Friday, February 16, 2007
'90s remix
My edition of "The Forever War" is the rerelease from 2001. Haldeman explains in the foreward that an earlier reprinting tried to change all of the dates, but it really just screwed everything up and it ended up with confusing anachronisms. He instructs readers to just think of it as an alternate reality that happened a decade ago. Were you able to do this, or were references to the '90s distracting?
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4 comments:
I got the recommended copy, which included Haldeman's foreword about this being the version he preferred. Math not being my, uh, strong suit, I sometimes was a little lost in how from jump to jump time would advance or slow down, but of course a lot of the great part of the story was how saying goodbye to someone on a mission was akin to going to their funeral. It was interesting how he really couldn't keep close relations with his mother or brother in those circumstances.
But for me, the '90s references were useful because it helped me continue to picture Mandella at his "true" Earth age. Otherwise it would have been hard to visualize him as a character.
I didn't have any problem with him using dates that are now past. I was sometimes amused at how far advanced he thought we would be in some areas, but it wasn't confusing.
I kind of liked the time setting and '90s references because I enjoyed thinking of the army commanders as old Vietnam vets and so forth. I found it pretty easy to think of it as an alternate reality, even if a totally implausible one.
Same issue with 1984. The year is really irrelevant.
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