BOOK REVIEW: Joe Haldeman's The Forever War

I finally read the classic 1974 sci-fi novel by Joe Haldeman called The Forever War which won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1975 and 1976, respectively. These are pretty significant achievement and it would be difficult for a book to live up to it.

This one does.

The central premise is about a war between humans and aliens that is occurring way out in space so that even though faster-than-light is possible via wormholes, the trips ends up taking decades of Earth-time. The author uses this relativistic effect as a time-machine that allows the characters to experience huge time shifts and allows the author to speculate on Earth's future in exciting, engrossing and particularly amusing ways.

The protagonist of the book is an Everyman: William Mandella, a (presumably) straight white American male who is conscripted to fight the aliens despite a 50% casualty rate and somehow manages to survive multiple missions in what becomes known as "The Forever War."

GRADE: A.