A separate war and other stories Book

Contents:

"A Separate War" (1998) The story of Marygay, William's fellow draftee and lover in The Forever War. Covers an aspect skipped in The Forever War, just how do you get far off and out-of-contact troops to know that the war is over? It's good, but it does require reading the novel first.

"Diminished Chord" (2004) a mood piece fantasy of a musician, his student, and the lute she gives him.

"Giza" (2001) Haldeman's 9/11 story and better than that implies.

"Foreclosure" (2004) a real estate agent gets told by the one who designed Earth that it's time to vacate. This has a William Tenn feel to it.

"Four Short Novels" (1998) each "short novel" begins with the line "Eventually it came to pass that no one ever had to die, ..." Each of them are clever and I liked them.

"For White Hill" (1995) Earth was one of the losers in a massive attack against human-occupied worlds. Visiting artists are studying it for a commemoration when a subtler attack is revealed that may kill everyone.

"Finding My Shadow" (2003) A soldier patrolling Boston for rebellious survivors of a plague finds her former lover among them.

"Civil Disobedience" (2005) A scuba instructor comes under the attention of a future Homeland Security.

"Memento Mori" (2004) A simple medical procedure involving the rebooting of an immortality treatment. The similarity to an old-fashioned exorcism really is just a coincidence, but the metaphor is pretty strong.

"Faces" (2004) A mysterious force may be overcome only by ...

"Heartwired" (2005) A pretty good joke written as a short story. Unfortunately I was already familiar with the joke.

"Brochure" (2000) A small list of the catastrophe tours as described in a brochure. Amusingly cynical.

"Out of Phase" (1969) An alien is sent to observe our species. Unfortunately, it is from a species where the young routinely kill and eat each other. It is approaching what might be called its adolescence, but will it outgrow its youthful enthusiasm before "playing" with us?

"Power Complex" (1970) The story that follows "Out of Phase". Our alien is in its second stage of its life, and is in a very powerful position. It has to deal with equally powerful humans, on their terms.

"Fantasy for Six Electrodes and One Adrenaline Drip" - Haldeman's entry for The Last Dangerous Visions, a now infamous anthology that was never published. This is a script from the future, with "stage directions" that include adrenaline levels and somatic stimuli. Unfortunately, the story within the script is fairly ordinary.

Haldeman follows with Notes on the Stories, which gives the background and thoughts behind the stories.

Overall, I liked this, but for the casual reader too much depends on having read Haldeman's other work. "A Separate War" is the obvious example, but the paired stories "Out of Phase" and "Power Complex" clearly need a third story to end the sequence, and it isn't there (but since these two stories are obviously precursors to the Tiptree Award-winning Camouflage, maybe a third story is redundant). If you're not the sort of person who likes to read everything by an author to see how he or she develops (I am), then I recommend picking the book up in the library and reading "Giza", "Four Short Novels", "For White Hill", "Finding My Shadow", and "Memento Mori". The rest you can pick and choose.