Old Twentieth

by Joe Haldeman

The twentieth century lies hundreds of years in humanity's past. But the near-immortal citizens of the future yearn for the good old days - when people's bodies were unable to spontaneously heal, and disease and age were actual causes of death. Immersing themselves in virtual reality time machines, they are addicted to exploring the life-to-death arc that defined a lifetime so long ago.

Jacob Brewer is a virtual reality engineer; overseeing the time machine's operations aboard the starship Ad Astra. On a thousand-year voyage to Beta Hydrii, the eight hundred member crew escapes the tedium of the trip within the artificial environment of twentieth-century Earth. But, they get more reality than they expected when people entering the machine start to die.

For the time machine has become sentient, evolving far beyond what its creators imagined. It has become obsessed with humanity - and wants Jacob Brewer to enter its confines and discuss this fragile state of being called life...

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Time Travel, Science Fiction Fantasy, Space, Speculative Fiction, Mystery

Paperback

First published August 1, 2005

About the author

Brother of Jack C. Haldeman II

Haldeman is the author of 20 novels and five collections. The Forever War won the Nebula, Hugo and Ditmar Awards for best science fiction novel in 1975. Other notable titles include Camouflage, The Accidental Time Machine and Marsbound as well as the short works "Graves," "Tricentennial" and "The Hemingway Hoax." Starbound is scheduled for a January release. SFWA president Russell Davis called Haldeman "an extraordinarily talented writer, a respected teacher and mentor in our community, and a good friend."

Haldeman officially received the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master for 2010 by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America at the Nebula Awards Weekend in May, 2010 in Hollywood, Fla.

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Science Fiction chef de cuisine Joe Haldeman whips up a hearty goulash using a choice selection of well-known tropes lightly seasoned with a pinch of psychology and garnished with a walking tour through the wars of the 20th Century. The result: while not as scrumptiously tasty as his chef d'oeuvre, The Forever War, is still an enjoyable repast that should leave all but the most peckish gourmands satiated and content.

Bon Appetit.

Mr. Haldeman has yet to write a story that I didn’t at least like, and while I don’t list his work among my personal favorites, he’s a SF staple that I can always count on to deliver a quality effort filled with some interesting ideas. He rarely “wows” me, but he also is yet to disappoint me. This story is no exception.

For this particular banquet, Joe chooses as his base ingredients: virtual reality, artificial intelligence, immortality and the generational starship. There's also a “quasi” 5th trope employed, however to mention it would require a spoiler so it will have to serve as our “mystery” meat (and NO, it isn’t Salisbury steak).

PLOT SUMMARY

In the near future, the Becker-Cendrek Process (BCP) provides immortality for the 3% of the Earth’s fat cats who are rich and/or powerful enough to afford it. Not surprisingly, the hoi polloi constituting the remaining 97% react with a fairly boisterous “fuck you and die along with the limo you rode in on”, resulting in the Immortality War of 2047. This war eventually ends when the immortals unleash Lot 92, a biological agent that kills anyone not using BCP.

Final tally:

7 billion “unwashed masses” dead
200 million immortals left alive.

Flash forward 200 years. Our main character is Jacob, a virtual reality expert aboard a fleet of starships bound on a 1000 year journey from Earth to a habitable planet circling Beta Hydrii. Jake is the chief technician for the “Time Machine,” a fully immersive simulated version of 20th Century Earth where passengers go to experience life and death in the last great period before the Immortality War.

The program in known as “Old Twentieth” and has become a societal addiction for most of the immortals who find the excitement of experiencing first hand the great wars of the period intoxicating. Think Star Trek holodeck or The Matrix and you've got the idea.

Major problems develop when “immortals” begin dying while inside the simulation and word reaches the explorers that similar deaths are occurring back on Earth. All those dying are “first generation” immortals (those first given the BCP treatment) and represent the power structure of society. Panic ensues and Jake and his team must find the cause of the mysterious deaths before it’s too late.

Commence drama.

THOUGHTS

A good, solid SF mystery with some interesting characters and a pace that moves along nicely and without much plod. I also thought the ending was clever and fit within the frame of the central story (I understand from some that this is a problem with some of Haldeman’s work). Joe also includes some nice inter-personal dynamics. I particularly like the relationship between Jake and his wife which was interesting and a bit unusual.

Overall, there was nothing here that screams classic or long term staying power, but it is an excellent story that accomplishes what it set out to do. If the ingredients mentioned above interest you, I think you will enjoy yourself with it and fans of Joe Haldeman should be well pleased.

3.0 stars. Recommended.

[Kemper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joe Haldeman is one of my favorite sci-f writers,and he is also one of those guys who makes me feel like a lazy stupid slug that’s not fit to walk on the same planet. Not only is he a brilliant award-winning author, he teaches writing part-time at MIT. He’s got a BS in physics and astronomy as well as a MFA in writing. He’s also a Vietnam veteran with a Purple Heart.

That background combo of writing, science and war has given him the experience to do sci-fi novels with a military slant like the classic Forever War or Forever Peace where he’s explored the true cost of warfare on people as well books centered around standard sci-fi ideas like aliens, time travel and space exploration.

Old Twentieth lets Haldeman do the big concept sci-fi stuff while adding in just a dash of his war writing for flavor. Hundreds of years into the future, the human race has eliminated aging and death by disease after a brutal war had eliminated a large percentage of the population. People now live hundreds of years and there’s a new era of peace and prosperity.

With the long life-span and new technologies, an expedition that will take centuries to explore a planet at a nearby star is planned and eight hundred volunteers are making the trip, including Jacob Brewer. Jake is a first generation user of the process that extended human life span, and he’s the ship’s expert on virtual reality.

Their virtual reality simulation is kind of a cross between the holodecks from Star Trek and The Matrix. Users are plugged into detailed historical recreations, and the system is designed to manipulate memories so that it will become reality for the users. The favorite destination is the 20th century, or Old Twentieth, before the war that changed the planet occurred.

The system has been widely used on Earth for decades, but when one of the shipboard users dies while in the simulation, Jake will have to try and figure out if the system contributed to the death. Entering virtual reality as an operator with admin rights and his memory intact, Jacob will begin finding oddities that may threaten the entire ship.

This concept lets Haldeman play with a lot of ideas. The story on the ship and background history let him create a new futuristic society and technology while the scenes inside the VR let him have Jake bop through twentieth century history. And since Jake has a taste for war stories, we get his experiences from World War I Gallipoli to World War II’s Tarawa to Vietnam as well as experiences ranging from having the Spanish flu after WWI to getting a bowl of Skyline chili in Cincinnati.

This is a great sci-fi story that plays with ideas ranging from what people would do with immortality to the value that we put on entertainment, sometimes at the risk of our lives.

[spikeINflorida · Rating 4 out of 5]

Think Star Trek, Time Machine, The Matrix, and 2001 A Space Odyssey and you'll get a good idea about this excellent story. It's the SciFi Channel meets Turner Classic Movies. I got such a kick from cameos by Clarke Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Sean Connery, and Marlon Brando. The various war scenes were gritty, shocking, and violent. Joe Haldeman was back in his game with this winner. 4.5 stars.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Old Twentieth is a good science fiction mystery about people in the future who become subject to the fad of nostalgia for the long ago twentieth century and visit via a virtual reality time machine. Unfortunately, it becomes a one-way trip for some... remember Hal was from 2001! It's a very well-written novel, with the old twentieth settings complementing and contrasting the future environment very effectively. Those were the good old days!

[Scott Rhee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Joe Haldeman's "Old Twentieth" is a decent enough science fiction read, but certainly not as good as one would expect from one of the sci-fi greats like Haldeman, whose "Forever War" is still one of the top 10 best science fiction novels of the past 50 years. Haldeman is an excellent writer, but this book plods its way through a rather ho-hum story involving a future in which immortality has been reached, virtual reality has reached a pinnacle, and a possibly self-aware and homicidal A.I. (that's artificial intelligence, for non-SF geeks) threatens humanity. Think "Matrix" meets "2001", only not as exciting.

[Dimitris Zisis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has an interesting approach in both AI and simulation.

The protagonist, Jacob, is dealing with some issues from a "time machine". A machine that takes the person back in the time somewhere in the 20th Century of his desire to witness the moment of his choice. This works as an entertainment because all of the humans beings got a thing that keeps them immortal so it would be boring living hundred of years doing nothing.

This story questions if the addictions we have nowadays are really worth it and some other subjects the reader might find interesting.

The author's description of historical events, environment back in the time, dialogues and attitudes is very well written and we can see the effort he took to either research or remember how people would acted and say back in the day.

I'd prefer it would be less in length because it had some details that didn't keep my interest at all, though.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the future, we are immortal: At least in this story, the survivors of the great war were. Nanotechnology has given them what they believe to be eternal life. A side effect of this is an odd fascination with the dramatic events of the "Old Twentieth" century (World War I, the Spanish flu, World War II, the Cold War, Vietnam, etc), the last significant era when people could still actually die. The crew of a starship on a thousand-year voyage to another star are able to use a virtual reality computer to play out their death and fear fantasies to distract and entertain themselves. The drama of the book begins when somebody actually dies while in virtuality. Did the machine kill them?

This book is very slow to get going, though the backstory of the nanotech revolution is interesting. It really hits its stride when the first person dies in the machine, and the crew struggles to figure out what is going on. Unfortunately, the ending robs this setup of seemingly all importance, and left me thinking "Oh, man, really? Come on!," with just a hint of "What's actually going on here, anyway?" The middle of this book would be 3-4 stars, but the disappointing finale drops it to two.

[Midas68 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rich People Kill off the 99 per-centers after they discover immortality.(who wants those bums around For Freakin Ever right. And they head to another planet, because they got the time Man.
Ship becomes an AI while the main charecter Virtual Realities it up in the 20th century a bunch of times.

Haldeman(is Great at times) Is Lame duck here. He even comes across as a republican who doesn't really see the loss of almost all humanity(the non Rich) as something of a Travesty.
In fact he states it's the poors fault, that if they would have waited. the rich would have shared the Immortality stuff with them too.(ahhhh, you can always count on a Sweet Mogul Brother)

Which as it turns out, The Super Expensive Drug was actually Cheap to produce in the first place. Capitalism at its finest. But Haldeman Never mentions that as a catalyst. Only that the Dumb Poor got GREEDY LOL, I kept waiting on him to enlighten his Main Character. But No, he never did.

I gave this book two stars a minute ago. but on reflecting. Im giving it a 1.
Why, cause I'm pretending I'm rich and that this is one Poor Read(Blimey)

[Ellis · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an odd one. I want to like it more than I did, but I think it needs to be longer. About 20 pages from the end, I wished the focus had been on only one aspect of the book, either the immortality of the world's population after the majority of it had been wiped out or the time machine that was really a virtual simulation of the past rather than an actual traveling device. By the end I just wanted another 100 pages to figure things out. I'd say that this "borrows heavily" from The Matrix rather than call it a rip-off because I really like Joe Haldeman.

[Parthena · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really like Haldeman's style for the most part; he has a compelling way of evoking specific emotions with his not-overly-verbose imagery. However, I found the ending to this book to be abrupt and disappointing. Much more could have been explained, and it left way too many questions unanswered.

The premise was brilliant, though.

[Clark Hallman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Old Twentieth takes place hundreds of years in the future. Humanity is nearly immortal and they immerse themselves in virtual reality time machines to explore the past. During a thousand-year voyage to Beta Hydrii the 800-member crew begin to die as the time machine becomes sentient. It's a very interesting book, like all of Joe Haldeman's novels.

[Louis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Old Twentieth by Joe Haldeman was a disappointment to me. This was unexpected since I usually like his work and he’s a talented author who has won, multiple times, the major awards in science fiction.

The basic premise in this work, from the back cover:

Jacob Brewer is a virtual reality engineer, overseeing the time machine’s operation aboard the starship Aspera. But on the thousand-year voyage to Beta Hydrii, the eight-hundred member crew gets more reality than they expect when people entering the machine start to die.

“Star Trek holodeck goes on the fritz?” Sounded intriguing knowing there was the possibility of something unique to be done here.

Honestly, it was a bore. The main point of the story took too long to get going, though I didn’t mind the world building. That was actually the high point of the book. No major spoiler points, just some nice elements to the story:

- He shares with us a great background of how humanity has gotten to the point at the start of this story. A unique conflict situation that sets the foundation of where our characters are coming from.

- In heading to another star many stories will load everyone in one ship and off they’ll go. Here, the author works out a more realistic design for a voyage of this type. Spreading the crew over multiple ships with varied environments to provide change for the crew. The ability to abandon one and move to another in case of catastrophic failure. Etc.

- Other stories usually don’t put in real limitations to the crew’s way of life for the duration of a long voyage. There seems to be a lack of hardship. But here we have some limits. Resources must be scheduled or provided at a slower rate (e.g. a wine allotment). Not every quarters have a bathroom, like a dorm you have shared facilities.

Those were little touches that I was glad to see to separate this story from many which are set in the “magical land of the future, where everything is possible and no one wants for anything.”

But then other times I was jarred out of the story by something strange. It’s mentioned that on-board they can synthesis meat to create meals if it’s in the database. But we then get a section where the protagonist wants duck and the systems aren’t programmed for that. So, he hunts one from a park-like area aboard ship to get a sample for future meals.

Huh? You build multiple starships, stock them with supplies, head towards the stars, but no one programs duck meat in the synthesizers?

Then during a zero-g maneuver we are told that there is only one zero-g toilet on a ship for 200 people? Okay, even if this maneuver rarely occurs and with warning beforehand to use the other facilities, this just made me question the logic and story world.

This whole novel was a mixture of good and clumsy ideas that just didn’t fit together nicely. The overall point of the book doesn't kick in early enough, and the ending left me with a feeling of indifference.

It’s too bad, the author is a treasure and has written some classics in the genre. Unfortunately, this was not one.

[Tito Hammer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clever plot and plot devices. Author plays to his strengths. As usual, Haldeman takes the reader off on some non-linear plot lines, which are not entirely disorienting and often pleasantly refreshing with their frank updates of characters' (seemingly) mundane lives. The working man's SciFi author.

[Billy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good but felt like written 60 years ago not 20.

[Pilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought-provoking story with the premise that people who are immortal want the experience of danger and possibly dying, so immerse themselves in virtual reality adventures.

[Tim Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

_Old Twentieth_ by Joe Haldeman is another good work by this outstanding author. I didn't think it as good as either _Forever War_ or _Forever Peace_ but nonetheless found it engaging.

The book opens up with a battle scene in 1915, Gallipoli, something that shouldn't surprise the reader too much as one of the basic premises of the book, as relayed on the back cover, is that in the future many people use a time machine of sorts, an incredibly sophisticated virtual reality program that lets its users vividly relive just about any aspect of life in the 20th century. So completely immersive is the experience that the users while in the machine are unaware that they are in a virtual reality program and they actually think they are the characters they inhabit.

Why the 20th century? It addition to I imagine the copious amounts of research and in particular media images from the era, it was the last century in world history in which the "life-to-death-arc" still existed for everyone on the planet, something fascinating to many of the characters in the story. Starting in the 21st century actual immortality became a viable option. Thanks to the Becker-Cendrek Process (or the BCP pill as it was popularly known), one's body can become a self-repairing machine, immune to disease and many injuries. In a lengthy but still interesting chapter of nearly pure exposition, we learn that the pill was available at first only to the extremely wealthy and that this generated great jealousy, jealousy so immense and far-reaching that a war resulted, the Immortality War (or just the War), a conflict that eventually resulted in the death of nearly everyone that had not taken the pill (7 billion people), leaving 200 million immortals left alive.

Fast forward to the future. It took many decades of work to get the world running to any degree again, as most of those who took the BCP pill were not those who actually made society run at the nuts-and-bolts level (your nurses, mechanics, farmers, garbage collectors, plumbers, police officers, fire fighters, construction workers, etc.). However society had recovered enough to send a fleet of five ships on a thousand year journey to a planet discovered orbiting Beta Hydrii, a planet with at least one planet with free oxygen in its atmosphere and liquid water.

The substantially sized crew of the five ships settle in for a long journey to their incredibly distant location, many people with more than one job and a number of hobbies to keep them entertained. One of them, Jacob Brewer, in addition to being an accomplished musician and a chef of French and Spanish cuisine, is a virtual reality engineer, working hard to keep the fleet's "time machine" running, making sure not only its technical aspects are up to standards but making sure that there are no anomalies or anachronisms in what the machine displays to its users (for instance making sure a famous art exhibition is not in two places at the same time).

The fun starts when Jacob finds there are some subtle, minor anomalies. He finds that New York City in certain year in the middle twentieth century starts to smell too clean. Not an absence of smell, but some of the olfactory substrata of the city is absent. While investigating this relatively minor problem someone dies in New York, in the simulator. This is not supposed to happen, not for an immortal, certainly not in virtual reality.

What is going on? Is the machine accidentally killing people? Does it need repair or need to be shut off entirely? Or is it deliberately killing people? Perhaps the incredibly sophisticated program has grown to hate humans, or just certain humans, or that some of the characters in the program - a mobster perhaps - have taken on a life of their own. What is the cause?

The majority of the book is Jacob and his fellow engineers trying to track down the problem and fix it, a quest that leads them to some surprising places. Against this backdrop we see some of the complicated mission aspects of the fleet on its way to the final destination and some of the trials and tribulations of Jacob in his personal life, his up and down relationship to his new wife. Though perhaps necessary parts of Jacob's story, as his life didn't occur only in a vacuum, focused only on the machine, sometimes they were a bit distracting (particularly the relationship aspects).

The ending of the book, the answer to the mystery, was intriguing though a bit abrupt. Questions are answered though and it was an interesting ending.

Overall I liked the book, it was a very fast read and I really liked the amount of historical detail that Haldeman packed into the various forays into various virtual reality trips, describing places and events from the 20th century.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Becker-Cendrek Process made death by natural causes a thing of the past. Of course the procedure was spectacularly expensive and initially available only to the fabulously wealthy. As it went further into production, the price began to come down. Soon the super, super wealthy could afford it; then the merely super wealthy. By the time the very, very wealthy could buy in, discontent began to grow among those who were stuck with their normal life spans. But the price could only come down so far until Becker-Cendrek made back their predictably high R&D costs. War broke out, a conflict known as the Immortality War. It was vicious, but the solution was outrageous. A pathogen known as Lot 92 wiped out that part of the world population that had not yet taken the BCP pill. Earth's populations dropped from the billions to just around 200 million.

As you might expect, those 200 million immortals were not the best equipped to keep public utilities running, or for that matter to fix their own plumbing. But mankind over the centuries pulled things together. Science and technology got back up and running and society adjusted to the prospect of a very long future with little change in the neighborhood. In vitro fertilization and the much chancier prospect of natural childbirth, which involves going off the BCP treatment for the term of the pregnancy, stabilized the population at 10 million. But an inevitable amount of tedium set in. When an earth-like planet is discovered near Beta Hydrii, the nearly thousand year journey to explore it is swamped by applicants looking for a change.

One of those applicants is Jacob Brewer, a first generation immortal, although not from an fabulously wealthy family. His family had a tradition of buying a case of good wine for each birth, a case to used sparingly for special occasions. Jacob's grandfather had the good fortune of buying a case of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild 1945, which would become on of the most valuable wines in history and the Brewer family's early ticket for immortality. Jacob is a virtuality engineer, trained to maintain the time machines that allow users to enter virtual recreations of any moment in history that has been sufficiently researched to become part of the time travel menu. Most of those destinations are in the twentieth century, "The Old Twentieth," and travelers may have a taste for the Paris of Hemingway and Fitzgerald or the battlefields of Viet Nam.

Haldeman's novel opens with Jacob having the lower half of his body blown off at Gallipoli, but hey, it's a virtual experience. His fellow travelers show him a choice of postcards he can study and choose an escape route from the gore-soaked foxhole in Turkey, He opts for London.

Old Twentieth, alternates between life on the Aspera, the ship bound for Beta Hydrii, and the time spent in virtual reality by Jacob and his crew as they maintain the understandably popular time machine on the milleneum-long voyage. Haldeman's best writing is in his recreation of the Old Twentieth environments where his military background serves him well. Although life on the Aspera has its romantic and bureaucratic complications and there is one funny scene involving ducks, the novel is at its liveliest in the virtual world of the time machine. And then people begin to die.

The deaths may be related to the time machine, but reports from earth convey news of similar deaths occurring on the home planet. Jacob's final trip into the machine, which may have become a sentient AI, takes the novel into new territory that makes Old Twentieth Haldeman's best exploration of the what constitutes a human life when the normal constraints of time have been removed since he explored similar themes in Forever War and Forever Free.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the future humans have managed to create the Becker-Cendrek Process (BCP) pill, a treatment that leads to their near-immortality. With such a gift initially available only to the rich, there is a war and the release of a virus, Lot 92, kills over seven billion of the world’s population. Of the remaining couple of hundred million people, humans begin to use their longer lifespans to travel the stars.

Jacob Brewer is one of eight hundred colonists who are chosen to travel on a group of space ships to Beta Hydrii, a journey that will take over one thousand years. As part of their recreation, not to mention to maintain their sanity as well as to remember what they have left behind, the ship has a holodeck that gives the user the chance to apparently go back in time to places and times in Earth’s twentieth century. Our heroes’ job on the trip is to go and check each year, to check that it works properly and ensure that there are no ill effects on the part of the user.

This is all told in the first person, with Joe managing to do his trick of creating a three-dimensional character (albeit it rather flawed) and at the same time fill in background details on the spaceship’s environment, society and culture. A lot of the fun is in the places Jacob goes to in the twentieth century: Gallipoli in the First World War, the US of the 1920’s, Paris in the 1940’s, Vietnam in the 1970’s and so forth. Many of the places involve war and death, for despite whatever injuries the user may gain in the simulation they return fit and healthy afterwards.

The jeopardy of the tale is caused when, all of sudden, some of the Immortals die, often whilst using the ‘time machine’ on the spaceship or on Earth. Jacob has to find out whether it is just natural causes or ‘the machine’ that is somehow doing it, which involves him talking to some quite complex AI that run the simulations.

Anyone who’s seen Source Code (admittedly 2011) will recognise the plot twist by the end of the tale, and whilst that may create a “Huh?” type moment, and possibly lead to the reader’s suspension of disbelief falling apart, the novel up to that point has been quite a ride. It all ends a bit too quickly, though it must be said rather appropriately.

Whilst it’s not perfect, Old Twentieth is an entertaining read that shows Haldeman’s skills at telling a tale. It’s not The Forever War, but it’s nice to read a tale that revels in just doing that.

[Bruce · Rating 3 out of 5]

"we desire the new but are reluctant to give up the old."

A quote from the book, p. 111, where I am in reading right now. Also very appropriate to what brings me here in the first place.

I first read Joe Haldeman almost 30 years ago. With Forever War he earned a lifelong fan. I avidly gobbled up everything he wrote as soon as it came out. Worlds and Worlds Apart were two other notable successes of his.

Around the time of Tool of the Trade I began to be disappointed in his writing. This and pretty much every book of his I read after followed the same pattern-- 2/3 of the way through there is a sudden deus es machina, the plot takes a right angle turn, and conflicts are resolved in this new meta level of activity that is very unsatisfying for not having been built up to through the majority of the book.

I pick up another Haldeman book every few years. He's a very deft writer technically. His stuff is easy to read and usually compelling... until that right turn.

So far I am finding Old Twentieth not so enjoyable. Ostensibly about the future, much of it so far takes place in the past, in a time travel virtual reality. Lots of details about lots of different historical periods in the 20th c.

The future, and the narrator, seem pinched, dry and bitter to me. Not such fun reading. We desire the new but are reluctant to give up the old...

======
OK, just finished it.

The plot, such as it is, doesn't really start until almost 2/3 of the way through. Then the conflict promised on the flyleaf finally starts.

...only to dissolve into no real resolution at all, a surreal ending that somehow manages to (try to) convey a love of life despite all the dry bitterness of living it. Books like this should have a warning on the spine: WARNING: the library general has determined that a lack of closure may be bad for your peace of mind.

Which earns it three stars in the Bruce rating system, meaning, reading it was an OK thing to be doing if I had nothing better to do (stuck in christchurch for a few days, waiting on town appointments) but not worthwhile on its own.

Comparing this to other Haldeman I have read in the last 10 years, I didn't like the first 2/3 of the book as much as others, but liked the last third more, sort of.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

So a bunch of immortal genocidal sociopaths build a virtual reality machine and start vacationing in the worst moments of the 20th century. And some of those immortals start to die in the machine. The machine says it’s not it’s fault. The machine is gaining sentience. And there’s really very little else to do to while away the time. What do you do?

I liked this book in that I wanted to turn the pages. I didn’t like this book in that I didn’t like the characters. The haves and have nots go to war, and the haves win. And by win, I mean they kill 97% of the population of the earth and then proceed to be pretty nasty to each other for a while. And that’s just the back story, which is dark and fascinating. But the front story – meh. I couldn’t work up any empathy for these people. They seemed utterly oblivious to the moral implications of what had to happen so they could live in a nearly perfect, though boring world. Which, okay, may have been the point.

But I suspect I didn’t get it.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joe Haldeman is one of those writers who manages to write books with totally different themes and characters and make them all interesting. After reading three or four of his books I can say that I would never hesitate to pick one up.

In this story a virus weapon wiped out all but a few million people worldwide decades ago and slowly the population has grown to a number and technological level that is ready to send a ship out to another star, Beta Hydrii. But instead of a generation ship the travelers on this voyage are immortal thanks to a process developed after the virus release.

To amuse the passengers and crew on the millennia long journey a virtual time machine is on board, and as the title suggests the twentieth century is the most popular destination. Everything is fine except some subtle anomalies start showing up in the VR and then someone dies while in VR. Things get very interesting then and the ending is definitely unexpected, neither Janice or I saw it coming.

The book is a quick read and I promise you will enjoy it.

[Ray Ivey · Rating 2 out of 5]

First time Mr. Haldeman has disappointed me since his dull book on Hemmingway. The book starts off very strong -- the setup is fascinating and horrifying.

After that, the author can't seem to make up his mind which book he wants to write.

Is this a book about artificial immortality? Is it about virtual reality? Is it about ultra-long voyages to the stars?

In a much longer book -- one by Peter Hamilton, say -- all of these themes could be successfully and interestingly explored. But Haldeman writes short books. And a book this length needs a bit of focus.

At the end of this book it felt like merely the first chapter of a longer work. Quite disapointed, particularly considering how shiny and sharp his other recent books have been.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

2-2.5

It had an interesting premise but I was thrown off by a few things, like the fact that the backstory is pretty much "and then the rich people got immortality and did a genocide on the poors who dared to be suspicious of all the rich people becoming immortal." They then had to go on with their immortal lives afterwards. I'll be honest, I didn't really feel sorry for these people.

They don't dwell on that much which I guess makes sense as it was a long time ago? idk. Anyway, the main plot didn't actually have a real ending, it had a TWIST ending. Which wasn't terrible but I didn't find very satisfying.

The book just turned out to be a lot more dull then I thought it would be based on the premise.

[Mortimer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure what I think about this one. I found myself turning the pages quickly, and I like that once again the machine is portrayed as being a result of programming and questions of what exactly being conscious entails are considered seriously. In this sense it reminds me of Cadigan's Mindplayers series, without the cartoony feel (and I mean that as a compliment) that that series gave me, almost two-dimensional in ways.

Haldeman handles war scenes about as well as any writer I've ever read - no glamorizing or idealizing, but also no moralizing, and lots of acknowledgment of the quiet desperation, fear, and courage exhibited by people in combat.

[Sean Randall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whilst I enjoyed the writing style, the humour, the, the future technology and all of that, I couldn't help but feel a little bit cheated at the ending. There's also that irritating thread of ennui you get when working with nearly immortal characters, a coldness seems to creep into their mindsets and things end up reduced to numbers rather than feelings. That did alternate well with the historical stuff, to be fair. I found the sentience of the machine at a bit of a remove. perhaps a deeper reread one day will reveal more subtext that I have glossed over.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of Haldeman's best books yet.

[Danjo · Rating 2 out of 5]

So there's no ending. I hit next page on my Kindle, and nothing happened. I thought it was broken, until I realized that I was looking at the last page.

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another excellent Haldeman novel. I am always drawn into his stories and seem to quickly become enmeshed with the main character. Never a dull read with Haldeman. Very recommended

[Dave Osmond · Rating 3 out of 5]

I rather enjoyed this one by Haldeman. Not his best work, like The Forever War, but still a good, worthy read with some interesting twists.

[Rach · Rating 3 out of 5]

I teetered both ways while reading this, and landed solidly somewhere in the middle. I was either bored or gripped, which makes for an interesting combination.

They’d never known anyone who had died.

This was just a little too slow and a little too war-focused for me. It definitely has its audience and you can tell Haldeman’s personal experiences help paint a lot of the tiny details within this complex futuristic world he developed.

I also think it isn’t helped by how… bland Jacob, the protagonist, feels. His emotions are so diluted down because he’s a logic-first person, which could be someone’s perfect cup of tea! But it just felt so odd at some points. Add in some minor insensitivities around race and sexuality and it was quite hard to really like him fully. There was a specific section that felt incredibly biphobic and it made me cringe. (Admittedly, for a book from 2005, mentioning LGBTQ+ labels was definitely not as practiced as it was today.)

Jacob’s detached emotional state also made it feel like the main time-crunching element of the book, the deaths of former-immortals, was not a big deal at all. When it is. It’s like everyone around him was reacting but he wasn’t - perhaps to fulfill a cool-headed, “I’m the smartest one here” trope? I don’t know.

All this to say, I loved the AI/time machine elements in this. The twist at the end was super solid and well devised, peppered with just enough clues to make it super satisfying. I just wish the pacing towards getting there was a little faster! Sentience in artificial intelligence is one of my favorite things in scifi and it was the main rewarding factor for me reading this.

Overall, I’m unfortunately just not the main component of Haldeman’s audience - at least for this book. Perhaps I’ll pick up another work of his at some point. I will say, if you know you like scifi from this era and the summary gripped you, give it a try! This could really shine in the hands of the right reader.