The Forever War By Joe Haldeman (1976)

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

The Forever War is one of the best science fiction war books ever written. It won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus award for best novel and has remained popular with multiple different versions being released and a movie in development.

It tells the story of a young man who is conscripted into a space infantry unit and fights through the thousand year of The Forever War, though due to time dilation it only takes a few years for him. This allows the author to explore the changes in society over that time, examine how war effects the person in it and show the entire war.

The biggest influence of this novel was almost certainly the Vietnam war and the author set the book considerably earlier than he would have because he wanted veterans of Vietnam in the book. This naturally makes it a generally anti war with the soldiers as much victims as anything else.

Saturday

Apr232011

The Forever War Covers

Saturday, April 23, 2011 at 4:07AM

With this amount of covers there are a suprizingly large numbers of covers for The Forever War which actually make sense for the book and none that are completly off the radar. This is stranger than it should be beacuse it seems like often covers can really miss the point. I think my favorite for the feeling of the book is the first beacuse the jungle really gives the Vietnaum feel without giving up the theme of the book while The Forever War covers in which show spaceships. They are in the book of course, but simply don't feel like they should be considered the center of the book.

Elton Gahr |