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I just got done reading Joe Haldeman’s novel Camouflage. I used to read Haldeman a lot back in the day. I loved classics such as The Forever War and All My Sins Remembered. It was after reading his novel The Accidental Time Machine that I said I’d never read him again (more on that later).

But a friend suggested giving him another try, so I found “Camouflage” at my local public library.

It’s generally a good book and a very easy read. I shot through it in just a few days. In spite of the title, the protagonist is an alien being simply called “Changeling.” We find out early on that Changeling came to Earth from over 10,000 light-years away and evolved in a very different environment. Apparently life is rare in the galaxy and Earth is where it found life.

Its ship landed in the Pacific Ocean, specifically the Tonga Trench about a million years ago. The narrative made it seem that Changeling is a subset of the life form in the ship that separated itself to explore. For the vast majority of that million years, Changeling was various forms of sea life swimming around, primarily an Orca and a Great White Shark.

But by-the-by, Changeling started observing human beings on ships and became curious. It came on shore in California in 1931 and superficially imitated a human being.

I should say the Changeling, given enough time and the right amount of mass, can become anything, a man, a woman, a fish, a table, a TV set, anything. It takes time, effort, and pain for the transformation to occur but it’s quite an advantage. It can simulate its own clothing, wallet, keys, even money.

At first, it knew nothing about people, and imitated a teenage boy after killing the original and dumping him in the ocean. It wasn’t out of malice. Changeling had spent most of the past million years as a sea predator, so killing was a matter of survival.

It took a long time in this persona to begin to approximate human behavior and at first he was considered by his (the boy he killed) family and the medical profession to be the victim of some off brain injury.

It experienced sex, which was pretty mysterious at first, but had no idea what love was.

I should mention that besides its history as numerous sea creatures, Changeling remembered nothing about its spaceship or where it came from. It didn’t even know what it is.

The book shifted back and forth from the Changeling’s perspective starting in the early 1930s to 2019 and into the 2020s. In the “present,” Dr. Russell Sutton, marine engineer and owner of a private oceanographic exploration company called Poseidon Projects, is approached by Naval Admiral Jack Halliburton with a proposal. Halliburton is about to become voluntarily separated from the Navy and, under the guise of rescuing a disabled submarine near Tonga, will “discover” an anomalous undersea object which they will raise for study.

Halliburton believes the object may be alien in origin, or if not, something profoundly unique and quite possibly very profitable. They hatch a plan to raise the object to the surface and eventually land it on Independent Samoa where they will be free from U.S. government interference in examining the artifact.

There actually is a third element in the book, an entity known as Camouflage. Unlike Changeling, Camouflage remembers being a human being since the age of Neanderthals. It was almost always a warrior or a soldier and enjoyed fighting, brutality, and killing. Like Changeling, it was almost impossible to kill and it could change its form. However it was limited to human males and it could make the change quickly and painlessly.

It also had no idea what it is and where it came from. Additionally, it differed from Changeling in that it wasn’t interested in learning from people. It just wanted to hurt and kill them. During World War Two, it adopted the guise of a doctor (like Changeling, a long life let it go to many schools and learn skills). It became the medical assistant to Dr. Josef Mengele, admiring his sadism (although after the war, he hunts Mengele down and kills him). That’s the nature of Camouflage.

As the histories of the two strange beings begins to catch up with the book’s “present,” I wondered if any of the people involved in the project could be the two of them. I was half right.

This occurs in a universe where televisions are called “cubes” and Poseidon Projects had raised the Titanic. I suppose Haldeman is mining some universe he created in other books, but I never heard of it before. The only novel I’ve read about bringing the Titanic to the surface of the ocean was Raise the Titanic by Clive Cussler.

Changeling becomes a U.S. Marine during the war and is captured in the Philippines along with many other Americans and Filipinos. It is in the Bataan death march and eventually escapes its brutal Japanese captors returning to being a shark for a few years. It goes back to land, adopts various identities, men and women, and continues its education, being especially attracted to oceanography and astronomy.

Along the way, it samples sex with men and women, and in fact as the book progresses, we experience humanity from the viewpoints of both Changeling and Camouflage. That’s really the whole point of the book, seeing people from the outside.

How many science fiction stories have been written this way? I’m sure Gene Roddenberry created the character of Mr. Spock on Star Trek to do the very same thing. To Haldeman’s credit, he doesn’t give in to the impulse to make all people everywhere suck. Too many dystopian, subversive novels, TV shows, and movies in the SciFi genre have done just that in the last thirty years or so and it getting worse all the time.

The book didn’t touch on feminism or trans ideology more than a little, involved a few more gay themes, but did make a point that people (or aliens) who are different are treated very badly. Although World War Two Nazis and the Japanese were pointed out, really the “bad guy” was equally white Americans. Fortunately, it didn’t really damage the story very badly and I kept reading past those parts of it.

I won’t go through all of the involved schemes in the Changeling and Camouflage managing to gain access to the alien artifact. Surprisingly though, as an Asian woman named Rae Archer, Changeling manages to finally fall in love…with Russ Sutton. She falls for him so badly, that when Rae’s cover is blown, she (although the Changeling becomes different males for a while during this sequence) continues to think of herself as “she” relative to loving Russ. Eventually Changeling makes her way back to Samoa as a woman and seduces him again. After sex, she shows him that “Sharon” is really “Rae.”

Spoiler Alert: Stop reading this now if you don’t want to know the “big reveal” at the end of the book.

Since Russ trusts the Changeling and has fallen hard for “her” too, he arranges for her to gain access to the artifact. Through various experiments, Russ’ team along with some NASA scientists, have coaxed a coded response from the alien machine, but no one can decipher it. Changeling believes its a song meant only for her kind.

However when Russ and Rae (now disguised as project exobiologist Jan Dagmar) reach the object, Halliburton is already there. Camouflage has been Halliburton since 2015 when, after studying the subject, killed him. It had discovered the object and created this elaborate scheme involving Sutton’s company to gain access to it.

Both Camouflage and Changeling believe their origins are tied to the object but only Changeling has any sort of proof. Camouflage isn’t interested in “competition,” which is how it saw Changeling. so Camouflage tried to kill her. Fortunately, this is after Changeling was able to respond to the artifact’s message.

While Camouflage is more powerful and brutal, the spaceship, not really the greater part of Changeling’s own substance, disables and captures Camouflage.

Changeling’s true form and memory returns and while she is strange and completely non-human, Russ still finds her beautiful.

The real cheat in all this is that the ship has no idea what Camouflage is or where it came from. Yes, it was a let down but maybe this opens the door for a sequel.

Besides a spaceship and aliens, one of the theories was that either or both aliens were sent into the distant past from the far future and that they were artificially evolved humans. The reason they had no memories was because you can’t take information from the future to the past. This avoids all of those paradox and breaking the timeline scenarios. Maybe that can still be applied to Camouflage.

But if that’s true, then the future is either brutal and sadistic or that’s how the future sees all of human history. Or that’s how the author sees human beings.

Russ wants to go with “Rae.” This is considered impossible initially since he is too short lived and can’t breathe chlorine. Then the ship tells Changeling that they can take Russ, but he’ll have to be transformed into a different life form. With Camouflage as prisoner, Russ and “Rae” take off for the Changeling’s home.

While the book is well written, has likeable characters, and contains a compelling mystery, it’s purpose it exceptionally plain, as I’ve already mentioned. It can be reduced to a basic exploration of human nature. That’s what science fiction does best, but it also does it often and has been doing it for decades and decades.

I was pleased that Russ didn’t trust the government, which is why he kept the object on Tonga. It seems a perfectly acceptable real-world analog.

Other themes besides distrust are protective coloration. If you are likely to be discriminated against by the majority, it’s best to find a way to blend in. That worked for Changeling in adopting various guises and learning to be more human in a compassionate and positive way. Camouflage did the same thing but taking on humanity’s worst qualities.

Taking place on Independent Samoa with adventures happening in other corners of the world, the book sampled different aspects of cultural diversity, majoring in racism with a minor in sexism. War also brings out these themes with Changeling’s experiences in the Philippines and Camouflage’s at Auschwitz.

I must say I found the Changeling falling in love with Russ a bit of a stretch. It had almost a century to fall in love and could have many times as a man and a woman. But it somehow fell in love only a single time and with the one person who could give it access to the alien object. Convenient.

Good action sequences, good knowledge and use of various cultures, good historical research and attention to detail. Of course, I’m not a historian, astronomer, oceanographer, or cultural diversity expert, so I can be fooled.

Pleasant enough book. I’d give it four stars on Amazon if I were so inclined, just for its readability.

Oh, it won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award in 2004 and the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 2005. Of course, that sort of thing doesn’t impress me anymore. I understand how these awards are assigned and  praise for any created work can be more of it passing the progressive litmus test rather than an objective measure of its quality.

I mentioned “The Accidental Time Machine” before which I reviewed a few years back. Read the review for all the details, but in short, Haldeman went way out of his way to write a novel dedicated to hating Christianity and all Christians in the extreme. Christians are either con men and hucksters or complete morons brainwashed by a toxic ideology.

It doesn’t matter if Haldeman personally dislikes Christians, but it’s hostile to rake an entire group made up of millions of people over the proverbial coals just to “vent your spleen.”

That’s why I decided to give up Haldeman’s books and only reluctantly consented to giving him as an author another try. At least “Camouflage” isn’t as blatant in expressing the writer’s social and political perspectives. Yes, those perspectives will always be part of an author’s works. You just don’t have to be so heavy handed relative to your bigotry and prejudice. Imagine if he had a “thing” for Islam instead.