The Forever War Book Reviews

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman Book Summary

Winner of the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award: He went off to war, but the Earth he came back to wasn’t the one he left behind

Man has taken to the stars. Deep in space, humans discover the fearsome Taurans after a transport ship is destroyed. To combat the threat, humanity sends in the United Nations Exploratory Force—a highly trained unit built for revenge. Conscripted into the service, physics student William Mandella fights for his planet against the alien force light years away. However, because of the relative passage of time when one travels at incredibly high speed, the Earth he returns to after his two-year experience has progressed decades and is foreign to him in disturbing ways.
 
Based in part on the author’s experiences in Vietnam, The Forever War is regarded as one of the greatest military science fiction novels ever written, perfectly capturing the alienation that servicemen and women experience even now upon returning home from battle. The Forever War shines a light not only on the culture of the 1970s, the era in which it was written, but also on our potential future.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Joe Haldeman including rare images from the author’s personal collection. 

“To say that The Forever War is the best science fiction war novel ever written is to damn it with faint praise. It is, for all its techno-extrapolative brilliance, as fine and woundingly genuine a war story as any I’ve read.” —William Gibson

“There are a handful of moments when an American science fiction novel abruptly and seemingly effortlessly satisfied every possible expectation conveyed not only by the genre’s ambitions, but of those of the whole literary landscape with which it was contemporary: Sturgeon’s More Than Human, Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, Le Guin’s Dispossessed, Gibson’s Neuromancer. The Forever War is one such book, and like those others still carries with it that air of recognition and possibility.” —Jonathan Lethem

“Perhaps the most important war novel written since Vietnam . . . Haldeman, a veteran, is a flat-out visionary . . . and protagonist William Mandella’s attempt to survive and remain human in the face of an absurd, almost endless war is harrowing, hilarious, heartbreaking, and true. . . . Like all the best works of literature, The Forever War takes you apart and then, before you can turn that last page, puts you back together: better, wiser, more human. Simply extraordinary.” —Junot Díaz

“An engrossing, poignant epic . . . Mandella . . . becomes one of the most memorable characters SF has ever produced.” —Chicago Daily News

Joe Haldeman began his writing career while he was still in the army. Drafted in 1967, he fought in the Central Highlands of Vietnam as a combat engineer with the Fourth Division. He was awarded several medals, including a Purple Heart.

Haldeman sold his first story in 1969 and has since written over two dozen novels and five collections of short stories and poetry. He has won the Nebula and Hugo Awards for his novels, novellas, poems, and short stories, as well as the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Locus Award, the Rhysling Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. His works include The Forever War, Forever Peace, Camouflage, 1968, the Worlds saga, and the Marsbound series.

Haldeman recently retired after many years as an associate professor in the Department of Writing and Humanistic Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He and his wife, Gay, live in Florida, where he also paints, plays the guitar, rides his bicycle, and studies the skies with his telescope. 

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The Forever War (Joe Haldeman) Book Reviews 2024

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