The novel “All My Sins Remembered” by Joe Haldeman was published for the first time in 1977.
Otto McGavin is a young Anglo-Buddhist who is recruited by the TB II, the secret service of the Confederacion, to carry out missions that are against his idealism. The future technology however allows to radically change the physical aspect of a person and also her mind. In fact, hypnotic treatments allow to impress a new personality into a brain and in this way Otto McGavin is turned into a different person for each mission.
On various planets Otto McGavin will use violence when he’ll face dangerous situations during missions where sometimes he’ll get in touch with alien species. However the greatest dangers will come from humans, who remain the most dangerous species in the galaxy.
“All My Sins Remembered” puts together three stories that are connected through proper chapters and give an overview of Otto McGavin’s career in the secret service of the Confederacion until his retirement.
Joe Haldeman became particularly famous for his novel “The Forever War”, which describes crudely and well away from any rhetoric an interstellar war. In “All My Sins Remembered” there’s no war but within the Confederacion there are problems that require the intervention of the secret service and the author describes those missions with the same disillusionment showed in “The Forever War”.
Superficially, Otto McGavin’s missions may give the impression of classic science fiction adventures in which there’s a hero who faces the villains of the situation. The only difference seems that the aliens, when present, aren’t the villains and the protagonist must face other humans. Actually, thanks to the chapters that connect the stories of Otto McGavin’s missions, we understand that the situation is more complex and McGavin is very different from a future version of James Bond.
Otto McGavin looks for employment in the Confederacion because in his idealism he thinks it’s the best way to help protecting the rights of humans and nonhumans. For the TB II his idealism is a problem but thanks to hypnotic techniques McGavin is trained to be able to carry out violent actions that circumvent his Anglo-Buddhist beliefs.
Otto McGavin is to carry out undercover missions in which he assumes the identity of someone in a radical way because his body is changed and the personality of the subject he has to impersonate is impressed over the original one leaving only the part of McGavin’s personality needed to react to the dangers he may encounter.
Reading “All My Sins Remembered” you can perceive more and more how Otto McGavin is used as a tool adapted to the different situations he has to face. The continuous overlapping of personalities, which can be of ruthless criminals, and violent actions he has to carry out end up creating psychological problems to the protagonist.
For the TB II however the solution is simple: it takes just another manipulation of his mind and the problem is solved. Eventually you can’t help feeling bitterness in seeing how Otto McGavin was used for the TB II’s ambiguous purposes.
In fact, the TB II’s exact purposes become less and less clear. The dangers that Otto McGavin faces come from ruthless people yet reading the stories of his missions you wonder if the secret services really have purely altruistic goals.
“All My Sins Remembered” isn’t easy to fully appreciate not only because the stories it contains are unrelated to each other but also because Otto McGavin literally changes his face in each of them. Therefore sympathizing with the protagonist isn’t immediate but his continuous changes reveal his alienation and this is a fundamental point of this novel.
“All My Sins Remembered” seems almost forgotten and is rarely reprinted but it’s one of Joe Haldeman best works so I definitely recommend reading it.
