Somewhat in the line of Redshift Rendezvous, but much better. The Forever War is fairly techy sci-fi, much the plot being driven by a serious consideration of the role of time dilation in interstellar warfare.The protagonist, William Mandella, a would-be physicist, is drafted into the army in 1997 under the "Elite Conscription Act." Earth's best and brightest are being sent out on nightmarish deep-space missions to combat their mysterious new enemies, the Taurons. They can travel long distances using newly discovered portal-type planets that, when approached at relativistic speeds, allow nearly instantaneous travel between portals. The acceleration and deceleration involved, however, results in a Rip van Winkle effect for Mandella and his comrades: while mere weeks or months pass for them, decades or centuries go by on Earth.
Mandella's life in the army is an unsentimental imagining of what deep space war might actually be like, complete with the chaos, ill-informed decisions, pointless loss of life, trickery, low morale, and general confusion that have probably attended every war in history. The vast majority of the troops survive for half a battle or less. Mandella, surviving more from luck than any exceptional talent, finds himself thrown together with an ever-changing (ever more futuristic) case of characters and hurtled into a future that becomes more and more incomprehensible and alienating. I was impressed by the attention to details like (drastic) changes in sexual mores and pronunciation of words. Military technology also changes at a fantastic rate (relative to Mandella's subjective time elapsed), which makes fun reading for people (like me) who enjoy reading about wonderful new toys and technologies. These things are described rather vaguely, of course, but that makes sense in context--Mandella's career as a scientist was cut short long ago; he became a soldier (steadily promoted up through the ranks) who was there to use the tools, not understand them.
I will not spoil the ending but just say that it was very satisfying, happier and stranger than one could possibly have imagined at any time during the course of the book. A great read, and totally mesmerizing.
