Joe Haldeman’s science fiction novel The Forever War was published in 1974 and is considered a classic of the genre: Along with Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, The Forever War invented the science fiction war novel. It won the 1975 Nebula Award as well as the 1976 Hugo and Locus awards. Haldeman, a veteran of the Vietnam War and a Purple Heart recipient, infuses his firsthand knowledge of war and military protocols into his futuristic setting, creating a narrative that is both fanciful and achingly real. The author of 20 novels and several story collections, Haldeman taught creative writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1983 to 2014.  

Plot Summary

William Mandella, a recent graduate with a degree in physics, is drafted into the army under the Elite Conscription Act, a law that seeks to fill the military ranks with only the best and brightest. In the future, humans have discovered “collapsars,” wormholes that allow high-speed space travel across vast distances in very short periods of time. As they begin to colonize unknown parts of the galaxy, they run afoul of the Taurans, an alien race that, military authorities claim, has attacked an Earth vessel, although evidence of the attack is sketchy. The military and the United Nations Exploratory Force soon start a war with the Taurans, seeking to establish footholds on “portal planets,” bodies orbiting collapsars. In basic training, Private Mandella learns many ways to kill, both hand to hand and with the military’s latest technology. A fully integrated force, the army encourages sexual relations among its members, and Mandella obliges with Rogers, a biologist in his platoon.

Mandella’s platoon is soon sent to the planet Charon to complete basic training in the hostile environment of space. The hazards of working and fighting in deep space take their toll, and after two weeks of training, 11 soldiers have died. Once training is complete, the platoon is transferred to Stargate 1, where they are given their first assignment: Attack a Tauran base and take at least one prisoner alive. On the planet’s surface, the ground assault becomes a slaughter as Taurans flee without protection and the humans, under the influence of mind control and propaganda, revert to bloodthirsty barbarism.

Twenty years later, Mandella is now a sergeant, and the war continues. The physics of near light-speed travel have kept Mandella young while the universe ages around him. He finds love with Margay Potter, a corporal and comrade-in-arms. Their ship, the Earth’s Hope II, tries to outrun a pursuing Tauran vessel, but it is eventually damaged in an attack, and Potter is severely injured. Her brush with death convinces them both to retire after their final mission.

Back on Earth, Mandella and Potter find a drastically different society. Overpopulation and food shortages have resulted in rampant crime and authoritarian social engineering practices. When Potter’s parents, communal farmers, are killed in a raid and Mandella’s mother dies from medical neglect, they decide to re-enlist. At least the military culture is the devil they know.

Years later, Lieutenant Mandella is injured in a crash and loses a leg, although the new, sophisticated space suits amputate and cauterize the damage in seconds. Mandella and Potter, also injured in the crash, get six months for rehabilitation and relaxation on “Heaven,” a resort planet. After six months, they are reassigned to separate platoons. Even if they both survive the next few years of combat, the distance from each other and the relative time disparity virtually assure that they will never see each other again.

Hundreds of years later, Major Mandella leads a strike force beyond the borders of the galaxy to establish a base on a distant planet. The war, which has been going on for over 1,000 years, has left both sides scrambling for scraps of territory. En route, Mandella survives an assassination attempt and struggles with the demands of leadership. On the planet, they build a base with more advanced weaponry and a protective “stasis dome” under which all conventional weapons are useless. After a brutal battle—during which soldiers are forced to fight under the dome with swords and spears—the Taurans finally retreat, and Mandella and the surviving members of his strike force return to Stargate.

During their long return trip (long by “objective,” or Earth, time standards), human clones, connected by a single hive mind, have assumed all military and political leadership duties and managed to establish communication with the Taurans. By the time Mandella’s ship reaches Stargate, the war has ended, an armistice negotiated. After more than 1,000 years of battle, the clones have designated the war “a monument to human stupidity” (259). While Mandella tries to decide which planet to call home, he finds a note from Margay Potter. She has relocated to a planet called Middle Finger. She has bought a starship and, using the ship’s hyperspeed to slow down her own objective aging process, now waits for him. Mandella joins her, and together, they, the oldest survivors of the Forever War, have a child.