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The Forever War
 
 

The Forever War [Paperback]

Joe Haldeman
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (219 customer reviews)
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In the 1970s Joe Haldeman approached more than a dozen different publishers before he finally found one interested in The Forever War. The book went on to win both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, although a large chunk of the story had been cut out before it saw publication. Now Haldeman and Avon Books have released the definitive version of The Forever War, published for the first time as Haldeman originally intended. The book tells the timeless story of war, in this case a conflict between humanity and the alien Taurans. Humans first bumped heads with the Taurans when we began using collapsars to travel the stars. Although the collapsars provide nearly instantaneous travel across vast distances, the relativistic speeds associated with the process means that time passes slower for those aboard ship. For William Mandella, a physics student drafted as a soldier, that means more than 27 years will have passed between his first encounter with the Taurans and his homecoming, though he himself will have aged only a year. When Mandella finds that he can't adjust to Earth after being gone so long from home, he reenlists, only to find himself shuttled endlessly from battle to battle as the centuries pass. --Craig E. Engler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"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, author of Neuromancer, Spook Country

"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, LeGuin'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, author of Gun With Occcasional Music, Fortress of Solitude

"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 Diaz, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

"If there was a Fort Knox for Science Fiction writers, we'd have to lock Joe Haldeman up."
--Stephen King, author of The Shining, The Dead Zone, The Stand

"The Forever War is not just a great Science Fiction novel, it's a great Vietnam war novel - and a great war novel, without qualification- that is also Science Fiction.  A classic to grace either genre."
--Iain M. Banks, author of Use of Weapons, The Player of Games, Matter

"FOREVER WAR is brilliant--one of the most influential war novels of our time. That it happens to be set in the future only broadens and enhances its message."
--Greg Bear, author of Moving Mars, Eon, The Forge of God

“A parable whose lessons are needful learning once more.”
--John Scalzi, author of Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades, Zoe’s Tale

"I first read this twenty years ago and have never forgotten the wonder and fury it kindled at the time.  Anyone who talks about the glory of war has obviously never read it.  A beautifully detailed and intensely personal account of a conflict which lasts for over a thousand years, as told by one grunt who lives through it all.  Only a writer as skillfull and knowledgeable as Haldeman could use war's dark glamour to lure the reader in and then deplou the sam fascination to show just what kind of effect this orchestrated barbarism can have on the human soul."
--Peter F. Hamilton, author of Pandora’s Star, Judas Unchained, The Dreaming Void

“In a literature of ideas, The Forever War is a titan: a book filled with mind-bending ideas about relatavistic time-distortion and world-shaking ideas about the futility of war. In today's world, where we think declaring war on abstract nouns like TERROR is a winning strategy, we need THE FOREVER WAR."
--Cory Doctorow, author of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Little Brother X

“It is to the Vietnam War what Catch-22 was to World War II, the definitive, bleakly comic satire.”
--Thomas M. Disch, author of Camp Concentration, 334

"The Forever War does what the very best science fiction does. It deals with extremes both societal and teleological; it places a frame around humankind's place in the universe to show us what is outside the frame; and it functions simultaneously at the literal and metaphorical level.  Inarguably one of the genre's great novels, it is also among the finest novels ever written about war."
--James Sallis, author of The Long Legged Fly, Drive, Cripple Creek


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Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man." Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

219 Reviews
5 star:
 (157)
4 star:
 (31)
3 star:
 (17)
2 star:
 (6)
1 star:
 (8)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (219 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars WOW, July 15 2004
By 
This review is from: The Forever War (Paperback)
This book was originally published in 1977 as an allegory to the Vietnam War. A reluctant soldier comes home from a never ending war without winning to a changed world he no longer recognizes. For this alone, this book is worth reading. However, the story stands on its own feet and he does a remarkable job. This book is part "Starship Troopers" and part "Armor". The reader actually feels for the soldiers who survive an unsurvivorable war only to find their world they left has changed and not for the better in their eyes. Much of the change has to do with worm holes and time dialation. Haldeman does a good job explaining the concept without getting to lost in the science which is not needed here. The enemy is not expanded upon and left shadowy except to explain that they are tough fighters and their tactics make no sense. This helps heighten the frustration of the soldiers and is a nice touch. The end of the story is rather abrupt, although ingenious and it certainly left itself open to a sequel. Highly Recommended
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5.0 out of 5 stars A Si-Fi war story written by an actual veteran., Jun 2 2004
By 
This review is from: The Forever War (Paperback)
Most of the main themes of this book were taken from the authors reactions to changes in his homeland during his absence. At first reading you would not think this was about vietnam if only because the story takes place on planets far from earth and in a more and more distant future. Because Mandela travels so close to the speed of light, to and returning from battle, every time he returns to earth everything has changed drasticly thus making him a living anachronism. It is easy to see how vietnam veterans could feel the same way.

I got into this only because I've read alot of vietnam non-fiction. The battle scenes are realistic and Mendela mostly stays alive due to luck, which is the case in most vietnam non-fiction.

A great read that I could not put down. I would highly recomend this to any si-fi or vietnam enthusiest.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars A Solid Product of its Time, Mar 21 2004
By 
A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Forever War (Paperback)
This slim military sci-fi novel won both a Hugo and Nebula awards following its publication in 1975, but readers today probably need a little context to understand why it was so well-received at the time. First and foremost, it was written as a direct response to the Vietnam War by Haldeman, who served a tour of duty there as a combat engineer and was severely wounded (he's also written several Vietnam-specific novels, including War Year and 1968). In the book, a young physics student named Mandella is drafted for a war against a mysterious alien race. We follow him through complicated and dangerous training, several violent battles, and his return home. Not surprisingly, Haldeman's portrayal of war is a brutal and messy picture, where long periods of boredom are followed by intense battles, death is arbitrary, and heroism nonexistent. Also not surprisingly, the war is revealed to be a misguided endeavor brought on by hawkish political leaders who lie to the public about the war. Needless to say, the public climate of the time was very receptive to such sentiments.

The other main noteworthy element of the book is the treatment of interstellar travel, and the distortion of time that results. After his first battle, Mandella returns to Earth to find his loved ones aged 27 years and society largely antiseptic. Just as many Vietnam vets had a difficult time returning home, he and many of his cohort can't handle life of Earth, and re-enlist. The book continues with Mandella shuttling from battle to battle, rising rapidly in seniority as hundreds of subjective years pass to his own few. Haldeman is a physicist, and there's a lot of scientific jargon about relativity theory to explain everything, and for the time, it was pretty exciting stuff for sci-fi readers. However, I found those passages nearly incomprehensible and the need to explain things definitely bogs down the narrative at times. These leaps through time allow Haldeman to do some interesting speculation about the evolution of humanity, as he touches upon cloning, sexuality, and genetics. The emphasis, though, is on Mandella and his personal quest to just survive. This is solid work, with generally good pacing, and a very overt antiwar message that is the product of its times.

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