Camouflage: on Humanity's Coming of Age and the Importance of Adaptability

The main title, Camouflage, is Joe Haldeman's. The secondary title is mine.

First let's talk about the actual title of Joe Haldeman's Nebula winning novel.

Here's what Webster's Online Dictionary has to say about camouflage:

1: the disguising especially of military equipment or installations
2 a : concealment by means of disguise b : behavior or artifice designed to deceive or hide

Camouflage begins like a classic, Crichtonesque thriller. For fans of nuts and bolts sf, fun physics and astrophysics facts abound, as not particularly well-characterized researchers go about trying to unlock the mysteries of an artifact found buried in the depths of the ocean. This fairly standard sf fare is made more intriguing by the "changeling," an immortal alien who presumably got its ride to Earth within the mysterious artifact. Third person omniscient narrating tells us that the "changeling" comes from a world of such harsh conditions, that it has learned to adapt to any environment- "not by natural selection, but by natural mutation." It can change the structure of its DNA-less body to adapt to any environmental conditions- extreme hot, extreme cold, bizarre chemical soup atmospheres, or no atmosphere at all. It can survive decapitation- when it is in a form that has a head. It can become a hammerhead shark, a beautiful woman, a floor tile, a TV set. It enjoys the taste of chlorine and gasoline.

After the "changeling" lands on Earth, it swims around in the ocean for a number of centuries, hanging out in the form of several kinds marine life. Then in 1931 it emerges on a California beach and makes its first attempt at taking human form. It soon finds that imitating the human body is a heck of a lot easier than imitating human behavior.

The story of Camouflage is the story of humanity's coming of age between the years 1931 and 2021. Haldeman, a Purple Heart Vietmam draftee, writes about the horrors of World War II as seen through the "changeling's" eyes when he is a Marine in the Bataan Death March of 1942. The Bataan experience is the "changeling's" induction to the human condition. From that point forward, the "changeling's" attempt to understand humanity reminds us just how fundametally the world has changed since the global crisis of World War II.

The first third of Camouflage is an exciting read, but I was frustrated by an inability to connect with the "changeling" protagonist. This is possibly the most ingenious part of the book: the "changeling" is not human, but gradually begins to take on some human characteristics. Its alien and predatory otherness slowly errodes, and as it is slowly surprised to find itself becoming more and more human, the reader gradually begins to have a grudging sort of empathy with it.

Empathy with the "changeling" is further heightened by its foil, the "chameleon." Like the "changeling," the "chameleon" is an immortal, adaptable being- but not quite so adaptable as the changeling. The "chameleon" can alter its appearance to look like a variety of human males, but is unable to become a woman or a non-living object. The "chameleon" war hops through hundreds of years of human history, always on the lookout for another being like itself. Unlike the "chameleon," he never drops his predatory, inhuman instincts.

The foil of the "changeling" and the "chameleon" seems to suggest that the more flexible and adaptable the creature, the better the possiblity for empathy and compassion with other beings. But which of the two models is best suited to survive? And how can humanity participate in the revolution of adaptability? Haldeman answers these question, but I don't want to spoil the exciting conclusion of the book for those who haven't read it.

If you look through the titles of Haldeman's books, you can begin to see a definite theme: The Forever War, Study War No More, Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds, War Stories, A Separate War, and let's not forget his debut 1972 short novel, War Year.

I don't mean to suggest that Haldeman is a one-note Johnny. My favorite Haldeman book, The Hemmingway Hoax, is caught up with a very different subject (a certain famous lost valise). But there's no denying that Haldeman's Vietnam experience informs his writing. Vietnam isn't just coloring the way he can describe the smell of miserable prisoners packed in a train and headed for slaughter- it makes up an important part of what he has to say. Camouflage asks big questions about humanity's develoment as a species since everything changed in World War II. What is the role of compassion in our survival as a species? How adaptable have we been and can we be to changing circumstances?

What does it mean to be human?

That's hardly a new question- but it's such a good one, that it seems worthwhile to keep asking it. The possible answers seem to be as varied and numerous as the men and women suggesting them.