** spoiler alert ** 
 After recently slogging through 500+ pages of Salman Rushdie magical realism I decided to pick a straight forward sci-fi that everyone and their brother has been recommending to me. The result being that it's a pretty great little piece of 1970s Vietnam allegory science fiction that still holds up in today's reading. 
 The concept of "future shock" describes the idea of someone being sent forward decades (or longer) in time and no longer being able to comprehend or relate to the current social or technological status quot. In this novel, humanity's first interstellar war has dire results for the soldiers drafted to fight, as traveling in speeds close to that of light result in relativistic aging. One or two years may pass for someone conscripted, but decades (or more) will pass for those left on Earth. As the protagonist Mandella progresses in his military career and gets further and further away from the world he once knew and people who have shared any of his experiences. The author handles this imaginatively and with a certain flair that kind of reminds me of certain parts of Robert Heinlein. Especially the fully co-ed military in what he originally imagined as being 20 years down the line; the novel begins in the protagonist's present day of 1995. 
 The alternating boredom, horror, and pointlessness of the war is a strong theme throughout. The anti-war messages rings through loud and clear, though the author admitted in the forward that he doesn't expect the current generation of science fiction readers or ones it the future to necessarily have Vietnam in mind when they read it. 
 Overall, it's pretty clear why The Forever War is a sci-fi classic and since it doesn't take much effort to get through (I sat down and burned through it in two or three hours) there's no reason not to pick it up for rainy day reading if you have an interest in the war, science fiction, or speculative fiction genres.