of it all.

It all comes across at least as powerfully as it did in the forever war, making this a worthy follow up... if not sequel.

Definitely recommended.
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