The Forever War

Editorial review

Haldeman, a Vietnam veteran, wrote the definitive military science fiction novel as an anti-war book. The relativistic time dilation — soldiers returning to centuries they no longer belong to — is one of the most quietly devastating ideas in the genre.

AI-distilled summary

In the late twenty-first century, humanity's first faster-than-light starships drag a small force of conscripted soldiers — including physics student William Mandella — into a war with the alien Taurans that will, thanks to relativistic time dilation, span more than a thousand subjective years. Each return to Earth is a return to a planet none of the soldiers recognize.

Key takeaways

• 1

  Relativity, applied to war, exposes the cost of return as much as the cost of going.

• 2

  Military science fiction can be the most serious anti-war literature in the genre.

• 3

  Empire, in Haldeman's reading, mostly outlives its original justification.

• 4

  'You can't go home' is not a metaphor in this book; it is the central plot mechanic.