They say "No Easy Day" isn't out until tomorrow, but you can bit torrent it here:
http://torrentz.eu/no/no+easy+day+mark+owen-qAnd probably a lot of other places. You can't ban books anymore, yay! You can Bradley Manning the author, sure, but the days of book burning and banning are over, at least until someone kills the Internet.
Anyway, finally finished Forever Peace, by Joe Haldeman. I would have read it sooner, but I've been assigned all these gross-as-fuck pregnancy books so my midwife won't get pissy with me because I didn't know you could give birth in a swimming pool or whatever the hell these placenta-eating hippies are into. Why can't they just put us on the hard drugs, like they did back in the 1960s, and when we wake up the kid is like 5 months old? Ugh. I've been to some dangerous places, but this one takes the cake. Anyway, back to my non-required reading.
So, if you've ever read Forever War, this book (1) has nothing to do with it, except for some of the military technology involved, and (2) is about ten million times better - the plot, the writing, everything. Since a lot of it takes place in Costa Rica - including a pivotal battle in my old stomping grounds, Liberia - it was especially fun for me, though there were some factual errors. Howler monkeys in the high-altitude cloud forests, Spanish Colonial architecture on the Liberia central plaza, etc. Really tiny things, but most of it was spot on. Lots of interesting plays on Costa Rica as a "nation of peace" turning into a war zone. Haldeman clearly spent some quality time in Costa Rica and Panama, so all props to him. He did fail to predict that the Panama Canal Zone would revert to Panamanian control... in 1999. The book was written in 1996. Hmmm.
What he did predict was the use of remote robots, controlled by "mechanics" from afar, as weapons used to terrorize and kill third-world rebels. Now, they aren't much like drones, though he does talk about "flyboys," remote-controlled airplane robots, which seems about right. He primarily concentrates on "soldierboys" (which can also be run by female mechanics), that are basically humanoid killer robots that can fuck up entire buildings, mow down crowds, sneak up on rebel bases, etc etc etc. You have to be "jacked" to use them - have a computer interface installed at the bottom of your skull so you can plug in and interact with machines (and people) at an extremely deep level online. The way it works was was almost completely ripped off by the movie Avatar, but the connection between "mechanics" who are "jacked in together" is much more intimate and complete - they grok each other in ways non-jacked people never will. This also has sexual uses, and many people get jacked just to fuck, have closer relationships, or plug into "recordings" and follow the war (or have other experiences - swimming in the Great Barrier Reef, being tortured to death, whatever) using all of your senses. It's regulated in the USA, so people go to Mexico and have jacks put in illegally, where you've got a 10% chance of dying or going brain-dead during the procedure. People still do it. Cypberpunky!
Anyway, in a nicely ironic turn of events, our protagonists (who are much better developed as relatable human beings than the characters in Forever War) discover that you can adapt military technology to achieve world peace. A 100-page chase scene ensues, a real page turner. This book FUCKING ROCKS. I think Forever War might be more enjoyable for folks with military knowledge than laypeople, while this one is much more generally appealing - not necessarily a recommendation in this crowd, but whatever. It's still five-star scifi, thought-provoking and entertaining at the same time.