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Life During Wartime (SF Masterworks # 66) by Lucius Shepherd
01/02/2007 . Source: Pauline Morgan 
Pub: Gollancz. 418 page enlarged paperback. Price: £ 6.99 (UK). ISBN: 0-575-07734-4. Buy Life During Wartime in the USA - or Buy Life During Wartime in the UK  check out website: www.orionbooks.co.uk
There are times when an author writes an absolutely brilliant novella or novelette which is acknowledged by the winning of an award. Later, for whatever reason, this goes on to form part of a longer work. This may work well. Sometimes, the whole does not match up to the brilliance of the part. There can be many reasons for this. It may be that the extended story does not have the intensity to match up with its precursor. Perhaps the author is pressurised into extending a successful piece. Maybe the writer just ran out of steam. But there are also successes, too. Anne McCaffrey's whole 'Dragonriders Of Pern' series began as a Hugo-winning novella, 'Weyr Search'. It may be argued that later books in the series tailed away but the first three certainly matched the promise of the original. Vonda McIntyre's novel 'Dreamsnake' which contains the Nebula-winning novelette 'Of Mist And Grass And Sand' is less successful.
'Life During Wartime' has been re-issued as part of the Gollancz SF Masterworks series and was originally published in 1987. The first part, 'R & R' won the Nebula for best novella in 1986. It was a deserving winner. The story is a powerful, anti-war piece of writing. David Mingolla and two of his fellow soldiers are on a brief leave from their base in Guatemala. This part of Central America is the focus of ferocious fighting at some time in the not too far future. Like many people in stressful situations, they have developed rituals. If they deviate from the sequence, dire things will happen. If the rituals are adhered to then they will survive. Mingolla, Gilbey and Baylor arrive in a small town for a spell of R & R. At first, they follow their usual patterns but the strains of being in constant battle readiness undermine the resolve to stick to the ritual of survival. Mingolla watches the foundations of his superstitions unravel. By the end of their leave, the pattern is broken. One of Mingolla's comrades has gone berserk and been hauled away into detention and the other has deserted, heading for Panama. This section achieves its power from watching the effects of war on the ordinary soldier. None of these three are older than about twenty. They are conscripts. They have no choice and no care is taken for their mental welfare. Seeing the skilful way that Shepherd portrays the mindset of young combatants it is easier to appreciate some of the reasons behind the worst stories that have come out of battlefield Iraq.
The rest of the novel is written in a much less intense style. On returning to base, Mingolla volunteers for Psicorps training. It gets him out of front line combat. His first assignment, though, is to go after Debora, the woman he had met briefly on R & R. It was his encounter with her that persuaded him to join Psicorps. He is expected to kill her, but has already fallen in love with her. Renewing the association, they head towards Panama. En route, he discovers the centuries long background to the conflict.
The plot is complex and the characters well developed. Probably the biggest change in the narrative style is that in the latter part of the book, Mingolla is more in control of his actions, even though he is being focused and lead in directions he didn't think he would be going. In the R & R section, he has no control at all of events. Without the first section, this would be an excellent slim novel in its own right. Except for the meeting with Debora, there is little in the first section that is absolutely necessary to subsequent events. It is, however, a book well worth reading and probably more than once to appreciate all the subtleties within it.
Pauline Morgan
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