The Forever War

The Forever War is a military science fiction novel by the American writer Joe Haldeman, published in 1974. It tells the story of human troops sent to fight an interstellar war against a species known as the Taurans. In 1975 it took the Nebula for Best Novel, and the Hugo and Locus awards came in 1976. It was the opening title of the SF Masterworks series.

Mandella, a physics student, is drafted into an elite unit of the United Nations Exploratory Force, which is being gathered to fight the Taurans, an alien species that came to human attention after an apparent attack on colonist ships. The recruits are highly educated, healthy and fit, and they are trained on a frozen planet where the survival rate is part of the process. Mandella is shipped out for a first strike that almost kills him.

Relativistic travel means each tour costs him months while years pass at home, so he returns again and again to a world that has moved on without him. His promotions exist because the officers above him are dead, and every leave on Earth is spent in a country he recognises less than the last time. The war lasts for centuries while the soldiers who fight it barely age.

Haldeman drew on his own experience of the Vietnam War. Direct and thematic sequels, Forever Free and Forever Peace, followed, and the story has also been adapted into a comic book and a board game.