"Forever Peace" was originally published in hardcover in October, 1997, long after the Canal Zone had ceased to exist and shortly before the U.S. military left Panama. A world much like that of the early 1970s has been extended to the year 2043 with a few changes. The invention of nanoforges, machines that generate power and fabricate anything for which raw materials can be found, make the United States rich while leaving the rest of the world in poverty, causing war between the haves and have-nots. Direct connections to the brain, jacks, allow people to communicate with each other so completely it seems as if they are sharing mind and body; the same jacks allow them to control fighting machines thousands of miles away, giving the rich countries a giant advantage over the military machines of the poor countries attacking them. An experiment being done by robots in orbit around Jupiter is discovered to be able to destroy at least the solar system, perhaps the whole universe, and a group of religious fanatics calling themselves Enders want to end the universe so its evil will be burned away, to be replaced by a new, innocent universe.
Julian spends a ten day shift in Panama, jacked into a soldierboy machine, his job being support for the war rather than actual combat. Then he returns to Houston, where he teaches physics at the university. He winds up at the center of the struggles to bring peace to the world and to keep the Enders from destroying the universe, and the tale is told as it happens to him, sometimes from the first person viewpoint and at other times from the third person viewpoint, the two viewpoints being kept in separate small chapters.
The story is well told. The characters are interesting, convincing and appealing. Their actions are reasonable. My only objections are to the premises of the story: that the nanoforge wealth wouldn't be shared worldwide and that mechanically assisted telepathy would be possible, much less as simple as was described. I do consider it a story worth reading as well as an example of good writing.