Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Forever War
    The Forever War
    The Forever War
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Forever War

    Written by Joe Haldeman

    Narrated by George Wilson

    4.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateApr 18, 2008
    ISBN9781436121170
    Author

    Joe Haldeman

    Joe Haldeman began his writing career while he was still in the army. Drafted in 1967, he fought in the Central Highlands of Vietnam as a combat engineer with the Fourth Division. He was awarded several medals, including a Purple Heart. Haldeman sold his first story in 1969 and has since written over two dozen novels and five collections of short stories and poetry. He has won the Nebula and Hugo Awards for his novels, novellas, poems, and short stories, as well as the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Locus Award, the Rhysling Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. His works include The Forever War, Forever Peace, Camouflage, 1968, the Worlds saga, and the Marsbound series. Haldeman recently retired after many years as an associate professor in the Department of Writing and Humanistic Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He and his wife, Gay, live in Florida, where he also paints, plays the guitar, rides his bicycle, and studies the skies with his telescope. 

    More audiobooks from Joe Haldeman

    Related to The Forever War

    Titles in the series (3)

    View More
    View More

    Related audiobooks

    Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Altered Carbon Gets Stuck In An Old Future

      Feb 12, 2018

      AS A GENRE, SCIENCE FICTION HAS never been smarter—especially as a more diverse array of characters have come to populate some of the most successful stories told onscreen. Last year’s Star Trek prequel cast a black woman as its lead, while the box o

      2 min read

    • Article

      Vietnam My Son, The Soldier

      Sep 1, 2021

      Vietnam My Son, The Soldier
      9 min read

    • Article

      A Marine At Guadalcanal

      Nov 6, 2018

      A Marine At Guadalcanal
      8 min read

    • Article

      Stagger

      Nov 13, 2022

      Stagger
      5 min read

    • Article

      Letter Bocks

      Jan 5, 2022

      ◻ I STAYED up late last month to see that International Space Station fly over our house. Quite apart from the disappointment of just seeing a white dot cross the sky, I was very concerned at the speed they appeared to be doing. I don’t care how much

      13 min read

    • Article

      Burying The Past

      May 17, 2023

      Burying The Past
      5 min read

    • Article

      If Sheep COULD FLY…

      Aug 3, 2022

      If Sheep COULD FLY…
      6 min read

    • Article

      Going For A Quick Six

      Nov 2, 2022

      Going For A Quick Six
      4 min read

    • Article

      Our Last Days in Country

      Nov 29, 2018

      Our Last Days in Country
      15 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      May 18, 2023

      CONTACT US BY POST: PO BOX 1200, WHITSTABLE CT1 9RH, OR E-MAIL SIEVEKING@FORTEANTIMES.COM PLEASE PROVIDE US WITH YOUR POSTAL ADDRESS With reference to his article on Nazi UFOs [FT430:44-49], I would be curious to know what evidence SDTucker has for s

      12 min read

    • Article

      Kept In The Loop

      Oct 4, 2023

      Kept In The Loop
      6 min read

    • Article

      Letter Bocks

      Apr 13, 2023

      Letter Bocks
      9 min read

    • Article

      Encased

      Jul 22, 2021

      Encased
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Moon Is Full of Money

      Jul 18, 2019

      I was slung in my favorite deck chair, drink in hand, having a gawk at the night sky. Andromeda, Pisces ... I trawled the constellations, mind abandoned, still aware in some curve at the back of my brain that the world is coming apart at the seams an

      14 min read

    • Article

      The Moon Is Full of Money

      Sep 7, 2017

      I was slung in my favorite deck chair, drink in hand, having a gawk at the night sky. Andromeda, Pisces ... I trawled the constellations, mind abandoned, still aware in some curve at the back of my brain that the world is coming apart at the seams an

      14 min read

    • Article

      BARRY DODDS’ Haunted Britain

      Apr 13, 2021

      As we emerge slowly from lockdown, our resident paranormal investigator and stand-up comedian Barry Dodds is looking forward to getting back to exploring the UK’s most terrifying haunted locations – and of course reporting back to us! But in the mean

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Forever War

    4.5/5

    519 ratings143 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Review from BadelyngeI've just reacquainted myself with Joe Haldeman's anti-war sci-fi classic The Forever War. First published in 1974 the book tells the story of William Mandella, one of the first conscripted troops to be trained and thrown at an alien race the expansionist human race has encountered unimaginable distances from Earth. After his first tour of duty, lasting two years, Mandella returns to Earth to a home that has advanced by a decade due to the relativistic nature of long distance space travel. The alienation and disconnection with the world he returns to echoes Haldeman's own experiences of returning home from his tours in Viet Nam. As more time passes, Mandella becomes more divorced from the human race as a whole, compounding the meaningless of conflict to preserve a race he no longer identifies with. It's all cleverly written, leading the reader to consider the nature of war and man's relation to it. He explodes the glorification of war and all its cliches one by one, bringing the act of war down to something mechanical with its human components as mere specialised cogs in the machine. The book won the Nebula, Hugo & Locus awards which is no mean feat considering the hot bed of sci-fi talent operating when The Forever War first appeared. Ridley Scott is said to be interested in bringing the book to the big screen.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The Forever War by Joe Haldeman and narrated by George Wilson is a good old fashion sci-fi adventure! Space travel, aliens, action, battles, social changes, military intrigue, and a hint of romance! This book has it all in written expertly! I hung on every word! I loved this book! I read this in 1975 or about then and couldn't remember all the details only parts and that I enjoyed it. I wanted to revisit this now that I am older and wiser. Also to see what social changes time has come true from the book.The narrator was terrific! Perfect for this story!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      William Mandella is a soldier in a space war between Earth and an alien race, the Taurans. He travels from planet to planet, creating bases and fighting battles with a brief tour back on Earth as a civilian. Because they travel through collapsar jumps which means that years can pass while Mandella only ages in days or months. There's a lot of military jargon which the reader would expect from a military space opera book. The author is a Viet Nam veteran and in some ways, this book is reflective of his experiences there told through a science-fiction lens. How Mandella is treated on his return to Earth parallels what many Viet Nam vets went through on their return home. Other reviewers have noted how some of the sexual views in the book seem dated; future populations on Earth have become homosexual due to population explosion and eugenics. I'll be honest. Military Science Fiction is not my usual read, but I did enjoy this book and found it interesting. It's a Science Fiction classic and certainly deserves its accolades.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      The first time I read this book it had a profound affect on me. I was not alone as it was highly acclaimed and won awards.Rereading it, twenty five years later, I am slightly less enthusiastic but still enjoyed it as a great SF book. I will be reading more books by this author.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      I'd expected better as this book is regarded as a classic, but I found it boring. War is hell, I already know that and don't need to be told over and over again.The female characters were very cardboard (well, so were the men to be fair). I kept wondering when the women would realise they had been mentally conditioned to want sex all the time so as to keep the guys happy, but the writer seemed to miss that one. (It would have been very plausible in the context of the novel.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Greatly enjoyed it. Funny wry dead pan humor, cerebral, forever timely
    • 5/5
      Such a fantastic story.

      The science is amazing, the relationship ark of the protagonist only becomes emotionally real near the end but when some bad news is delivered at one point, the feelings felt are intense.

      Just an amazing story. Please read or listen to it!
    • 5/5
      Very good. Alien war. Interesting thoughts on war.
    • 5/5
      An older story but quite amusing. It is worth a read.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book, but I didn't live the narrator.
    • 4/5
      I don't read a lot of science fiction anymore but I decided to give this a shot. I really enjoyed reading the book even though I found at times that it left me feeling a little depressed. The story has a nice "nitty gritty" feel to it giving it a sense of "being real" even in a sci-fi environment. The ending was not what I expected (not sure if that's good or not).
    • 5/5
      There were plenty of things that made it feel like it was undeniably written in the 1970's, but was a great story nonetheless, and was plenty of fun to read.
    • 5/5
      Wow. I picked this up pretty much at random and it was surprisingly good. Too good. Why hadn’t I knew about this one.
    • 3/5
      Good, well written, intelligent science fiction, albeit with paper-thin characters and little actual human emotion. Written by a Vietnam vet in 1974, it is a thinly veiled satire on Vietnam, and war in general.
    • 4/5
      I can't believe that I missed reading this book for so long. I've had the paperback forever and finally just finished the eBook. Interesting fact I just found out, Joe's wife is Mary Gay Potter and they will celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary this week at Worldcon. I wish them as long a life as "Mandella" and "Gay" and hope that it is considerably happier. I really loved this book and plan on picking up the sequels and they won't sit around unread for long.
    • 5/5
      Wow! To think this book was written in the 70’s! The description was wonderful; I could practically “see” the story. Not sure how anyone could make physics sound interesting. I’m going to reread just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. The ending was a great closure with a twist.
    • 5/5
      I had a great time listening to the book. The author has a very good theoretical preparation in Physics and great skill in creating an enchanting story.
    • 4/5
      Inevitably, I feel bound to compare The Forever War to the two other great military science fiction books I've read, Starship Troopers and Old Man's War. Starship Troopers is the more classic of the two for obvious reasons. It is largely a philosophical book, that sets out to make an argument. Whether that argument was for or against the society it outlined is up to interpretation, but there's no doubt it was saying something. Old Man's War in contrast isn't really making an overarching argument. It's just a fun novel with an awesome premise. These books both work. Because The Forever War tries to have it both ways to varying degrees of success, it only sort of works, and comes in a distant third behind Heinlein's and Scalzi's novels.The Forever War is built on the premise that Earth has encountered a hostile race in its interstellar travels. This race appears bent on destruction whenever it encounters humans. To counterract this, humanity enlists a draft of its most intelligent youths, and sends them into the fray. Of course, given the vast distances involved, we quickly find out how relativity affects the course of war. It's an interesting idea, that most books would try to avoid. Haldeman deals with it brilliantly, and the timescales involved play a huge part in the novel's appeal.Where the novel starts to break down is the obvious nature of its allegory. This is a Vietnam book. But it isn't in any way subtle. We didn't try to understand the North Vietnamese motivations as much as we should have. Well, in The Forever War, we don't try to understand them at all! In the Vietnam War, our intervention was fabricated based on flimsy justification. But in The Forever War, the entire war is a big fabrication just to keep a constant war economy! In Vietnam, soldiers came home to a country that had changed culturally. In The Forever War, they come back to a world where everyone is homosexual! (seriously) These were the dull parts, where Haldeman was trying to force the story to serve the message rather than the reverse.The Forever War has long stretches where it's a fascinating read. Then it has other stretches where it seems ludicrous. Haldeman's writing seems borderline homophobic at times as well. It's a mixed bag. In the end, I think there are better examples of military science fiction, but The Forever War is still worth reading.
    • 4/5
      The Forever War is the story of a scientist, Mandella, who is recruited to fight a war against the Taurans, an alien species nobody knows much about.

      The soldiers travel through collapsars, something like gates to another part of the universe. But to reach the collapsars they have to travel at light speed. This has an important consequence: on Earth time is quicker than on the ship, so when the soldiers arrive back on Earth, some of their relatives and friends are already dead.

      There are two main topics in this novel. The first one is how the war affects the soldiers while they are fighting and the second, how they find themselves in a society they no longer fit in once they return to Earth.

      Mandella, the main character, starts as a young recruit. He is a completely normal person, like the readers. Suddenly he is in the middle of a war he can’t understand. He is a very realistic character. The reader learns of his fears, worries and wishes. And sees from his point of view how much the Earth has changed when he returns home and when the war ends.

      The book shows how this character evolves. At first he is a rather innocent man who hates the people that give him orders and just wants to return home. Throughout the novel he changes, and at some point he is the one giving orders and facing tough decisions regarding the lives of the people he commands.

      When he returns home, his younger brother is older than he is and he learns how much society has changed. At first he thinks he can adapt to these changes, but the more he learns, the more he hates what the world has become. At some point he even thinks he has nothing left there.

      When he meets somebody who left home a couple hundred years after he did, Mandella learns that the Earth has changed even more. It is now completely unrecognizable.

      The descriptions of the planets, weapons, battle suits and the battles are very detailed. This makes it possible to the reader to imagine everything easily, but they are not long enough to make the novel boring.

      There is a negative part about this. While it doesn’t bother me, some people may not like all the sometimes very graphic explanations of how the soldiers die.

      I enjoyed reading this book and couldn’t put it down, but I found two big negative aspects. One is the kind of words everybody uses. Nobody seems to be able to express themselves without curses. The other is the high amount of sex mentioned. While there aren’t any graphic descriptions of that, it looks like nobody can refrain from sleeping with everybody else.
    • 5/5
      This is obviously a classic in the realms of sci-fi and of anti-war novels, and another book with thousands of reviews that I can't improve upon, but I'll just offer a couple of insights.

      One of the primary concepts from the book is the main character returning from space travel (complete with Spacial Relativity) to an Earth that was completely foreign to him; it was a massive dose of culture shock which progressed deeper and deeper the further the story went. I was in the US Air Force for 22 years, and can say without a doubt that returning to the US after a 4-year overseas assignment to the Philippines, that this type culture shock is a real thing. I was stationed there from 1985-1989, and basically immersed myself in the Philippine culture. When I returned to the US in mid-summer 1989, there was so much that had changed in 4 "short" years. Imagine being a military member sent to outer space, traveling through colapsars (wormholes), and returning to Earth a century or more in the future while you've only aged a few weeks or months.

      The other thing that the author captures very well is the lack of understanding of the "big picture" at the lowest enlisted level. This is something that will always be a factor in any military, even though you constantly hear, "think of the military objective". That objective is so obscure and far-off that the peons have no idea why they do what they do. They follow the propaganda that the enemy is "evil", and that our government is "good". This was Haldeman's view of the Vietnam War in a nutshell. His allegories, especially early on, with the battalions attacking Tauran "villages" were spot on, and the question of whether the troops destroying said villages as part of the overall military objective was something our troops continually struggled with, coming home with PTSD. He didn't mention it in the story, but you can see the effects of PTSD in a lot of the characters in the book.
    • 3/5
      The book was written in the 1970's and the setting started in 1997. Interesting to read what the author thought things would be like in the current (2012) past. Bummer that the "star-gate" wormhold thingy hasn't been found. Maybe not, as good science fiction almost always does - what was on the other side of the worm hole may not be friendly. Overall the book wasn't as good as I hoped it would be. Some parts were episondic, not really creating an overall epic tale that I enjoy much more.
    • 5/5
      This a must buy. One of best scifi novels written. Hard science with good memorable characters. This is one book that is worth re-reading.
    • 5/5
      Now that's how you tell a story. Start right in, say what you came to say, and get out. Two hundred and sixty-four pages, no fuss. Brilliant.
    • 4/5
      The sound quality was great, and it was a space opera
    • 5/5
      The Forever War, for me, lived up to its reputation. I had been wanted to read this book for at least a couple of years. An excellent use of time-dilation to represent the way that a war leaves soldiers disconnected from the civilian population (especially the Vietnam War). Would highly recommend this as an excellent example of the way that science fiction can mirror society.
    • 5/5
      The Forever War, for me, lived up to its reputation. I had been wanted to read this book for at least a couple of years. An excellent use of time-dilation to represent the way that a war leaves soldiers disconnected from the civilian population (especially the Vietnam War). Would highly recommend this as an excellent example of the way that science fiction can mirror society.
    • 5/5
      Great book. Really imaginative. Looking forward to reading his other books!
    • 5/5
      This was a fun book to read. I mean, what more can you want in a book? The story is intriguing and the main character is definitely someone you can relate to. The book does a good job of letting you relate to life of continuously coming back home to find it changed completely. The predictions of the future, the relationships, the battle and training experiences are all top notch. The book is able to cover so much time and space without feeling that it was moving too fast or jumping around too much. The only thing that I had a problem with was keeping track of all of the characters sometimes (but that's probably my problem more than the book's (-: ).All in all, this book is highly recommended for those looking for a good story, interesting characters and character interaction and an intriguing view of the future.
    • 5/5
      Written by Vietnam War veteran Haldeman, The Forever War won both the the Nebula Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1975), the Locus Award for Fiction Novel (1976)**, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel (1976). Critics consider The Forever War one of the quintessential pieces of American Science Fiction because it stands the test of time. Ironically, The Forever War came close to never being published; as the author notes in his introduction to the edition I read "it was rejected by eighteen publishers before St. Martin's Press [which at the time did not publish adult science fiction] decided to take a chance on it" (xv).

      The Forever War, and allegory of the Vietnam War, focuses on the tale of William Mandella, a physicist and physics teacher who as been drafted into the United Nations Exploratory Force (UNEF) through the Elite Conscription Act of 1996. Each person drafted into the UNEF was considered a genius within his or her field; only the best and the brightest would serve in this new army that was put together to battle an alien force, the Taurans, that had been encountered when time travel through time dilation, which is allowed by Stargates (not the kind of Stargates we think of from the television series) and collapsar jumps between portal planets.

      The novel follows Mandella, from Private to Major, through 1143 years of Earth Relative time, which only seem like months to him. While he is in space and jumping from planet to planet, he ages only months as the Earth ages decades, even centuries and in the few times that Mandella makes it back to earth after being in space, for him, a relatively short time, sweeping changes occur--the population explodes, billions are without jobs, the monetary system is replaced by trading in Ks or calories, everyone is armed, has body guards, of lives in idyllic communes that are sporadically and devastatingly raided by armed men, and "veterans" of the interstellar war are displaced and not necessarily treated as heroes to the point where they "re-enlist" based on false promises that are quickly nullified by a change in orders.

      Haldeman's novel is a powerful study of not simply the devastating effects of war on the combatants but its strains on the economic and political systems as well as the social structures of cities and nations as a whole. Above all, The Forever War is a powerful look at the human psyche and an exploration of human resilience. After reading this novel, I understand why it won so many awards. While The Forever War certainly speaks to the time it was written, it clearly speaks to our time now by touching on issues that come around again (or perhaps never really leave us).

      **The Locus Award was presented for Best Novel from 1971 to 1979; in 1980 they changed the award designation to Best Science Fiction Novel.**
    • 3/5
      Summary: Private William Mandella may be a Midwestern boy, but he's been enlisted as part of an elite military group that is being sent to fight the newest threat to humanity: an alien race known as the Taurans. Not much is known about what the Taurans look like, what their capabilities are, or where they live, but Mandella and his unit must prepare to fight them regardless. But before they can fight, they have to get there, using new technology to travel vast interstellar distances nearly instantaneously, but there's no way of knowing what they'll find when they get there, or, given the relativistic speeds they're travelling, what they'll find on Earth once they get back.Review: I can see why this one's a classic, but it just didn't really do it for me. I will say that I certainly didn't actively dislike this book, and it had some cool ideas that I quite enjoyed. But military sci-fi just isn't really my thing, Old Man's War notwithstanding, and the story never really pulled me in. I should have learned that lesson with The Lost Fleet, but alas. Actually, my reactions to The Forever War and The Lost Fleet were pretty similar. Best things first: I think the idea of relativistic speeds and interstellar distances and how they affect things like battles and wars and soldiers and veterans is a really, really neat idea, particularly for someone who grew up watching Star Trek, where they routinely blithely ignore that part of physics. I loved the concept that by the time you'd traveled to engage your enemy, it had taken you months but they'd had centuries, so your technology would always be hopelessly outmatched. I also thought this was a really nice treatment of the "can't go home again" problem of relativity, where you come back the same age but all your loved ones are 10, 20, 50 years older than when you left... or more. There's obviously a clear parallel to veterans here, not only in the war parts of the story but also in the idea of returning home to a world you no longer recognize. (Given the time frame, it's clearly supposed to be a Vietnam allegory, but I think it would probably be applicable to veterans of various combats - not that I have any personal military experience against which to judge.)However, on the other hand, I didn't find the story part of the story particularly compelling. The writing is smooth enough, but it's fairly episodic - battle sequence, techy spacesuit stuff, travel, some interpersonal bits, some economic bits, more travel, more techy stuff - and doesn't feel like it connected terribly well. Worse, I had zero connection with the main character, and even the more interpersonal bits totally failed to spark any emotional resonance. Intellectually, I was interested in the concepts, but viscerally, I didn't really care whether or not Mandella found the Earth too different to deal with, or whether he and his girlfriend would be separated forever or not. Also, I get that attitudes towards homosexuality, particularly in military contexts, were probably very different in 1974, but there's a distinct homophobia about Mandella (and thus about the book as a whole) that bugged. 3 out of 5 stars.Recommendation: If you're a fan of military and/or classic sci-fi, or stories about soldiers, or are very interested in the practicalities of near-light-speed travel, then it's probably worth checking out. There are plenty of people out there who would enjoy it, and it's not bad, but it wasn't for me.