The Forever War - Hardcover

HALDEMAN, Joe

4.14

166,070 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0575073187 ISBN 13: 9780575073180

Publisher: Gollancz, 2001

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When it was first published over 20 years ago, Joe Haldeman’s novel won the Hugo and Nebula awards and was chosen Best Novel in several countries. Today, it is hailed a classic of science fiction that foreshadowed many of the futuristic themes of the 1990s: bionics, sensory manipulation, and time distortion.

William Mandella is a soldier in Earth’s elite brigade. As the war against the Taurans sends him from galaxy to galaxy, he learns to use protective body shells and sophisticated weapons. He adapts to the cultures and terrains of distant outposts. But with each month in space, years are passing on Earth. Where will he call home when (and if) the Forever War ends? Narrator George Wilson’s performance conveys all the imaginative technology and human drama of The Forever War. Set against a backdrop of vivid battle scenes, this absorbing work asks provocative questions about the very nature of war.

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Review:

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

About the Author:

SALES POINTS * #1 in the Millennium SF Masterworks series, a library of the finest science fiction ever written * Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Award as best sf novel of the year * 'Faultless advanced military technology, fascinating aliens, and a dangerously believable future Earth ... a book that's damn near perfect' -- Peter F. Hamilton * 'If there was a Fort Knox for science fiction writers who really matter, we'd have to lock Haldeman up there' -- Stephen King

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