Forever Peace

Haldeman, Joe. Forever Peace. New York: Ace, 1997.

See for "soldierboy technology"—a kind of waldo-operated fighting suit in telepathic link with the rest of one's squad; "nanoforges," US government-controlled devices capable of making just about anything from basic raw materials (41 and passim); and machine-mediated telepathy and empathy (for a psi motif) that can yield, if maintained long enough, "humanized" people: pacifists (166-67). "[T]he soldierboy, or Remote Infantry Combat Unit: a huge suit of armor with a ghost in it," capable of inflicting great destruction and superior to robots (10-11); cf. fighting suits in JH's Forever War and R. A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers. Note also afto-aspro in P. F. Hamilton and G. Joyce's "The White Stuff": effectively nanoforges, but controlled by poor people. Note that pacifistic Homo sapiens pacificans will replace Homo sapiens sapiens—which is a good thing—but that JH sees both groups as subspecies: pacificans are not our kind of human (325-26).

(RDE, 17/05/01, 28Aug16)