A Separate War and other stories is an attempt by the old sci-fi writer, Joe Haldeman (The Forever War) to represent stories of his full range as a writer. This is an interesting concept, as he starts his first tale as one of the stories he ever first submitted, to his last one, a funky tale written like a movie script!

Listing all the stories and analyzing each would be hard not only on this writer but on the reader as well -- so here are the ones that impacted me, good or ill.

The intro written by one of my favorite writers, Connie Willis, was entertaining enough. Usually I skip these prefaces, but she gushes about the eloquence of Joe and her excitement at meeting him. I can relate, regarding meeting celebrities. Moving on...

The first story, A Separate War, was the best one. It takes up where The Forever War leaves off. It's military science fiction at its best -- an alien/human war where one must compensate for the great distances traveled, the impossibility of relationships, and he writes a gay element into the story to give it some interest and perhaps shock value.

I find this in several stories where his characters have some character flaw, are in the military, are gay to some extent or are impacted by a cold and ruthless social norm.

Finding My Shadow was a sad love story about Boston after its annihilation by a virus bomb. The government has declared the area a disaster area. The protagonist however, who left her lover to the virus, defects and joins the victims, only to find that the disease has long been dissipated. She tries to tell her government that with surprising results.

For White Hill is another 'alien war' story. A team of artists are on the planet Earth, which is uninhabitable except for a few stations where you can get the virus that wiped out all life flushed out of your system (in a gruesomely painful manner). It's really about love, about environmental disasters and about self-sacrifice. It's long, too!

Giza reflects on Man's attempt to bio-engineer himself to be able to mine the asteroids. Except his new creation rebels and the results are not pretty. I was not impressed with the last story, Fantasy for Six Electrodes and One Adrenaline Drip, which was written as a movie script where you could key in emotions and sex stimulation.

Haldeman makes his political views well known with an alien "child", Braxn, who becomes the President of the United States in order to know the feeling of power and his father who tamps down his power to teach him some humility. These are in the related tales Power Complex and Out of Phase.

Overall, an entertaining piece of work. I have yet to read Haldeman's novels but his short stories are hit or miss. I would probably go ahead and read his novels The Accidental Time Machine and The Forever War, but his shorts, well, are not bad at all.
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A Separate War and other stories is an attempt by the old sci-fi writer, Joe Haldeman (The Forever War) to represent stories of his full range as a writer. This is an interesting concept, as he starts his first tale as one of the stories he ever first submitted, to his last one, a funky tale written like a movie script!

Listing all the stories and analyzing each would be hard not only on this writer but on the reader as well -- so here are the ones that impacted me, good or ill.

The intro written by one of my favorite writers, Connie Willis, was entertaining enough. Usually I skip these prefaces, but she gushes about the eloquence of Joe and her excitement at meeting him. I can relate, regarding meeting celebrities. Moving on...

The first story, A Separate War, was the best one. It takes up where The Forever War leaves off. It's military science fiction at its best -- an alien/human war where one must compensate for the great distances traveled, the impossibility of relationships, and he writes a gay element into the story to give it some interest and perhaps shock value.

I find this in several stories where his characters have some character flaw, are in the military, are gay to some extent or are impacted by a cold and ruthless social norm.

Finding My Shadow was a sad love story about Boston after its annihilation by a virus bomb. The government has declared the area a disaster area. The protagonist however, who left her lover to the virus, defects and joins the victims, only to find that the disease has long been dissipated. She tries to tell her government that with surprising results.

For White Hill is another 'alien war' story. A team of artists are on the planet Earth, which is uninhabitable except for a few stations where you can get the virus that wiped out all life flushed out of your system (in a gruesomely painful manner). It's really about love, about environmental disasters and about self-sacrifice. It's long, too!

Giza reflects on Man's attempt to bio-engineer himself to be able to mine the asteroids. Except his new creation rebels and the results are not pretty. I was not impressed with the last story, Fantasy for Six Electrodes and One Adrenaline Drip, which was written as a movie script where you could key in emotions and sex stimulation.

Haldeman makes his political views well known with an alien "child", Braxn, who becomes the President of the United States in order to know the feeling of power and his father who tamps down his power to teach him some humility. These are in the related tales Power Complex and Out of Phase.

Overall, an entertaining piece of work. I have yet to read Haldeman's novels but his short stories are hit or miss. I would probably go ahead and read his novels The Accidental Time Machine and The Forever War, but his shorts, well, are not bad at all.
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Spanning nearly 40 years, these stories even dip a bit into fantasy, but mostly it’s Haldeman’s brand of humane but pessimistic sf, with people caught up in disasters environmental and military. I enjoyed them, even the most depressing (a story set in post-plague Boston, where the military hunts the few survivors to keep them from infecting the uninfected). The title story is what happened to Marygay from The Forever War, and it’s more sweet than most of the rest. ( )

This is a short story collection. I like anthologies, and this one was pretty good. The stories are:

* A Separate War: the end of The Forever War told from the perspective of Marygay.
* Diminished Chord: love and music on an old harp like instrument.
* Giza: genetic engineering to enable space mining.
* Foreclosure: let's get rid of those nasty squatters.
* Four short novels: eventually it came to pass that no one ever had to die...
* For White Hill: artists as collateral damage in an interstellar war
* Finding My Shadow: biological warfare in Boston.
* Civil Disobedience: global warming in a post Bush world.
* Memento Mori: a very short story about modern medicine.
* Faces: life as a draftee on a planet with a noxious atmosphere.
* Heartwired: viagra for the soul.
* Brochure: a badly polluted Earth reopens as a Disney resort.
* Out of Phase: a shape shifting alien learns about power on Earth, to the detriment of the Earthlings.
* Power Complex: the same shape shifting alien learns about real power.
* Fantasy for Six Electrodes and One Adrenaline Drip: a script involving love (or at least sex) and murder in a world with immersion entertainment.

http://www.stillhq.com/book/Joe_Haldeman/A_Separate_War_and_Other_Stories.html ( )

After reading through the omnibus edition of "Forever War", "Forever Free" and "Forever Peace", I picked up a copy of "A Separate War & Other Stories" based on a friend's recommendation. The collection is short, but good. "A Separate War" is a parallel narrative to the last section of "Forever War", in which we follow Marygay Potter's last campaign in the Forever War.

Recent works like the "Ender's Shadow" series by Orson Scott Card have tread this territory, mining the author's most famous work and constructing a parallel narrative. Where even the best of the "Ender's Shadow" series seemed a bit convoluted, "A Separate War" flows naturally and is a fine companion piece to the larger work.

The rest of the collection is quite enjoyable, particularly the paired stories "Out of Phase" and "Power Complex". What really makes the collection especially enjoyable are the author's introduction and notes. Haldeman teaches writing, and shares his insights about the craft of writing in a natural way that's a refreshing accompaniment to the stories themselves, kind of like a good director's commentary on a DVD.

Well worth picking up and a very quick read. ( )