Peace and War Omnibus: "Forever Peace", "Forever Free", "The Forever War" ~ Paperback ~ Joe Haldeman

WAR William Mandela is a reluctant hero, drafter to fight in a distant interstellar war against unknowable and unconquerable aliens. But his greatest test will be returning to Earth. A few months of his tour of duty equate to centuries on his homeworld, during which he becomes increasingly isolated from the world he has been fighting to protect FREE Mandela returns home for the last time - to find humanity has evolved into a group conciousness which excludes him. Alone, alieneated and missing the certainties of combat, he and his fellow verterans search for an escape - and finally look towards space. PEACE A war is raging, fought by indestructible machines operated remotely by soldiers miles away - and for soldiers like Julian Class, war is truly hell. So when he anc his companion, Dr Amelia Harding, uncover something which could take the universe back to square one, the prospect isn't so much terrifying, as terrifyingly tempting ... Accolades "Forever Peace" won both the Hugo & Nebula Awards 1998. "The Forever War" won the Nebula Award in 1975 & the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1976. Reviews for The Forever War "To say that The Forever War is the best science fiction war novel ever written is to damn it with faint praise. It is, for all its techno-extrapolative brilliance, as fine and woundingly genuine a war story as any I've read." --William Gibson, author of Neuromancer, Spook Country "Perhaps the most important war novel written since Vietnam . . . Haldeman, a veteran, is a flat-out visionary . . . and protagonist William Mandella's attempt to survive and remain human in the face of an absurd almost endless war is harrowing hilarious heartbreaking and true . . . like all the best works of literature THE FOREVER WAR takes you apart and then, before you can turn that last page, puts you back together: better, wiser, more human. Simply extraordinary." --Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao "If there was a Fort Knox for Science Fiction writers, we'd have to lock Joe Haldeman up."--Stephen King, author of The Shining, The Dead Zone, The Stand "The Forever War is not just a great Science Fiction novel, it's a great Vietnam war novel - and a great war novel, without qualification- that is also Science Fiction. A classic to grace either genre." --Iain M. Banks, author of Use of Weapons, The Player of Games, Matter "FOREVER WAR is brilliant--one of the most influential war novels of our time. That it happens to be set in the future only broadens and enhances its message."--Greg Bear, author of Moving Mars, Eon, The Forge of God "I first read this twenty years ago and have never forgotten the wonder and fury it kindled at the time. Anyone who talks about the glory of war has obviously never read it. A beautifully detailed and intensely personal account of a conflict which lasts for over a thousand years, as told by one grunt who lives through it all. Only a writer as skillfull and knowledgeable as Haldeman could use war's dark glamour to lure the reader in and then deplou the sam fascination to show just what kind of effect this orchestrated barbarism can have on the human soul."--Peter F. Hamilton, author of Pandora’s Star, Judas Unchained, The Dreaming Void Review for Forever Peace "It isn't the sequel to The Forever War (1975) that it was rumored to be -- except, perhaps, on a thematic level -- but Haldeman's latest novel holds its own with that SF classic. In the year 2043, an American-led Alliance has been at war with Ngumi, a third-world confederation, for eight years, due largely to the Alliance's refusal to share new technology. Aside from a few thermonuclear strikes, most of the fighting, at least on the Alliance's side, has been carried out by "soldierboys," killing machines run under remote control by brain-jacked "mechanics," many of them draftees like physicist Julian Class. Meanwhile, in orbit around Jupiter, humanity's most ambitious scientific experiment ever, the Jupiter Project, is coming to fruition. But Julian's lover and former adviser, Amelia Harding, discovers that potentially the Project could destroy not just our solar system but the entire universe, in a reprise of the Big Bang. When Amelia and Julian try to stop the Project, their way is blocked by the Hammer of God, an influential Christian cult dedicated to bringing about the Endtime. As always, Haldeman, a Vietnam vet, writes with intelligence and power about the horrors of war, and about humanity's seeming inability to overcome its violent tendencies. Julian Class, like so many of Haldeman's protagonists, is an essentially good man who, forced by the military to become a killer, has been driven nearly to suicide by guilt. His story packs an enormous emotional punch, and this novel should be a strong awards contender." Publishers Weekly Author Biography Joe Haldeman was born in Oklahoma in 1943 and studied physics and astronomy before serving as a combat engineer in Vietnam, where he was severely wounded and won a Purple Heart. The Forever War was his first SF novel and it won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, a feat which The Forever Peace repeated. He is also the author of, among others, Mindbridge, All My Sins Remembered, Worlds, Worlds Apart and Worlds Enough and Time.