These three books are by Joe Haldeman. The Forever War in particular has shown up on a couple of "top 25 sci fi novel" lists so I figured I'd get around to reading it. As a warning, this post isn't super extensive - possibly because I read all three books before I started to write down any thoughts.
The Forever War seems on the surface to be about a really long war with an alien species, but really it's about a soldier coming home after his tour of duty to find that he doesn't have a place in the world anymore except in the military. Or at least, that's what I was told after finishing the book. As I was reading the novel, that theme didn't particularly stick out to me as primary, probably because I was more interested in something else.
Personally I was fascinated with the idea of a war that's temporally out of sync due to the restrictions of space travel. The novel mentioned that individual forces would destroy an enemy that didn't even know what a gun was, and then with a couple hundred years of real time between battles due to relativistic flight, in the next engagement they'd be crushed by an enemy with tech far ahead of theirs. That stuff wasn't explored enough for my liking, having been referenced a few times and mentioned as a possibility for one battle (which didn't pan out), but it did do a better job showing a soldier dealing with a thousand years of social change (though some of the ideas there feel out of date, particularly regarding sexual orientation).
Forever Peace is by the same author but has no relation to The Forever War. I actually liked this one better because it was a lot more thorough with the ramifications and side effects and personal impacts of its core science fictional idea. The novel deals with the military applications of mind-sharing and the safety issues of those military applications; the impact on romantic relationships when one can jack in and the other can't; the social prejudice from those who can't or won't get the enabling surgery; an unexpected side effect that could change the world.
Forever Free is a direct sequel to The Forever War, and it did not do what I expected. Resistance to the cloned hive mind is something I did see coming (even if the buildup was rather slow), but the consequences of the resistance and the big reveal of the true cause were not what I had in mind.
Spoilers ahead.
Normally I'm intrigued by the idea that our understanding of the universe may be completely wrong and that there are impossibly powerful beings that we can't hope to understand because we're so limited and insignificant. That's why I like H.P. Lovecraft. I don't believe that certain things shouldn't or can't be known, but I like exploring the idea in fiction.
But I don't know what to think of Forever Free's revelation that our galaxy is an experiment set up by beings that are, to us at least, essentially omnipotent. My issue is probably how relatable those beings seemed to be. Rather than some incomprehensible elder god or titan from outside the universe, the being that the humans interact with just seems like... some guy. Some random scientist who happens to have the power to set up an entire galaxy and sentient civilizations for an eons-long experiment.
Spoilers finished.
Anyway, they're good books that are worth reading. I'm just picky about what I want from my fiction. Maybe I'll write a post on that.
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