3.5 stars. Due to the acquisition of GoodReads by Amazon on March 28, 2013 and my existing and continuing boycott of all things Amazon, the review I wrote after reading this book has been relocated to my blog and can be found in its entirety by following this link: http://bit.ly/YLLifV

This book is a military style space opera with …..Wait! Where are you going? Get back here. I hadn’t got to the good part yet. Give me a second to explain. Geez…

OK, so yes, there is an interstellar war with human troops in high-tech armored suits battling an alien enemy on distant planets. I know it sounds like another version of Starship Troopers or countless other bad genre sci-fi tales, but this one is different. Hell, when it was published in 1975 it won the Hugo, the Locus and the Nebula aw More...

What is it about military science fiction novels? When I was in high school and then as an enlisted man in the Army, I would devour them by the dozen.

These books take us to the farthest reaches of deep space and the most alien of worlds. They posit realities in which the very survival of the human species is at stake. And yet they are ultimately novels of manners, pitting a protagonist's aspirations against rigidly controlled hierarchies and webs of social practice and expectation. Military prot More...

Let's say you're shipping off to a particular battle in a war. By the time you reach the battle, fight it, and return home, everyone you know has died of old age and the society you protected has evolved (or devolved) into something you don't recognize or particularly like. What would you be fighting for?

That's just one of the issues brought up in "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman.

The Plot
In this novel of galactic war, the alien menace is the Taurans. The war is fought over collapsars, which ar More...

Catch-22 is often cited as one of the great books about the futility and inherent paradoxes of war. I think this is easily its equal, but is often overlooked because it is dismissed as "just" science fiction.

By using the tropes of SF, Haldeman vividly illustrates not only the psychological effects on the combatants, but also the desperate disassociation wrought between the "soldiers" and the rest of society - his reference point was the Vietnam veterans, but it could apply anywhere and anywhen. More...

A gripping read in the mold of Heinlein's Starship Troopers, though the novel is substantively/philosophically antithetical to ST. Haldeman's Vietnam experience informs the book from beginning to end, and he does a fine job of capturing the futility, frustration, and petty indignities of war from the POV of a (more or less) lowly participant.

* Relativity: Haldeman weaves the practical aspects of relativity into this book more than any other SF novel I've read. It's fascinating nerd mind-fodder.

* More...

Actually about a 3.8. A entertaining, fast read that most readers will love or hate for all the right and wrong reasons.

I read the "definitive version" with the original "too downbeat" middle section. Draw your own conclusions.

One thing I check before reader a book—and I never read the blurbs until after—is the date it was published. That's important here because, while the book was written in 1974, it opens in the 1990s with what Haldeman (in 2008) admitted were such "obvious anachronisms. Thi More...

The book is an allegory of Haldeman’s own Vietnam War experience and can be extrapolated against any other modern war. It is a book about corruption, violence, hope, stupidity - the Tauran war was started by a mistake perpetuated by political and military elites. War made societies easier to govern using fear. Based on, probably, his experience, he tells a story about the futility of warfare and the often random chains of events that lead to absurd costs in financial and human terms.
I liked that More...

Real rating: 4 1/2 stars.

A lot has been written about this novel as a story of Vietnam, but not much has been written about it's second biggest influence: Alvin and Heidi Toffler. The book "Future Shock" and Alvin Toffler are mentioned by name (though not Heidi as she didn't come out of the shadows as one of the thinkers behind Future Shock until well after this was published). The ideas in Future Shock are quite clearly used in how the characters problems with fitting into Earth society after m More...

This book is about William Mandella and his military career. A career that last for centuries due to time dilation caused by his travels near the speed of light to distant planets through worm-hole like devices called collapsars. Mandella spends a few years traveling to distant planets, fighting battles and when he comes home to Earth, decades have pasted. Yes, at last,a book that uses Einstein's relativity theory. Most soldiers don't survive the battles, a lot die in training on base. Space is More...

I finally picked up Joe Haldeman’s seminal sci-fi novel The Forever War and it knocked my snooty spaceship-and-military-fiction-averse socks off. Quick summary for those who haven’t read it yet, the Forever War is about one soldier’s experience in a war between humans and an alien race that, due to time dilation from faster-than-lightspeed travel, lasts over a thousand years. While there are a few battle scenes, the novel isn’t about tactics or technology at all, but rather it’s a timeless soldi More...

The main downside, in my experience, to the military SF genre is that it doesn’t really give you much to think about. The novels are fun, but for the most part they tend to focus on the action. That’s not a bad thing if that’s what you’re looking for--indeed, I quite often find myself in the mood for that sort of story. Still, it’s nice to find a member of the genre that isn’t just a less-philosophical rehash of Starship Troopers. (By the way, I do quite like most of the Heinlein I’ve read, incl More...

I remember reading this in high school and was absolutely fascinated about the temporal aspect of traveling faster than light. Very few authors I had read had really played up this aspect in military sci-fi, instead allowing for their versions of FTL to almost exist outside of time. I quite honestly think that was the most interesting part of the whole book. It just made you stop and think. What if you went away to protect a society and way of life that you believed only to come back and to find More...

I was surprised how much I enjoyed this book as I am not big science fiction person. I found our main character William Mandella to be really interesting and relevant to today, The whole displacement of time, since joining the Army was really fascinating. When Mandella has been in the army for 2 years but returns to the earth and it's 30 some years later, it is very thought provoking. Haldeman's commentary on war, how violence begets violence can be applied to our current situation. I also like More...

This is one of those novels where you can really sense, and to some extent identify, with the main character. The reluctant hero angle really works here and is written in such a way as not to patronise the subject. The complete sense of isolation that is a repeating theme throughout the novel really sets the environment into which grows this slight glimmer of underlying hope.

Really speaks volumes about the impact of war on the those who are called upon and how, when they return, the world they More...

This book follows the military career of one Private William Mandella who joins the military at the start of a centuries long interstellar conflict with an alien race. The training and later the combat is brutal, with many casualties, but Mandella survives when many others are killed. Each time he returns to the war, he is promoted through the ranks, largely due to having survived where his previous superior officer did not.[return]Because of relativity, a few short months on a campaign can mean More...

This book is often listed as a science-fiction classic and is on many "best of" lists. The particular version I read is cited by the author as the definitive version.[return][return]I found it to be an enjoyable read, but not really what I expected. From the description I expected it to cover more time as in the passage of time and the effect it had on the main character, but the story was more about the training the character received and more about his role in the war than about what happened More...

I took a Science Fiction writing class from Joe Haldeman back at MIT, which is why I've been meaning to read this book for the last 15 years. (The class was one of my all time favorites.) I wish I'd read it back then, because I have some questions for him.

Haldeman, by the way, is a Viet Nam vet, and I think this is critical information for reading the book, which he wrote in the 70's, shortly after his tour was over, I believe.

The book follows William Mandala, a physics student who's been cons More...

I tried reading this a couple times before and lost interest in the first quarter of it, but once I got past the opening section it became a bigger story. I had read beforehand that it was thick with Vietnam allegory, and so I was very aware of its several instances. I actually found the sci-fi world-building to be far more intriguing. The way time-travel is utilized and the way the world continues to change every time the protagonist makes a return trip kept me turning the (electronic) pages. I More...

Once again, I made the mistake of picking a science fiction book because it won a bunch of awards. Haldeman's Forever War is very well written--there is no mistaking Haldeman's talent as an author--but the book, written in the early 1970s, reeks of topicality for that era. Much of it is intentional, as Haldeman was drawing in large part on his experiences from the Vietnam War, but better fiction manages to transcend the time in which it was written in ways that Haldeman's work here does not. The More...

Forever War tells the tale of Mandella, a soldier recruited to fight the interstellar war between human and an alien race called Taurans. But don't let yourself be fooled by the title. The strong point of the book is not the grand battles, but the effect of the war on Earth and human colonized planets. Mandella, in being transported by collapsars to battle, become the subject of relativity, and aged a few years while the earth aged many centuries, and things on earth, regarding social or economi More...

Great book.

Like most great sci-fi, it relates directly to something in real life. In this case, the feeling of going to fight a war and coming back to a world that has still been moving on without you.

In this case it's taken to the extreme. Because of some complicated theoretical physics stuff that isn't all that important, the soldiers who leave Earth perceive time passing as normally, however 25 days of deep space deployment can end up being equal to as many years passing on Earth.

It's interes More...

My friend Gurvir recommended this book to me, and his brother Tanvir gave me his second copy to read. They told me it was one of the best science fiction novels they have ever read, and after reading it for myself, I must agree with them. I am usually a fantasy kind of guy, but as of late, I have found a large interest in sci-fi. This book was particularly interesting because it does seem to have a slightly original idea. I've read lots of books, and played lots of games that have to do with ju More...

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman is a futuristic science fiction book which tells the story of a solder’s battle trough space and time. The solder, William Mandella deals with unknown enemies and a changing world as he travels through time and space, while trying to stay with the girl he loves.
Mandella is a member of an elite military unit drafted into service due to being the best and brightest young individuals on earth. The start by being trained to fight an enemy only know from DNA evidence a More...

this has got to honestly be one of the best science fiction books i've read. it's like a wicked mix of all my favorite science fiction books put into one easily accessible and readable novel. imagine ender's game, brave new world, the end of eternity put together, thats how ambitious this book is.

first and foremost, it deals with the idea of war. its futility, its often irrational causes and multifaceted consequences, its effect on an individual, society, a country, an entire planet. it deals wi More...

8/10

Tra le righe si legge un impegno notevole per rendere plausibile l’ambientazione fin nei dettagli, anche a costo di qualche tirata di fisica di troppo: i momenti di vita militare, l’evoluzione degli equipaggiamenti, il sistema di salti spaziotemporali, le vicissitudini politiche sulla Terra… nella gran parte dei casi questa attenzione viene ripagata da una verosimiglianza che permette al lettore di immergersi bene nella storia, di vivere le avventure di Mandella con partecipazione sincera. U More...

I love when I read a book and I expect it to be ok and it turns out to be fantastic. There were so many interesting ideas that Halderman brought to this book. Homosexuality, time dilation, gun control, medicare and the changes a society goes through over long periods of time.

Halderman's take on homosexuality was interesting. I love the idea of humans turning to their own sex because the world is over populated. It also shows what power the government can have over a person's private life. It beg More...

by: Joe Haldeman

Sensing a theme? It's war in space week! And yep, next up is Old Man's War. Thesis/antithesis/synthesis? Or so I've heard. This is definitely the "war is stupid and pointless" to Starship Troopers' "war is awesome and necessary". I'm guessing Old Man's War will be "war is stupid and necessary"?

This felt like it had more of a typical plot and character arc than ST, so I identified better with it in that way, however I found the writing slightly less fluid - although the tale itse More...

This is different from your average Star Wars knockoff. This revolves around William Mandella, an army officer, who literately fights a forever war. Humans have discovered colapsers, area in space that warp you from one point to another. The humans are at war with alien race called Taurans. They both establish bases to take control of colapsers. Well, traveling through colpsers is actually like time travel. It feels like months to the people traveling but actually amounts to years. It follows Ma More...