We return to sf for the first post time in … quite a while, really. Forever peace is Joe Haldeman’s followup to the surpassed-only-by-Starship troopers-as-most-well-known-military-sf-novel The forever war.
That being said, they are completely different books that don’t even share a universe. Forever peace is more of a thematic successor than it is a literal sequel. It was nominated for a bunch of awards and I’ve already recommended it several times on this blog.
Brief plot summary
The gap between the haves and have-nots has widened considerably. While most citizens of the Universal Welfare State live in relative comfort, the developing world is plagued by constant uprisings. The UWS fights these wars through the use of soldierboys, remote-controlled robot soldiers piloted by draftees who are linked mind-to-mind. Forever peace focuses on physics professor and draftee Julian Class as he struggles with the morality of war, the possibility of the total destruction of the solar system, and the “rightness” of forcing a situation that would make humanity biologically incapable of war.
Reader's advisory and random musings. 