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Forever War
  
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Forever War (School & Library Binding)

by J. Haldeman (Author) "Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man ..." (more)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (216 customer reviews)

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Product Description

From Amazon.com

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 the Mass Market Paperback edition.

From AudioFile

William Mandela is a survivor of an alien war that has gone on for hundreds of years. Time-travel paradoxes have turned the young soldier into the oldest man alive, a man who no longer fits in an armed and regulated Earth society. He barely feels comfortable in an army in which he is one of the few heterosexuals left and harsh, alien environments are liable to kill you, even if the aliens don't. George Wilson gives a matter-of-fact reading to a story filled with spectacular action scenes interspersed with the endless boredom of deep space. First published in the 1970s, FOREVER WAR still seems all too possible. M.C. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
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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

216 Reviews
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 (154)
4 star:
 (31)
3 star:
 (17)
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 (6)
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4.5 out of 5 stars (216 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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17 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Dissapointing, Sep 1 2006
By Steven R. McEvoy "MCWPP" (Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Forever War (Paperback)

This book arrived in my hands with much advance praise and high recommendations. It did not live up to its press. Joe Haldeman, who wished to become a power in the genre of Science-Fiction, wanted to write a book in the style of, and after that famous worthy Robert A. Heinlien. Unfortunately Haldeman had neither the skill nor the gifts that Heinlien did.

This book, The Forever War, like Heinlein's Starship Troopers or Orphanage by Robert Buettner, is set in a fictional future when earth is at war with an unknown alien species. It deals with issues such as conscription, political unrest, and a human race devastated by the effects of an interplanetary war.

In this book soldiers are all conscripted from the intelligentsia, to lead mankind in space war against unknown forces. Our Hero, if we can call him a hero, is Private William Mandella. But in the future, soldiers are psychologically conditioned to kill in a frenzy, and to be dependent upon drugs. Unlike both Buettner's and Heinlien's books that have drugs as a detriment to military life, Haldeman uses drugs for everything from recreation to encouraged addictions.

This book, though the winner of many awards including the Nebula and Hugo, is not worth your time and effort. One of the possible reasons for this is that the book has gone through four different major revisions. It was rejected by eighteen publishers before finally being published in 1974 with some major editing. It was not believed that as a book about the `Vietnam War', the forever war would have a large market. But a publisher took a chance and published it. Then The Forever War went on and won a few awards.

Since then, the author has revised it through two major revisions. The first put a section back in that messed up the timeline of the story, and the second returned it to the original unedited version, known as the definitive edition of the book. It is the only version currently in print.

The writing is poor, and this unedited - so-called restored version of the book - is lackluster at best and downright boring! The story drags at many points and, at other times, so little story is given that it seems to jump from scene to scene without filling you in on how our characters got where they are.

This book in some version may have won the top two science fiction novel of the year awards, but it is really not worth the effort. Read either Heinlien's or Buettner's version of the story. Both are much more satisfying and enjoyable.

(First Published in Imprint 2006-09-01 as `Hate It' part of the `Love It/Hate It' book review column.)
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1 of 1 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
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (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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5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for science fictions lovers, Dec 12 2009
By Timothy Watt "Freedom Fighter" (Hamilton, ON, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Forever War (Paperback)
An enjoyable easy read from cover to cover. The story covers centuries of human "evolution" through the eyes of the main character 'Mandella'. It is a war story but the underlying story, which we should all pay attention to, shows how humanity is scientifically molded into the final perfect human. Of course once the perfect human is forged then it no longer represents humanity. The story touches on a world molded through eugenics and bioengineering and our man Mandella witnesses the whole process. He is repulsed yet keeps moving ahead with his duty and his survival and his love.

I've read that the author wrote this as a representation of the Vietnam conflict which he was a combat engineer in. I've never been a soldier but it seems he did a wonderful job of recreating that experience into a science fiction novel. Once I was finished this I wanted to read more from Joe Haldeman.
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