I have to admit the changes the human race took over 3k years was what I most enjoyed about this book. The long process of changes as a society, from semi-normal, to overpopulation, and means to control population without controlling the population. I do find moving society to a homosecual based system to control population a bit on the repulsive side. It is a viable solution, no matter what my personal thoughts are.
The eventual shift to one male and one female, all clones, was another interesting twist. I probably would have like more on the social changes on Earth, but that wouldn't have been practical.
I think some of the issues that is brought up in the book are things that will eventually happen in reality. I wonder how we will deal with these problems in the future. Overpopulation, lack of food, or even an alien race. Though aliens I wouldn't suspect as a definite.
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I wonder how much of this Haldeman worked out in advance, and how much just came to him as he wrote it.
The biggest problem I had wasn't with the societal developments over time, but the passage of time itself. And it wasn't that the book wasn't well-written - I think Haldeman did a heck of a job with the issue of time dilation and some possible effects and results from it. I think the evolution of society was made to seem very natural, but Mandella has to deal with his own shock and concerns, and it is written such that we sympathize with him.
My personal problem is that I don't believe in the time dilation effect. Yeah, yeah, I've read the science. I don't care how fast you are going, or what it seems like. If you go out an hour, and then come back over an hour, the speed thing should just mean you are able to travel farther in that time. If someone wants to explain it to me on a more appropriate thread, fine, but I'm not sure it will work!
It didn't bother me how society changed, though I did wonder about procreation during the homosexual stage - it was probably described but I don't recall. I think it was very satisfying that it came full circle, and then almost backward - from assigned bedpartners in the military to supposedly monogamous marriage on Middle Finger, down to babies delivered by the family doctor (and what a lovely way of telling us that Charlie and Diana got married!).
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I loved how the society changed, but I had some trouble with the ending. Why have the race divided into separate sexes if you're working off a single clone? Unless Man kept the sexuality just for the pleasure of it, I don't see that it's necessary. Especially the way Haldeman painted Man's character.
On a different note, I liked how Haldeman subtly changed the promiscuity of the women in the 21st century from an apparently free society to a life of drudgery/bondage for the women who have to put out to any guy that asks. I think it would have been nice to state that law earlier in the beginning, but I think that would have ruined the way Haldeman was stressing the similarities between his recent future setting and the time he was writing the book.
I loved how he used homosexuality in this book. It was fascinating to see the tables turned on the "hetero". And it was equally fascinating watching it all go back to the beginning on Middle Finger.
And finally, I loved watching the cycle of weapons. Ending the war with bows and arrows, quarterstaffs, and shields -- all modified, of course -- was wonderful.
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Time dilation happens, Lee, because when you go at speed close to c (speed of light), your sense of the passage of time slows down. So in the time that you feel an hour has passed at near light speed, someone who is not moving anywhere near that fast feels that years have passed.
It all comes down to the idea that the speed of light is constant in a vacuum, but the speed of time is relative (depending on how close to the speed of light your speed is).
If you've seen the math, and you don't argue with that, all you can really argue with is a perception (of how fast time is passing in a particular frame of reference). Time is slower in a fast moving space ship than it is on a planet. The greater the difference in the speeds of motion, the greater the difference in the speeds of time.
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Thanks for the response Kathleen - I really appreciate it. And you hit the nail on the head - I'm reading about the science and math of "time dilation" but then the words "feel" and "perception" come in. In my head, I'm yelling "who cares how you FEEL, or what you PERCEIVE to be happening - I want to know what is ACTUALLY happening!" Which is what you told me, and what the books say... I guess this effect has actually been measured to a tiny degree (was it airplanes, or some of our space vehicles?), but still...
I happen to have twin toddlers If they each had matching watches, and one left Earth fast (some significant portion of c), and used that watch, it SEEMS that the watch wouldn't know any better (that time is relative) - if the outbound and return trips take an hour each by the on-board watch, it should be the same for the other watch. All that should matter is that by going fast, you can go farther (distance) in the given time!
I know I'm wrong, by the math, and, oh, all the great minds that know better than I. I just have trouble wrapping my mind around it.
I try to think - oh, maybe if you are moving towards the center of the universe... or oh, if you actually got to the speed of light (not likely, I know) maybe it would be dark and, oh... just random thoughts that come up and blur together in a mind trying to rationalize something that doesn't seem rational or logical. Maybe the math is like statistics - it can say what you want it to say
But even if it is true (!), I expected a lot more time to have passed before Mandella's trip home - I was shocked because he was gone for a while, and the trips were not short - but his mom was alive... and while I could go back and try to do the math, at some point you just have to stop and enjoy the book. Which I did.
I will copy what you wrote, and put it somewhere where I can look at it. Maybe someday my mind will grok. It is very frustrating. Usually I can teach myself anything - I don't know why this is such an issue for me.
Darn you, LDS, for making me read a book that makes me think...
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Lee, the hardest thing for me, I guess, was accepting the idea that time isn't a constant, but that the speed of light is.
What helped was to realize that time really does seem relative to us anyway. After all, it really does seem slow when your [argh! I mean you're--I hate it when I don't catch that] bored and it really does seem to fly when you're having fun.
A two-second earthquake feels like it lasts ages, and the taste of a chocolate kiss, no matter how slowly I can get it to melt in my mouth, is only there for an instant.
The whole thing about time dilation is very hard to wrap the brain around, though, so don't feel bad about the difficulty.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited July 29, 2004).]
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I remember reading something in the last year that speculates the actual relativity curve (speed/time distortion). The article was saying that it is now believed that the curve is a bit different than originally believed, and that this would make time dialation not as effective until comming much closer to the speed of light.
So if you climbed aboard your space ship and took off at half the speed of light, you would have some time dialation, but not near as much as originally believed.
And I'll put my general disclaimer when commenting on scientific ideas we have yet to prove....no one has done it yet, so we really don't know. Since this is something that could be used in a story, I figured I'd through it out.
As for him comming back and his mother still being alive...well, he lost 15 years in his first trip...or roughly that. So his mother being in her sixties is very believable. I think where most people might get confused is that the book mentions several times the interest on the money they were earning. Well, if you are on a ship where there is nothing to buy, you don't need money. The result is that all your pay just sits.
I was paying attention to the period they spent on earth, and the way they felt being out of touch with the society they found there. This is something that happens even today. People will work the same job for years, and if they switch (even to a better company) they will find it hard to be happy. Once people have adjusted to a way of life, they get comfortable and stick with it. It would be hard to convince most people that someone would willingly go back to a military that is obviously messed up. There would have to be some very good justification to them choosing military over staying on Earth. The whole section showed both of ther connections with Earth (parents) dying. That left them only with each other, and they both could go back to the military. If you think about it, would you find it reasonable to go back to the military, where you have a very high chance of getting killed, without a good reason?
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