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Life During Wartime
David Mingolla soon learns that escape from the rotten jungles of Guatemala is impossible—he is once more a pawn of secret, ruthless forces lusting for world domination. They try to dominate David by ordering him to kill the woman he loves.
432 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1987
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3429 people want to read
About the author
Lucius Shepard
296 books156 followersBrief biographies are, like history texts, too organized to be other than orderly misrepresentations of the truth. So when it's written that Lucius Shepard was born in August of 1947 to Lucy and William Shepard in Lynchburg, Virginia, and raised thereafter in Daytona Beach, Florida, it provides a statistical hit and gives you nothing of the difficult childhood from which he frequently attempted to escape, eventually succeeding at the age of fifteen, when he traveled to Ireland aboard a freighter and thereafter spent several years in Europe, North Africa, and Asia, working in a cigarette factory in Germany, in the black market of Cairo's Khan al Khalili bazaar, as a night club bouncer in Spain, and in numerous other countries at numerous other occupations. On returning to the United States, Shepard entered the University of North Carolina, where for one semester he served as the co-editor of the Carolina Quarterly. Either he did not feel challenged by the curriculum, or else he found other pursuits more challenging. Whichever the case, he dropped out several times and traveled to Spain, Southeast Asia (at a time when tourism there was generally discouraged), and South and Central America. He ended his academic career as a tenth-semester sophomore with a heightened political sensibility, a fairly extensive knowledge of Latin American culture and some pleasant memories.
Toward the beginning of his stay at the university, Shepard met Joy Wolf, a fellow student, and they were married, a union that eventually produced one son, Gullivar, now an architect in New York City. While traveling cross-country to California, they had their car break down in Detroit and were forced to take jobs in order to pay for repairs. As fortune would have it, Shepard joined a band, and passed the better part of the 1970s playing rock and roll in the Midwest. When an opportunity presented itself, usually in the form of a band break-up, he would revisit Central America, developing a particular affection for the people of Honduras. He intermittently took odd jobs, working as a janitor, a laborer, a sealer of driveways, and, in a nearly soul-destroying few months, a correspondent for Blue Cross/Blue Shield, a position that compelled him to call the infirm and the terminally ill to inform them they had misfiled certain forms and so were being denied their benefits.
In 1980 Shepard attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop at Michigan State University and thereafter embarked upon a writing career. He sold his first story, "Black Coral," in 1981 to New Dimensions, an anthology edited by Marta Randall. During a prolonged trip to Central America, covering a period from 1981-1982, he worked as a freelance journalist focusing on the civil war in El Salvador. Since that time he has mainly devoted himself to the writing of fiction. His novels and stories have earned numerous awards in both the genre and the mainstream.
Toward the beginning of his stay at the university, Shepard met Joy Wolf, a fellow student, and they were married, a union that eventually produced one son, Gullivar, now an architect in New York City. While traveling cross-country to California, they had their car break down in Detroit and were forced to take jobs in order to pay for repairs. As fortune would have it, Shepard joined a band, and passed the better part of the 1970s playing rock and roll in the Midwest. When an opportunity presented itself, usually in the form of a band break-up, he would revisit Central America, developing a particular affection for the people of Honduras. He intermittently took odd jobs, working as a janitor, a laborer, a sealer of driveways, and, in a nearly soul-destroying few months, a correspondent for Blue Cross/Blue Shield, a position that compelled him to call the infirm and the terminally ill to inform them they had misfiled certain forms and so were being denied their benefits.
In 1980 Shepard attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop at Michigan State University and thereafter embarked upon a writing career. He sold his first story, "Black Coral," in 1981 to New Dimensions, an anthology edited by Marta Randall. During a prolonged trip to Central America, covering a period from 1981-1982, he worked as a freelance journalist focusing on the civil war in El Salvador. Since that time he has mainly devoted himself to the writing of fiction. His novels and stories have earned numerous awards in both the genre and the mainstream.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 107 reviews
August 20, 2015
look inside, young soldier. look inside your fellow soldier, see the nothing there, see the nothing that has been put there as a reason why, see the nothing that has become a something, a reason for being a reason for acting a reason for dying. look inside your own self, young soldier. see the slowly building anger, see the red. you can shape that anger, turn it into a weapon, make it a place you can live, make it a reason for moving forward. it is the heart of you.
Soldier of America! shine bright, and bring the radiant dawn of corporate-military interests to these little third world countries! neither you nor your masters really understand why you are there in the first place - but who cares? you are all serving greater interests! be the pawn in a long-game whose rules are long-forgotten!
out of the darkness, into more darkness; out of the jungle, into another. make a home there! America is just a memory now, a place you once were; you are much more at home in this personal heart of darkness, this jungle of the mind, this bubbling sludgy swamp of the soul. you make new friends in this new place. your friends will guide you - and you will guide them! there is so much to teach and so much to learn.
grow up and become a living weapon, little soldier. do your parents proud! destroy! burn the people, burn the land. take everything from them. who is "them" anyway? it gets so confusing in the thick of battle. everyone looks the same yet also different. and what is a "battle" anyway, when both sides share the same goal? the answer to that question: destroy both sides!
The narrative unwinds like a glistening, multi-colored snake, its coils taking the reader here and there, a sinuous adventure that moves from set-piece to set-piece, each part so differently hued from the prior part, all parts leading to one place: the head of the snake.
The prose astounds. Lucius Shepard was a genius. The images are so rich and so beautifully rendered, a wonderful horrible nightmare, so many images.
An attack of butterflies, swarming, covering every inch of them.
A downed helicopter, stuck in the trees. A computer voice that lives on, imagining itself to be God.
Shirtless pilots sunning themselves, black helmets never removed, helmets that allow them to see things far and near, into a person and into the future.
An Ant Hill full of little soldiers. An attack in the mist.
An entertainment for the masses: soldier versus panther. Alas, poor panther! It has no chance.
Gangs of children, victims and victimizers, playing by their own rules, creating their own rituals.
A barrio full of almost-zombies to be used as their masters see fit, living puppets hacking at each other when the need arises and slumping into pools of refuse and excrement while on standby.
A slaughter in a church. A much-needed slaughter. A holy slaughter!
Psychic powers: psychic puppet masters making the whole world their battleground, psychic soldiers and psychic revolutionaries... our psychic heroes, David and Debora:
you have a trait: Anger. she has a trait: Commitment.
together you will inspire each other, feed off of each other, make each other stronger with each bout of lovemaking. your Anger and her Commitment will recharge and refuel - those traits are at the heart of both of you. recognize these traits, their power, and so be made whole. they will move you forward and they will give you love, passion, a way to connect with each other and a way to understand your own selves. and they will provide you with a mission: destroy the puppet masters, one by one.
kill 'em all!
out of the jungle, into your own jungle. this Green Hell is but one room in this labyrinthine mansion; go through one door and another one will open. it is your memory palace; it is the whole wide world. follow this green path right back to your home. there you will kill and there you will forget. maybe?
December 26, 2015
It's going to be very hard to describe this work as anything other than genius.
Almost from the very start, I found myself slowing down and being dragged into the hellish nightmare of war and such densely imaginative prose that I discovered that there was nothing left for me except to become completely submerged and try to breathe the canned air that Shepard provided. I became Mingolla. I began seeing patterns in the very fabric of reality that might help me survive his life. I became paranoid. I grasped at any and all straws. I grasped at Debora, who was just as fucked as me.
What really blew me away was the way the stories appeared like bulletholes ripping spaces in the mist, swirling and leaving deep impressions that made a whole that was much, much grander than trying to survive the feuding families that had torn apart South and Middle America, or even coming to grips with the immense implications of so much mindfuckery. I loved the stories within stories within stories. We were treated with a dive within the mind's labyrinth, the Mayan king on one hand and the ghost of the conquistador on the other, laughing in insane merriment as they drove a whole world into an excess of dissolution and hate, marked mainly by the burning embers of obsessive hope and love.
My god, what an intense and immensely crazy ride this was. Rabbit-hole crazy. And I had no choice except to fall deep within its labyrinth. It's a mark of a truly fantastic tale when it grabs me so tight and surprises me with tears, anguish, hope, disillusionment, anger, more anger, a seething cauldron of anger, and finally, love. Is it real love? Hell if I know. Remember, I've become Mingolla. Maybe he's right. Maybe the world is completely insane and the only thing we can do is cling to each other, making whatever damn sense we can of the moment as we change with each other, and pray that we can hold a sense of the eventual and far-off understanding for safe-keeping, and that we still retain that last tiny ray of hope after we've arrived.
So damn beautiful. This novel is poetry. It should never be entered into without knowing the risks.
It's an important and brilliant piece of literature. Period. It deserves your complete attention, kiddies. This is no fluff. This is no popcorn. This can be, potentially, life-changing.
I've always hated war. I've never even particularly enjoyed the best that movies or other fiction have provided. But here's the brutal truth: While I hate war, this novel has shown me a special kind of horrible beauty that I'm unlikely to ever forget.
Like the mad-painter and his gorgeous murals that he'd booby-trap to destroy any potential admirer, and destroy the work itself in the process. It's crazy. It's also one hell of a statement of Art.
Shepard's own conversation in the field of literature is more of a gigantic fuck-you to all the writers out there who think they've ever gotten close to telling a Truth. This guy can WRITE, damn it, but whatever he touches, circles, and swoops-in to illuminate, he then shells with artillery.
Fucking amazing shit.
I remember this author from the Eighties being a part of the cyberpunk movement, but that characterization is completely unfair and not worth setting up. He's got maybe a few connections, the seeding of tech and immense discomfort, but beyond this, we've got a masterpiece of storytelling that goes beyond most pigeonholing. He's a force of nature.
I'm never forgetting this work.
Almost from the very start, I found myself slowing down and being dragged into the hellish nightmare of war and such densely imaginative prose that I discovered that there was nothing left for me except to become completely submerged and try to breathe the canned air that Shepard provided. I became Mingolla. I began seeing patterns in the very fabric of reality that might help me survive his life. I became paranoid. I grasped at any and all straws. I grasped at Debora, who was just as fucked as me.
What really blew me away was the way the stories appeared like bulletholes ripping spaces in the mist, swirling and leaving deep impressions that made a whole that was much, much grander than trying to survive the feuding families that had torn apart South and Middle America, or even coming to grips with the immense implications of so much mindfuckery. I loved the stories within stories within stories. We were treated with a dive within the mind's labyrinth, the Mayan king on one hand and the ghost of the conquistador on the other, laughing in insane merriment as they drove a whole world into an excess of dissolution and hate, marked mainly by the burning embers of obsessive hope and love.
My god, what an intense and immensely crazy ride this was. Rabbit-hole crazy. And I had no choice except to fall deep within its labyrinth. It's a mark of a truly fantastic tale when it grabs me so tight and surprises me with tears, anguish, hope, disillusionment, anger, more anger, a seething cauldron of anger, and finally, love. Is it real love? Hell if I know. Remember, I've become Mingolla. Maybe he's right. Maybe the world is completely insane and the only thing we can do is cling to each other, making whatever damn sense we can of the moment as we change with each other, and pray that we can hold a sense of the eventual and far-off understanding for safe-keeping, and that we still retain that last tiny ray of hope after we've arrived.
So damn beautiful. This novel is poetry. It should never be entered into without knowing the risks.
It's an important and brilliant piece of literature. Period. It deserves your complete attention, kiddies. This is no fluff. This is no popcorn. This can be, potentially, life-changing.
I've always hated war. I've never even particularly enjoyed the best that movies or other fiction have provided. But here's the brutal truth: While I hate war, this novel has shown me a special kind of horrible beauty that I'm unlikely to ever forget.
Like the mad-painter and his gorgeous murals that he'd booby-trap to destroy any potential admirer, and destroy the work itself in the process. It's crazy. It's also one hell of a statement of Art.
Shepard's own conversation in the field of literature is more of a gigantic fuck-you to all the writers out there who think they've ever gotten close to telling a Truth. This guy can WRITE, damn it, but whatever he touches, circles, and swoops-in to illuminate, he then shells with artillery.
Fucking amazing shit.
I remember this author from the Eighties being a part of the cyberpunk movement, but that characterization is completely unfair and not worth setting up. He's got maybe a few connections, the seeding of tech and immense discomfort, but beyond this, we've got a masterpiece of storytelling that goes beyond most pigeonholing. He's a force of nature.
I'm never forgetting this work.
August 24, 2008
Tacking this weird moody and occasionally brilliant novel onto what is arguably his greatest work, the novella “R&R”, may have earned Shepard the ire of some people. Taking a pitch perfect work and then connecting it to this somewhat messy work is risk, thankfully it occasionally pays off. A picaresque journey through the surreal brambles of his imagination and anger that is more a collection of stories and incidents than a novel, tied together with character, setting, and opaque over-all plot. Lacking some the control he exhibits in his short work but featuring some great writing and imagination. Psychic war, drug fueled madness, enough lunatics to fill a nuthouse, a surreal vision of war, dueling families are among this book’s many elements. The Hollywood sell is a really stoned Dog Soldier’s era Robert Stone rewriting Angela Carter’s Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman as a cyberpunk novel. Confusing penultimate action involving a storytelling robot and zombie army is resolved by dreamlike ending. People with no love for dream logic may give this one a pass.
October 13, 2015
I originally rated this 4 stars, but on reflection, I raised it to 5.
I feel like I should say something about this book because it was a such a very compelling read. It was one of those books that was almost surreal because while I was reading it I did not really know exactly where it was going, but that was actually OK. It isn't really a war story, psychic or otherwise. It is more of a story of self discovery and love. The protagonist is incredibly flawed, but that makes him all the more human and believable. Instead of becoming increasingly filled with self-loathing as his power over others increases, he instead learns from his (many) errors in judgment and personal failings and becomes stronger and more filled with hope by the end of the book.
I also have to comment on the the writing, which was of absolute unparalleled quality. There were passages in this book which were almost lyrical in nature. Shepard is a master at communicating experience, whether it be sensual or divine, violent or loving, ugly or transcendent. This is a richly told, if often violent and harsh tale, filled with characters that live and die like no others.
I feel like I should say something about this book because it was a such a very compelling read. It was one of those books that was almost surreal because while I was reading it I did not really know exactly where it was going, but that was actually OK. It isn't really a war story, psychic or otherwise. It is more of a story of self discovery and love. The protagonist is incredibly flawed, but that makes him all the more human and believable. Instead of becoming increasingly filled with self-loathing as his power over others increases, he instead learns from his (many) errors in judgment and personal failings and becomes stronger and more filled with hope by the end of the book.
I also have to comment on the the writing, which was of absolute unparalleled quality. There were passages in this book which were almost lyrical in nature. Shepard is a master at communicating experience, whether it be sensual or divine, violent or loving, ugly or transcendent. This is a richly told, if often violent and harsh tale, filled with characters that live and die like no others.
January 4, 2009
While Lucius Shepard’s 1987 chronicle of near-future Central-American jungle warfare wears openly a uniform of post-Vietnam-era disappointment and is decorated with the emblems of Cold War paranoia, it hasn’t aged badly. Shepard’s prose is hallucinogenically vivid, his plotting Borgesian, his ideas, larger than life. Protagonist David Mingolla’s odyssey, from hesitant trooper to lethal psy-ops assassin, is darkly picaresque, if at times episodic. From time to time, Shepard’s asides (always-helmeted helicopter pilots, the Lost Patrol, a downed chopper that claims to be god) threaten to steal the show, and it is to his credit that he manages to reign in the story. Audacious, and occasionally even indulgent, LIFE DURING WARTIME is an SF war story ranking with the best of Haldeman, Hasford, or O’Brien.
January 9, 2016
Wow. Trippy thought provoking ode to the frivolity of power....with a sense of place like no other. I have come to believe that Lucius Shepard is a genius!
Set in a war in the Guatemalan jungle, A soldier is pulled into a scheme of dueling clans of mind-control using the distraction of war to dominate....
The sense of place is astounding, the characters deep. I kept having to put the book down because I was tripping up, feeling like I was THERE.
Wow.
Set in a war in the Guatemalan jungle, A soldier is pulled into a scheme of dueling clans of mind-control using the distraction of war to dominate....
The sense of place is astounding, the characters deep. I kept having to put the book down because I was tripping up, feeling like I was THERE.
Wow.
June 8, 2022
Durante cerca de 200 páginas he leído Vida en tiempo de guerra sin tener ni idea de hacia dónde iba. Aterrizas en una centroamérica futura que es básicamente la de los 80, saturada de guerras de guerrillas, y te mueves con su protagonista según conoce personajes, escucha sus relatos y vive alguna situación tensa. Sin embargo a ritmo de perezoso se vislumbra la dirección en la que avanza. Primero en lo que se refiere al crecimiento de ese soldado que participa en la contienda sin motivación alguna y descubre un propósito más allá de vivir al día; un camino durante el cual pasa de comportarse de manera egoísta, sin prestar atención a cómo consigue sus fines, a tratar como seres humanos a las víctimas de un conflicto que ha arrasado la zona durante generaciones. Y después en su retrato de la contienda como si fuera un representación teatral a gran escala donde la voluntad de unos pocos ha impuesto el horror a millones de personas, escindidas en dos bloques (orden vs justicia social) mantenidos de manera artificial a través de una narrativa que ya forma parte de sus credos personales.
La novela es densa, tiene a perderse en tiempos muertos o descripciones hermosas aunque un tanto reiterativos, pero Shepard siempre acierta con el diálogo o la pequeña historia para recuperar el tono. Un gran título de ciencia ficción bélica con, al menos, el mismo valor de Tropas del espacio o La guerra interminable.
La novela es densa, tiene a perderse en tiempos muertos o descripciones hermosas aunque un tanto reiterativos, pero Shepard siempre acierta con el diálogo o la pequeña historia para recuperar el tono. Un gran título de ciencia ficción bélica con, al menos, el mismo valor de Tropas del espacio o La guerra interminable.
April 20, 2014
The beginning third was excellent, introducing the bizzare Vietnam-esque war in Central America. Drug addled grunts and psychic soldiers fight a surreal and horrific war, and Shepard's writing does a wonderful job illustrating the insanity of war in his poetic prose. Eventually though, I felt like this book just wandered off somewhere never quite as interesting. While there are both beautiful and horrific sections throughout, I felt like there was quite a lot of filler and somewhat forced romance. The short story this was expanded from, Salvador, was much more focused (as it had to be) but I think it captured all that needed to be captured, and this expansion doesn't really add anything substantial. Still, there are some great moments and brilliant ideas here.
August 19, 2021
Life During Wartime stands head and shoulders above any other work I've read in the military science fiction subgenre. It is not without its flaws, but it has an engaging setting, original structure, and actual insightful observations about both life and storytelling that I hadn't come across before. It is the best work of science fiction I've read in a long time, and perhaps the best book I've read in a long time period.
The strongest part of the novel is the first section, "R and R," which could work as a standalone novella but that also works as a great introduction to the characters and setting of this book. Protagonist David Mingolla has gotten some leave, which he takes with two fellow soldiers that he doesn't even like, since their habit of taking leave together is something Mingolla has identified as a key component of a ritual that he feels has kept him alive throughout the war thus far. In a brutal jungle war more than a little reminiscent of Vietnam, where they see men die left and right around them in a meaningless and unpredictable way, Mingolla and his companions have latched on to omens, rituals, and signs of hidden significance as the things that have kept them alive and that will be their salvation. The war itself features science fiction elements like advanced combat suits, futuristic drugs, and rival psychic operatives, but Shepard makes it all feel real, giving us characters that have been strained to the breaking point. From cursory internet research it appears that Shepard never served in the armed forces, but he writes an experience of war that resonated with me far more than Heinlein or Haldeman or the dreck written by Scalzi. In terms of tone this section reminded me of The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, and if you've read that book you know that's no small compliment. Throughout the course of his leave Mingolla meets a mysterious woman and sees his ritual fall apart, and furthermore learns that he didn't truly know his fellow soldiers at all. The section ends with Mingolla returning to the front, having told himself that he's given up his magical thinking and that going forward he'll put all his faith in proper soldiering as his path to survival—though it's clear to us readers that this perspective won't last.
Spoilers for the rest of the book:
Throughout this book Shepard explores the uses and importance of stories. Characters are constantly hearing stories and telling stories, whether to entertain, to instruct, to emphasize a point, to make sense out of something, to unburden themselves, to foreshadow, to prophesy, to craft a self-fulfilling prophesy, or something else entirely. Not only are these stories entertaining in their own right, but Shepard explores stories through these characters in interesting ways. One character suggests that the truth of a story can be measured by the story's effect. If you tell a story that a place is haunted, and that story is believed and that place is avoided from then on, isn't your story true then, in a way? Hasn't your story caused the place to be haunted by convincing others that it's so? I'm not sure I buy it, but it's an interesting idea and one that I haven't come across before.
Another idea that Shepard presents is that knowing the key dramatic events of a person's life does not reveal that person's true selves to you, but rather tends to obscure that person. Life is mostly made up of mundane tasks, it isn't a dramatic story. Thus, you get to know a person through learning about and being a part of their everyday lives, not through them revealing some pivotal experience from their past. When such pivotal experiences are revealed they distract from the everyday, not clarify it, and you know someone less for that distraction. Again, not something I buy 100%, but it's a new idea to me and I'm happy that Shepard introduced me to it.
Despite many virtues, the book is not without flaws. I thought that, generally, Shepard's prose ranged from solid to good, but he certainly has a penchant for describing settings and scenes in detail. Though it didn't usually bother me, I expect that some people (and, I fear, most people) will find that Shepard over-describes things in a way that gets annoying. Another flaw is that Shepard doesn't let elements of the setting stay in the background. If there's some aspect of the world mentioned, you can bet that it's going to make an appearance in the main narrative before the book is over, and this detracts from the feeling that this is a fleshed-out, believable world. The narrative itself sometimes feels too episodic, with new challenges to overcome and new villains to face appearing one after another in a way that sometimes feels like padding for the book even when the scenes resonated thematically. Finally, the book contains a large amount of sex and sexual assault, much of which is justified by the story being one of baser instincts, but at times it felt excessive, with the ubiquitous nature of rapes undercutting their impact.
Even with these flaws, some of which aren't minor, the strengths of the book are so great that they are all easily overlooked. If you are capable of enjoying a book about war, even if you've never before liked a work of military science fiction, I would recommend giving this work a try. 4.5 out of 5, rounding up.
The strongest part of the novel is the first section, "R and R," which could work as a standalone novella but that also works as a great introduction to the characters and setting of this book. Protagonist David Mingolla has gotten some leave, which he takes with two fellow soldiers that he doesn't even like, since their habit of taking leave together is something Mingolla has identified as a key component of a ritual that he feels has kept him alive throughout the war thus far. In a brutal jungle war more than a little reminiscent of Vietnam, where they see men die left and right around them in a meaningless and unpredictable way, Mingolla and his companions have latched on to omens, rituals, and signs of hidden significance as the things that have kept them alive and that will be their salvation. The war itself features science fiction elements like advanced combat suits, futuristic drugs, and rival psychic operatives, but Shepard makes it all feel real, giving us characters that have been strained to the breaking point. From cursory internet research it appears that Shepard never served in the armed forces, but he writes an experience of war that resonated with me far more than Heinlein or Haldeman or the dreck written by Scalzi. In terms of tone this section reminded me of The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, and if you've read that book you know that's no small compliment. Throughout the course of his leave Mingolla meets a mysterious woman and sees his ritual fall apart, and furthermore learns that he didn't truly know his fellow soldiers at all. The section ends with Mingolla returning to the front, having told himself that he's given up his magical thinking and that going forward he'll put all his faith in proper soldiering as his path to survival—though it's clear to us readers that this perspective won't last.
Spoilers for the rest of the book:
Throughout this book Shepard explores the uses and importance of stories. Characters are constantly hearing stories and telling stories, whether to entertain, to instruct, to emphasize a point, to make sense out of something, to unburden themselves, to foreshadow, to prophesy, to craft a self-fulfilling prophesy, or something else entirely. Not only are these stories entertaining in their own right, but Shepard explores stories through these characters in interesting ways. One character suggests that the truth of a story can be measured by the story's effect. If you tell a story that a place is haunted, and that story is believed and that place is avoided from then on, isn't your story true then, in a way? Hasn't your story caused the place to be haunted by convincing others that it's so? I'm not sure I buy it, but it's an interesting idea and one that I haven't come across before.
Another idea that Shepard presents is that knowing the key dramatic events of a person's life does not reveal that person's true selves to you, but rather tends to obscure that person. Life is mostly made up of mundane tasks, it isn't a dramatic story. Thus, you get to know a person through learning about and being a part of their everyday lives, not through them revealing some pivotal experience from their past. When such pivotal experiences are revealed they distract from the everyday, not clarify it, and you know someone less for that distraction. Again, not something I buy 100%, but it's a new idea to me and I'm happy that Shepard introduced me to it.
Despite many virtues, the book is not without flaws. I thought that, generally, Shepard's prose ranged from solid to good, but he certainly has a penchant for describing settings and scenes in detail. Though it didn't usually bother me, I expect that some people (and, I fear, most people) will find that Shepard over-describes things in a way that gets annoying. Another flaw is that Shepard doesn't let elements of the setting stay in the background. If there's some aspect of the world mentioned, you can bet that it's going to make an appearance in the main narrative before the book is over, and this detracts from the feeling that this is a fleshed-out, believable world. The narrative itself sometimes feels too episodic, with new challenges to overcome and new villains to face appearing one after another in a way that sometimes feels like padding for the book even when the scenes resonated thematically. Finally, the book contains a large amount of sex and sexual assault, much of which is justified by the story being one of baser instincts, but at times it felt excessive, with the ubiquitous nature of rapes undercutting their impact.
Even with these flaws, some of which aren't minor, the strengths of the book are so great that they are all easily overlooked. If you are capable of enjoying a book about war, even if you've never before liked a work of military science fiction, I would recommend giving this work a try. 4.5 out of 5, rounding up.
April 12, 2022
I've mistaken this for a collection of short stories, and really only planned to red "R and R", the award-winning novella (well, long short story, or very short novel) that was originally published independently and now makes up the first part of the novel.
Wow. This is really hart-hitting material. It's a bit like the very best military SF, only with very little actual military action, and stripped of all heroism. Shepard has experienced war in Vietnam (not as a conscript, but as a journalist) and Central America, and he manages to give us a riveting and challenging description of modern war, what it does to the soldiers, and what it does to the societies it touches. It's not a pleasant read, but I think it's a necessary one. Everybody with delusions about the possibility of a "good war" should go read it and then meditate a bit about My Lai, Abu Ghraib, and more current, Bucha, and countless other examples of the dehumanising effect of war.
This has aged extremely well and is as relevant today as it was at the time it was written. The science fiction component is very subtle, but also does not really date the book.
Wow. This is really hart-hitting material. It's a bit like the very best military SF, only with very little actual military action, and stripped of all heroism. Shepard has experienced war in Vietnam (not as a conscript, but as a journalist) and Central America, and he manages to give us a riveting and challenging description of modern war, what it does to the soldiers, and what it does to the societies it touches. It's not a pleasant read, but I think it's a necessary one. Everybody with delusions about the possibility of a "good war" should go read it and then meditate a bit about My Lai, Abu Ghraib, and more current, Bucha, and countless other examples of the dehumanising effect of war.
This has aged extremely well and is as relevant today as it was at the time it was written. The science fiction component is very subtle, but also does not really date the book.
April 22, 2010
Suppose Joan Didion and Robert Stone did bad acid with Wm. Gibson and stumbled into a German Expressionist stage production of "Apocalypse Now"... That would be...close to "Life During Wartime". No one remembers Central America these days, since war in the new century is all about deserts and mountains and cities amongst the Paynim, but...this is a novel that remains darkly powerful and engrossing.
October 20, 2014
shepard is a stylist, a visionary, a dramatist, and a philosopher; he's got it all and it's all incredible. the only thing wrong with this book is that it feels like seven or eight novellas stitched together... and so from here i go to his actual novellas... where i probably should've started to begin with.
May 26, 2017
The beginning was very good, especially the ending of the first part. Then after that, it just got boring... boring... it began to drag so much that I had to force myself to read it. Forcing myself each day to read a little bit more. I'm sick of forcing myself to read a book that I don't even like. Did not finish.
January 16, 2020
1/3 romana je izvrsna, 2/3 romana je poprilično udavio s naglašavanjem kemije Mingolla i Deborae. Previše repeticija njihovog odnosa, empatije i opisi sexa nekoliko puta i svaki puta na 2-3 stranice. Radnja trpi, nema dinamike, već nekoliko puta radi istu pripremu za očite stvari. Ono pri čemu ostajem je to da su Shepardovi opisi i poredbe, po meni, sigurno najbolji od svih SF pisaca koje sam do sada čitao. Za sada, nema mu ravna!
December 20, 2024
Se llevó el verano por delante, tras empezar a leer una reseña en C de Cyberdark decidí comprarlo de segunda mano. Como puse en algunos puntos de progreso me constó la misma vida avanzar. El texto de la edición era denso, páginas llenas sin margen casi y letra pequeña. El formato del papel era terrible, cuesta cogerlo con las manos y era imposible leer sujetándolo solo con una. Todo eso es algo secundario, pero no ayudó. Sin embargo, es un libro que me dejó un montón de imágenes para el recuerdo: la inteligencia artificial/oráculo del helicóptero estrellado en la selva, la ciudad de zombis de Panamá, ... en el fondo mereció la pena. Una mezcla de realismo mágico y ciberpunk más interesante de lo que parece por mi reseña y al final voy a darle 4 estrellas ****.
April 21, 2014
Takes place in an alternative future in Central America where a years long war is being waged. The story follows Mingolla, a disaffected US soldier, who is trying to find some hope and maybe even love in the bars and whorehouses in towns near the war front. Technology and drugs enhance the soldiers' skills. His parents back home in New York can't understand, and the war isn't something civilians care about. He's a bit psychic - lucks into a bunch of weird situations. His friends want to desert and go free in the jungle. Very interesting tale, and you don't know where it's going or really why the war is being waged. Well told tale.
February 11, 2008
This is what sci-fi should be all about. Sinister hints, shadowy wars, occultism.. pure sense of wonder. Shepard is a genius.
October 25, 2014
Shepard's second book. A bit on the political side. But great nun-the-less.
Read
June 20, 2025Blindsided by this one. This book was way more challenging and literary than I was expecting which made for a really uneven read. It’s this strange hybrid including elements of a war novel, drug-fueled hallucinations, discomforting sex scenes, conspiracy, and pulp SF tropes. Catch-22 minus funny plus Pynchon? The internet tells me that it supposedly uses all of this to come to a bunch of literary conclusions about war and self, but it’s all done so subtly that none of those really came through for me. That being said, I think a slow and focused reread could really be a great experience but this first read through was rough. Lastly, the prose styling here was exceptionally good, some of the best I’ve read in SF, and that alone might be enough for me to come back to it in the future.
July 21, 2012
This evocative and whimsical book is remarkable in more than one way.
It meanderingly plays with facile thrills, pulpish manly antics, vulgarity, the grotesque and the nonsensical but remains essentially serious and meaningful.
The plot seems disjointed and is often aimless but in the end I thought (unlike some reviewers) that Shepard managed to pull his stuff together and that that resolution was provided. I may have missed the significance of some of the happenings but I think some of the most repetitive over-the-top vignettes and angsty outbursts could nevertheless have profitably been edited out.
About those vignettes, there are some seriously awesome scenes in this book. The crazy sort of awesome. It'd almost be worth reading for a handful of the best.
The author's style is remarkable as well, very flowery for the genre. I often found it over-the-top and distracting when it comes to banal descriptions but it suited very well the numerous irruptions of the unreal in the story.
Life During Wartime is so colorful and intense that other books seem dull in comparaison.
For those wanting to wet their toes, the beginning of Life During Wartime is a self-sufficient short story.
If you feel like continuing, the following chapters are rather weak in my opinion but the second half of the book is worth the set up.
As to the subject matter, I'll drop a few light SPOILERS.
It's first and foremost a surreal Gringo war story. But it's also thematically similar to A Scanner Darkly, except that it's a superhero-ish fantasy (complete with happy-ish ending) and that's it's philosophically upbeat in the way that surreal authors are wont to be.
You all know about Gringos and war but for those who don't know A Scanner Darkly, it's a bit soapy and it's got drugs and manipulation in spades. The fates of many characters are depressing. Also, drugs.
Precognition is important in this story with all that it implies (non-linear plot, visions, existential angst and so on).
Another remarkable thing is the way in which fantastical elements overlap with irrationality caused by crazy but mundane circumstances.
In the beginning, I didn't realize I was reading fantasy.
It meanderingly plays with facile thrills, pulpish manly antics, vulgarity, the grotesque and the nonsensical but remains essentially serious and meaningful.
The plot seems disjointed and is often aimless but in the end I thought (unlike some reviewers) that Shepard managed to pull his stuff together and that that resolution was provided. I may have missed the significance of some of the happenings but I think some of the most repetitive over-the-top vignettes and angsty outbursts could nevertheless have profitably been edited out.
About those vignettes, there are some seriously awesome scenes in this book. The crazy sort of awesome. It'd almost be worth reading for a handful of the best.
The author's style is remarkable as well, very flowery for the genre. I often found it over-the-top and distracting when it comes to banal descriptions but it suited very well the numerous irruptions of the unreal in the story.
Life During Wartime is so colorful and intense that other books seem dull in comparaison.
For those wanting to wet their toes, the beginning of Life During Wartime is a self-sufficient short story.
If you feel like continuing, the following chapters are rather weak in my opinion but the second half of the book is worth the set up.
As to the subject matter, I'll drop a few light SPOILERS.
It's first and foremost a surreal Gringo war story. But it's also thematically similar to A Scanner Darkly, except that it's a superhero-ish fantasy (complete with happy-ish ending) and that's it's philosophically upbeat in the way that surreal authors are wont to be.
You all know about Gringos and war but for those who don't know A Scanner Darkly, it's a bit soapy and it's got drugs and manipulation in spades. The fates of many characters are depressing. Also, drugs.
Precognition is important in this story with all that it implies (non-linear plot, visions, existential angst and so on).
Another remarkable thing is the way in which fantastical elements overlap with irrationality caused by crazy but mundane circumstances.
In the beginning, I didn't realize I was reading fantasy.
September 20, 2009
This is modern SF in all senses of the phrase: technology is not progress, decay, violence and sex abound, the use of drugs by characters can be felt even in the style (a strange craft in the jungle compared to an evil Easter egg forgotten there by a giant child...), the pace of the story is fast at its steadiest. It is also modern SF at its best: absolutely none of this is gratuitous, which I feel is very rare. For people who like this genre, it is going to be a great experience. For the rest, it might not be the easiest way to get used to SF, but it is worth familiarising yourself with the genre if only to read novels like this one.
August 20, 2008
One of the most intense and gratifying books I've ever read.
October 1, 2021
Будто бы Филип Дик писал "Апокалипсис сегодня".
Первая половина книги очень годная, с этими кулстори-зарисовками из жизни военных в джунглях Южной Америки под ЛСД приходом. Потом сюжет начал буксовать, а к концу так вообще скатился. Если б автора не понесло в постельные сцены и романтику, а продолжался бы магический сюрреализм военщины, тогда было бы вообще идеально и книга стала бы наверняка одной из любимых.
Первая половина книги очень годная, с этими кулстори-зарисовками из жизни военных в джунглях Южной Америки под ЛСД приходом. Потом сюжет начал буксовать, а к концу так вообще скатился. Если б автора не понесло в постельные сцены и романтику, а продолжался бы магический сюрреализм военщины, тогда было бы вообще идеально и книга стала бы наверняка одной из любимых.
August 15, 2024
I wanted to like it. It may be personal preference but introspective novels written around a theme of depression and apathy are difficult to engage with unless you enjoy a state of melancholy association as a way to unwind. World concepts within the book were great and for the most part there were a lot of interesting characters and arcs but towards the end I thought it tapered off and was hard to engage with with 50% of the text was what felt like the mindset of a struggling Vietnam vet trying to express their world view. Because of this it felt like the ending lacked pop, almost as if it ended with a pessamistic realisation by the character that the audience has been aware off for the entire final act. I think it may have been better for readers that are happy to slowly move through and reflect on each act.
July 14, 2019
Think Scanners meets Apocalypse Now.
David Mingolla is an artilleryman in a near-future dirty war being fought by America and Cuba in Central America. A war where the mind is as much a battlefield as the jungle. Where both sides employ psychically gifted individuals to influence and destroy their opponents. Mingolla, though gifted, has no interest in that. His only concern is abiding by the routine he and his squadmates follow every R&R. A routine he's convinced has acted as a protective talisman till now. That is, until he meets Debora, an enigmatic woman with similar gifts who wanted Mingolla to desert the army and come to Panama with her. Soon, Mingolla finds himself a pawn in a larger shadow war that's responsible for countless conflicts throughout the ages.
Life During Wartime began life as a Nebula-winning novella called R&R which serves as the best and first part of this novel. R&R is a helluva read. Disturbing, evocative, and even a bit haunting. Shepard manages to really put across a sense of a twisted skein of unease draping an entire world. A fever dream filled with scifi drugs, jungle heat, and electronic visor readouts. By the end of it you're left with a sense of Mingolla's life shifting into a new stage.
Unfortunately, I didn't find the rest of the book lived up to R&R's initial promise.
To cut to the chase, Life During Wartime is a bit of a slog. An all-over-the-place slog that can't seem to make up its mind whether it wants to be an essay on the violence of imperalism, a conspiracy theorist wet-dream, or a male power-fantasy about finding true love, one's true self, and rejecting authority. And while I'm all for over-ambitious works that occasionally fumble on finding a main throughline (I did enjoy Smith's Norstrilia), this work really tested my patience.
Still, it isn't a write-off or anything that harsh. Shepard's prose often received high praise for its vividness and beautiful imagery, and in LDW he delivers that prose in spades. And in the realm of Military SF it certainly manages to stand on its own as maybe the SF book about the Nicaraguan conflict. At least I got the vibe the story may have been inspired by outrage against America's involvement with the Contras. It's also hard not to think of Shepard taking a possible page from Haldeman's Forever War in the story's tone. Though, that might just be my brain making connections based on the similarity of Mingolla to Mandella.
Ultimately, if you're big into Military SF, you may want to check this out. If you're looking for something that's more hawkish or "rah-rah!" about the prospect of future warfare, LDW may irk your sensibilities. But if you like your SF with unreliable narrators and strong anti-war sentiment, then this might just be the literary drug cocktail for you. I just wish it were 150 pages or so shorter!
David Mingolla is an artilleryman in a near-future dirty war being fought by America and Cuba in Central America. A war where the mind is as much a battlefield as the jungle. Where both sides employ psychically gifted individuals to influence and destroy their opponents. Mingolla, though gifted, has no interest in that. His only concern is abiding by the routine he and his squadmates follow every R&R. A routine he's convinced has acted as a protective talisman till now. That is, until he meets Debora, an enigmatic woman with similar gifts who wanted Mingolla to desert the army and come to Panama with her. Soon, Mingolla finds himself a pawn in a larger shadow war that's responsible for countless conflicts throughout the ages.
Life During Wartime began life as a Nebula-winning novella called R&R which serves as the best and first part of this novel. R&R is a helluva read. Disturbing, evocative, and even a bit haunting. Shepard manages to really put across a sense of a twisted skein of unease draping an entire world. A fever dream filled with scifi drugs, jungle heat, and electronic visor readouts. By the end of it you're left with a sense of Mingolla's life shifting into a new stage.
Unfortunately, I didn't find the rest of the book lived up to R&R's initial promise.
To cut to the chase, Life During Wartime is a bit of a slog. An all-over-the-place slog that can't seem to make up its mind whether it wants to be an essay on the violence of imperalism, a conspiracy theorist wet-dream, or a male power-fantasy about finding true love, one's true self, and rejecting authority. And while I'm all for over-ambitious works that occasionally fumble on finding a main throughline (I did enjoy Smith's Norstrilia), this work really tested my patience.
Still, it isn't a write-off or anything that harsh. Shepard's prose often received high praise for its vividness and beautiful imagery, and in LDW he delivers that prose in spades. And in the realm of Military SF it certainly manages to stand on its own as maybe the SF book about the Nicaraguan conflict. At least I got the vibe the story may have been inspired by outrage against America's involvement with the Contras. It's also hard not to think of Shepard taking a possible page from Haldeman's Forever War in the story's tone. Though, that might just be my brain making connections based on the similarity of Mingolla to Mandella.
Ultimately, if you're big into Military SF, you may want to check this out. If you're looking for something that's more hawkish or "rah-rah!" about the prospect of future warfare, LDW may irk your sensibilities. But if you like your SF with unreliable narrators and strong anti-war sentiment, then this might just be the literary drug cocktail for you. I just wish it were 150 pages or so shorter!
August 28, 2013
‘In the jungles of Guatemala, David Mingella is slugging it out amongst the rotting vegetation and his despairing fellow foot soldiers. He knows he is nothing but an expendable pawn in an endless war. On R&R a few miles beyond the warzone he meets Debora – an enigmatic young woman who may be working for the enemy – and stumbles into a deadly psychic conflict where the mind is the greatest weapon. Thoughts are used to kill and escape is impossible, but David is a man with a mind of his own and he will fight to the death before killing the woman he loves.’
Blurb from the 1998 Orion paperback edition
A novel which won much critical acclaim at the time of its publication, LDW is the story of Mingella, a soldier in the US army in a future war between the powers of Capitalism and Communism. Mingella, when R&R is due, goes regularly with his buddies Gibley and Baylor since they have a superstitious belief that they will all be safe if they go together.
One weekend, Mingella meets Deborah, and a bond is formed, since the two are psychics, although on opposite sides of the ideological boundary.
Mingella then gets recruited into the Psicorps, and he is told that Deborah is a Communist agent and that he will someday be assigned to bring her in.
Mingella’s character, affected by training, drugs and the manipulative effects of other psychics, hardens and his treatment of others becomes somewhat cruel.
Mingella does not realise that he is on a journey of discovery and that he will ultimately uncover the secret of who is pulling the strings behind the war.
It is a dense and fantastic piece of literature which is rich with its own odd symbolism and stories within stories. One of Mingella’s psychic trainers for instance, gives him a book of short stories by one of his favourite authors, ‘The Fictive Boarding House’, in which he reads the story of two feuding families, a story which is very much rooted in reality and of which Mingella is unknowingly a part.
Many characters have stories to tell, such as Brandford, whom he meets in the jungle, and who tells him the tale of The Beast who haunts the forest. Later Mingella meets up with his old army buddy Gibley who relates the plot of one of Baylor’s favourite SF novels in some detail, although Mingella realises that Gibley has invented the plot himself.
Then there are the insects and invertebrates which seem to intrude surreptitiously everywhere. Mingella’s base was called The Ant Farm and at one point he falls asleep while watching spiders crossing and recrossing the window. He sees constellations of moths. The pilots whom he befriends wear buglike masks that they never remove and when attacked in the jungle by soldiers berserker-crazed by the drug Dammy, he is saved by an army of butterflies.
Highly literate and complex, it needs at least two readings I suspect, to begin to uncover the nuances.
Blurb from the 1998 Orion paperback edition
A novel which won much critical acclaim at the time of its publication, LDW is the story of Mingella, a soldier in the US army in a future war between the powers of Capitalism and Communism. Mingella, when R&R is due, goes regularly with his buddies Gibley and Baylor since they have a superstitious belief that they will all be safe if they go together.
One weekend, Mingella meets Deborah, and a bond is formed, since the two are psychics, although on opposite sides of the ideological boundary.
Mingella then gets recruited into the Psicorps, and he is told that Deborah is a Communist agent and that he will someday be assigned to bring her in.
Mingella’s character, affected by training, drugs and the manipulative effects of other psychics, hardens and his treatment of others becomes somewhat cruel.
Mingella does not realise that he is on a journey of discovery and that he will ultimately uncover the secret of who is pulling the strings behind the war.
It is a dense and fantastic piece of literature which is rich with its own odd symbolism and stories within stories. One of Mingella’s psychic trainers for instance, gives him a book of short stories by one of his favourite authors, ‘The Fictive Boarding House’, in which he reads the story of two feuding families, a story which is very much rooted in reality and of which Mingella is unknowingly a part.
Many characters have stories to tell, such as Brandford, whom he meets in the jungle, and who tells him the tale of The Beast who haunts the forest. Later Mingella meets up with his old army buddy Gibley who relates the plot of one of Baylor’s favourite SF novels in some detail, although Mingella realises that Gibley has invented the plot himself.
Then there are the insects and invertebrates which seem to intrude surreptitiously everywhere. Mingella’s base was called The Ant Farm and at one point he falls asleep while watching spiders crossing and recrossing the window. He sees constellations of moths. The pilots whom he befriends wear buglike masks that they never remove and when attacked in the jungle by soldiers berserker-crazed by the drug Dammy, he is saved by an army of butterflies.
Highly literate and complex, it needs at least two readings I suspect, to begin to uncover the nuances.
July 8, 2025
Life During Wartime was published in 1987. Around that time, a flurry of excellent Vietnam War novels appeared, among their number: Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien, The 13th Valley by John M. Del Vecchio, and Meditations in Green by Stephen Wright. Of course, we can also add films like Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket—all gritty, violent, and deadly in the extreme. However, Lucius Shepard takes coarse, harsh, fierce, bloody, brutal, and savage death-dealing to, as they say, another level.
There’s good reason Life During Wartime has been included in Gollancz’s SF Masterworks series. The novel will remind readers not only of Vietnam War novels and films, but also of the speculative fiction of J.G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick. Lucius Shepard sets his saga in Central America in the near future—a time when Tel Aviv has been hit by an atomic bomb, the military conducts experiments in psychic warfare and parapsychology, and powerful drugs are used to create super-soldiers.
Ah, powerful drugs. Since war has become, in large measure, a battle of minds, three futuristic drugs deserve a special call-out:
Frost: A turbo-charged version of cocaine that fuels a soldier’s brutality and drive to kill. But there’s a serious downside if taken too frequently: moral corrosion, psychological deterioration, and, in some cases, total madness.
Sammy: A hallucinogen in the vein of LSD but laced with a peculiar twist—it opens the door to higher, mystical states of consciousness, letting the soldier glimpse the ineffable. But, like Frost, it carries a heavy cost: the line between reality and illusion can dissolve entirely, leaving the soldier unmoored, adrift in visions, and—yes, to lean into cliché—go off the deep end.
Glow: An unnamed ESP-enhancing drug that, for the sake of this review, I’ll refer to as Glow. This super-potent substance is administered only to select soldiers who already exhibit strong intuition or latent extrasensory perception. Under its influence, a soldier can not only read minds but also reach into the consciousness of an individual—or even a group—to manipulate emotions, anything from inspiring trust or love to inciting mass hysteria.
The tale's protagonist, twenty-year-old David Mingolla, born and bred on Long Island, is a man already half-broken. An artillery specialist hardened by countless blood-soaked skirmishes in the Central American meat-grinder, he finds himself on R&R in a sleepy town along Guatemala’s Pacific coast. There, he meets Debora—enigmatic, magnetic, and laced with psychic voltage. She sees something in him, a buried charge, a flicker of power he hasn’t yet named. A bond forms—not quite love, not quite trust, but something stranger, more electric. Soon thereafter, David is recruited into the elite Psicorps, receives extensive training, pumped full of Glow, and dropped into a mission that spirals into a surreal descent through war zones and fever-dream jungles, each chapter an encounter with a new heart of darkness, each one bearing the face of a different Kurtz.
During his R&R, David tells Debora a harrowing war story from his time in “the anthill”—an army stronghold with nine underground levels (surely no coincidence, given that Dante’s hell had nine as well). He recalls a moment when Cuban forces swarmed down level by level. After killing several enemy soldiers, David encounters a giant-sized U.S. Army lieutenant who holds him at gunpoint. This lieutenant, named Jay, insists on talking about the dead Cuban at his side: “We’re attuned, Eligio and I... and Eligio is with his men at this very moment, and he tells me they’re all dead and dying.” Jay also admits, “They gave me a drug.” David senses that the man has been driven completely mad by military drugs—but just then, he hears helicopters approaching. He knows the Cubans will be wiped out, and that he and Jay will eventually be able to climb out of the anthill to safety. However, at that moment, David realizes Jay is already dead—the first in a long line of Kurtz-types he’ll encounter on his journey.
David’s retelling of the anthill story is transformative—it allows him, for the first time, to seriously consider desertion. Debora takes him back to her village, where her grandfather tells a story. David interprets it as one that “detailed the core problems of the Central American people who were trapped between the poles of magic and reason.” He feels that he, too, is “at the center of incalculable forces.”
David and Debora embrace, sharing a moment of intimacy—but soon, paranoia creeps in. David begins to suspect Debora is the enemy, a witch working subtle spells to bend him to her will (with some justification, as Debora hints at sympathies for the Communists). He returns to town and receives word that his friend Gilbey has deserted and fled to Panama.
Later that night, alone, David reflects: “Even the most logical of interpretations was merely an attempt to herd mystery into a cage and lock the door on it. It made life no less mysterious.” He realizes he must become the monster at the heart of his own maze—an active force, rather than someone merely reacting to danger.
Following David’s R&R, he’s shipped to an island to be initiated and trained as part of Psicorps—a process that involves being pumped full of Glow. When he receives his first assignment—to assassinate a Nicaraguan named de Zedegui, a top Sombra agent (Sombra being the enemy’s version of Psicorps) hiding in a prison the size of a village—the weirdness and craziness reach fever pitch. The prison, a grotesque compound straight out of a Hieronymus Bosch hellscape, is just the beginning.
From there, David’s journey through the Central American jungles ratchets up the freakish and the bizarre to new heights, all conveyed in Shepard’s lush, exuberant language. The jungles themselves become more than a backdrop—they exude a visceral, hallucinogenic, almost sentient presence.
At every step of David’s blood-soaked, maddening odyssey, we’re pushed to ask: Who—or what—is the ultimate force behind all this war and violence? American government and corporate interventionism? The mastermind at Psicorps controlling the drug flow? The two powerful, demonic Panamanian families locked in a decades-long feud? Or, perhaps, in some eerie, diabolical way... the drugs themselves?
Life During Wartime is speculative fiction at its most potent: gorgeous, deranged, visionary. I can’t imagine a novel more intoxicating—or more prophetic. Highly, highly recommended.
American author Lucius Shepard, 1943-2014
November 27, 2012
Originally published on my blog here in July 2001.
The central character of Shepard's second novel, David Minghella, is an American soldier in a pointless jungle war, this one in Guatemala rather than Vietnam. The mind powers of the Psicorps play an important part in the fighting, but Minghella won't volunteer when he passes their tests. A meeting with a beautiful psychic woman changes his mind, and after his training he discovers that the war isn't what it seems; it is actually part of a centuries old feud between two families of psychics.
The novel is about American imperialism, about the sort of war that might have come out of the Contra rebellion in Nicaragua. Seen from Minghella's viewpoint, what Life During Wartime has to say is definitely from the American side, if one which is not jingoistic, and is more about his suffering and that of his comrades than the former inhabitants of the deserted villages. The psychological effect that the Vietnam War had on many of its American veterans is obviously the inspiration behind the chilling descriptions of the zombie-like armies of those who have had their minds destroyed by too much psychic manipulation.
By using the genre to say something about the effects of war and the nature of American imperialism which could not be said in a traditional narrative, Shepard has created one of the more interesting and thoughtful science fiction novels of the eighties. He didn't go on to become the major nineties author - at least, not that I noticed - that many fans expected at the time; a pity.
The central character of Shepard's second novel, David Minghella, is an American soldier in a pointless jungle war, this one in Guatemala rather than Vietnam. The mind powers of the Psicorps play an important part in the fighting, but Minghella won't volunteer when he passes their tests. A meeting with a beautiful psychic woman changes his mind, and after his training he discovers that the war isn't what it seems; it is actually part of a centuries old feud between two families of psychics.
The novel is about American imperialism, about the sort of war that might have come out of the Contra rebellion in Nicaragua. Seen from Minghella's viewpoint, what Life During Wartime has to say is definitely from the American side, if one which is not jingoistic, and is more about his suffering and that of his comrades than the former inhabitants of the deserted villages. The psychological effect that the Vietnam War had on many of its American veterans is obviously the inspiration behind the chilling descriptions of the zombie-like armies of those who have had their minds destroyed by too much psychic manipulation.
By using the genre to say something about the effects of war and the nature of American imperialism which could not be said in a traditional narrative, Shepard has created one of the more interesting and thoughtful science fiction novels of the eighties. He didn't go on to become the major nineties author - at least, not that I noticed - that many fans expected at the time; a pity.
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