2001: A Space Odyssey
Half of the most influential SF artefact of the twentieth century.
Book Entry · Science Fiction
What is The Forever War about?
Conscripted under the Elite Conscription Act for his physics degree and fitness scores, William Mandella fights the Taurans across collapsar jumps that flick decades past at relativistic speed: each tour returns him to an Earth more alien than the enemy — new economics, new sexualities, new languages — until only the army, and fellow soldier Marygay Potter, remain as home. The combat is exact (Haldeman's wounds informing every page), the time-dilation grief exacter still, and the war's final accounting — a thousand years of casualties traced to a misunderstanding — lands like a court verdict.
Why it matters
Hugo, Nebula and Locus winner; the Vietnam veteran's answer to Starship Troopers and the cornerstone of morally serious military SF. Heinlein himself reportedly told Haldeman it may have been the best future war story he'd ever read.
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