Joe Haldeman

Private William Mandella is a reluctant hero in an interstellar war against an unknowable and unconquerable alien enemy. But his greatest test will be when he returns home. Relativity means that for every few months' tour of duty centuries have passed on Earth, isolating the combatants ever more from the world for whose future they are fighting. Winner of the HUGO AWARD for best novel, 1976 Winner of the NEBULA AWARD for best novel, 1975

Forever War Book 1

The Forever War

Dave | Storyphoria

Three weeks of carrying around twice as much weight as normal it's no picnic. We did some cautious exercises three times a day and remained horizontal as much as possible. Still, we got several broken bones and serious dislocations. The men had to wear special supporters to keep from littering the floor with loose organs. It was almost impossi- ble to sleep; nightmares of choking and being crushed, rolling over peri- odically to prevent blood pooling and bedsores. One girl got so fatigued that she almost slept through the experience of having a rib push out into the open air. 

Drafted into the ranks of Earth's interstellar warriors, private William Mandella finds his fight against the Taurans secondary to the side-effects of faster-than-light space travel, which affects the rate at which he ages. Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

Darren Olivier

Classic sci-fi novel with a great treatment of time dilation and the implications of a near-constant enemy.

Tobias V. Langhoff

The first part (about half) of this book is fairly standard military science fiction, although of course an early specimen of the genre. It’s nice to see where the tropes in later works come from, although I’m not overly fond of the genre. The second part, however, is dystopian fiction. The soldiers return from the interstellar war to an Earth that has, because of time dilation, radically changed since they left it. This is the best part of the book; a true futuristic look at where humanity might be headed. Included in the bargain we also get a weird view of homosexuality, which is typical of the era the book was written in, I guess, but which is still expanded upon to ridiculous extremes as the book progresses.

The future has to get worse before it gets better, but whether or not it objectively becomes better in the end is left as an exercise to the reader, as the reference in the following quote signifies: “O brave new world, I thought.” It’s also a bit jarring that nothing resembling the Internet exists in this future. Of course that’s to be expected in science fiction this old – I don’t expect authors to be prophets – but when a letter from Earth to Luna costs $1,500 it seems a little silly. I guess I’m nitpicking.

For the story returns to the war in outer space, and repeated campaigns at locations in the galaxy requiring relativistic travel speed cause the time dilation to get longer and longer. This is really a book about time travel. Humans can travel forward in time and meet up with other people, and enemy aliens, from different time periods. (It’s no secret that the war in the book parallels the Vietnam war; soldiers return from a pointless war to a world that changed and left them behind.)

The aliens are interesting, but not quite interesting enough. Their alien-ness is present, but never expanded upon, and finally hand-waved away and not explained in depth by the end of the book. The premise is also interesting, but much of the book was a slog to read. Some parts are cool and some boring. Luckily the ending made me happy, but ultimately I was disappointed in this classic of the sci-fi genre which I had been looking forward to read. I guess I didn’t manage to read it in the correct subjective reference frame of its time.

Cody Degen

Pretty clearly dated socially but still a good read and deserving of scifi classic status. The social commentary on the military industrial complex was relevant to the time and forty five years and who knows how many armed conflicts later is just as relevant or perhaps even moreso.

Peter Read

Whoa this book was good. My only complaint is that it was so short.

Shiveen Pandita

Great book if you keep in mind the context it was written in. I’m not usually into rambly military space operas but this one was just the right pace for me. I would recommend it.

Cams Campbell

I read this as it was the September choice for the Sword & Laser book club. Sci-fi is a genre that I've not read much of, not because of I don't think I would enjoy it, but because I never really got around to it. I read Stephen Donaldson's Gap series twice and they are included in my top 5 list. I also read Dune and enjoyed it too.

So, The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman. This is supposed to be a classic of the genre and, to be honest, I'm not sure why. I did enjoy it but it's quite forgettable in my opinion.

The main themes are war and time dilation. The main protagonist, William Mandella, is conscripted along with a number of individuals with a high IQ. They endure a tough training regime, during which many trainees lose their lives. This happens in a fairly come-what-may sort of way and we don't learn enough about the characters really to care. And this is one of the book's shortcomings: it's too short. Not enough time is spent developing the characters, or the plot. This makes it a short book. Another 100 or so pages would have allowed the author to give it some flesh.

Due to the physics of travelling above light speed, Mandella encounters time dilation. So while a few months pass for him, years pass on earth. When he gets back, things have changed so much that he no longer feels comfortable on earth. So he goes back to the army and gets back into the war again.

I found the idea of homosexuality off putting at first. This is something that happens on earth to prevent population increase. It's an interesting concept.

To be honest, I didn't really enjoy the book enough to write more about it than I already have. As this is not a recommendation list but simply a list of what I've read (because I do forget), I'll leave it at that.

Luke Kanies

Thoroughly enjoyable War/future/dystopia novel. Captures without judging, and manages to pull the reader in places they might not want to go.
 A classic that also manages to show its age somehow.

Haldeman, Joe

"Del Rey book." Battling the Taurans in space was one problem as Private William Mandella worked his way up the ranks to major. In spanning the stars, he aged only months while Earth aged centuries.

Jay Carter

"They" have been calling The Forever War a classic for years, so it's odd that the book is younger than I am.

Carlo Zottmann

Just finished it. Shows the insanity that is every war ever… Great novel, the end had me welling up a bit.

Daniel Toke Hansen

Jesse White

Gonia Cholewa

Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards: A futuristic masterpiece, “perhaps the most important war novel written since Vietnam” (Junot Díaz). In this novel, a landmark of science fiction that began as an MFA thesis for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and went on to become an award-winning classic—inspiring a play, a graphic novel, and most recently an in-development film—man has taken to the stars, and soldiers fighting the wars of the future return to Earth forever alienated from their home. Conscripted into service for the United Nations Exploratory Force, a highly trained unit built for revenge, physics student William Mandella fights for his planet light years away against the alien force known as the Taurans. “Mandella’s attempt to survive and remain human in the face of an absurd, almost endless war is harrowing, hilarious, heartbreaking, and true,” says Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Junot Díaz—and because of the relative passage of time when one travels at incredibly high speed, the Earth Mandella 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, capturing the alienation that servicemen and women experience even now upon returning home from battle. It shines a light not only on the culture of the 1970s in which it was written, but also on our potential future. “To say that The Forever War is the best science fiction war novel ever written is to damn it with faint praise. It is . . . as fine and woundingly genuine a war story as any I’ve read” (William Gibson). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Joe Haldeman including rare images from the author’s personal collection.

The Forever War Forever War Book 1

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