Feminism and Diversity

I thought that the plot device ( due to travel at relativistic speeds, the protagonists experience a mission of 2-3 years duration, yet dozens, or some times hundreds of years transpire on earth ) was clever. Each time the protagonist returns home, he's never really coming "home" -- he returns to new and different culture after each mission.

My sense was that the sexually promiscuous behavior described in the first part of the book was largely due to the soldiers' belief that they probably weren't going to survive their first battle -- and were trying to cram every kind of experience they could into the brief time they thought remained to them.

I read the book when it came out (~1975), I remember thinking that the idea that people could be "indoctrinated" into homosexuality on a broad scale was naive.

And I seriously doubt that the author is advocating the gender roles and dynamics seen in the novel.

I thought the hero's story: fighting to stay alive, dealing with post-traumatic stress, exiled from his own time and place, was interesting. The part of the book that fails for me is that the author's postulates about what future earth culture(s) might be like aren't very imaginative. But for me, the book was about was William Mandella's struggle to hold onto his own humanity while fighting an apparently endless ( and ultimately pointless ) war. It should be noted that the author was a veteran of the Vietnam War.

J.