Just Finished Reading: The Forever Man by Gordon R Dickson



In the far future mankind has been at war with the mysterious Laagi for generations. Neither side can gain the advantage as the war drags on crippling both of their planets economies. In the midst of this, star pilot Major Wander and his team are sent on a special mission deep into enemy territory. The mission is the rescue the Earth ship La Chasse Gallerie and bring back its pilot Raoul Penard presumed lost over 100 years earlier. The hope is that the nearly discover ship can provide answers to who the aliens are, what they want and how they can be defeated before Earth exhausts itself in fruitless warfare amongst the stars.


I haven’t read much of this authors work since I enjoyed his Dorsai series of Combat SF novels. So I was kind of looking forward to a more that reasonable read. It was not to be. The idea of a century’s long war against a mysterious alien enemy is not a new one but it can be handled well. Dickson’s handling of the conflict itself was adequate. He even came up with an interesting star ship propulsion system - based on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which was novel. He also had some interesting things to say about disembodied minds ‘melding’ with their ships. But apart from that things got a bit dull – actually very dull. Once the aliens were contacted (unknown to them) and studied – by two non-experts who endlessly theorised about them – what little action there was dried up completely and the book stagnated. The introduction of an exotic energy based life form did little to liven things up and the final third of the book became quite a slog. The ending I found to be rather bizarre – revolving around a love story between the pilot and the head of the science section – but I really didn’t have any inclination to re-read that section to make sense of it all. I was just glad it was all over. All in all a rather disappointing read after a fairly promising start. Definitely not recommended.