An interview with all-time sci fi great Joe Haldeman and his wife Gay! The Forever War is absolutely one of the best sci fi books of all time, and we were excited to discuss the origins, real-life inspiration, and message of the book, as well as sci-fi and writing more broadly. In addition to writing more than 30 novels, Joe was also a professor at MIT (as was Gay) where he taught science fiction writing for decades.
As always, you can also search for "Hugonauts" on your podcast app of choice if you prefer to listen to the show.
This week, instead of us recommending similar books, we asked Joe and Gay for their recommendations:
Joe's books (after the Forever War):
- Camouflage
- The World's Trilogy
- The Accidental Time Machine
- Work Done for Hire
Other sci-fi recommendations:
- Vonnegut
- The Murderbot series – Martha Wells
- Ted Chiang
- N.K. Jemisin - Broken Earth trilogy
- Lois McMaster Bujold
Non sci-fi recommendations:
- John Dos Passos
- Ernest Hemingway
NO SPOILERS SUMMARY OF THE FOREVER WAR: William Mandella was a physics student when he was conscripted into the UNEF. Human colony ships had been disappearing, apparently at the hands of a newly discovered alien species called the Taurans, and humanity is conscripting the best and brightest to go out and fight the aliens in deep space.
Mandella and the rest of the recruits undergo dangerous and brutal training to learn how fight for control of the collapsars that greatly speed interstellar travel. During training and through the difficult fighting that follows, Mandella falls in love with another member of his unit, a woman named Marygay Potter.
Mandella and Marygay do everything they can to survive the war, but even if they survive, they still can’t return to the world they left behind. Even with the collapsars to speed their interstellar journeys, travelling through the gaps between the stars still requires accelerating to near lightspeed, and the resulting time dilation means every trip takes them farther and farther into the future, away from their families and the society they knew.
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
1:48 Forever War summary (no spoilers)
3:30 The inspiration for The Forever War
5:00 Naming characters after real people
7:12 Homosexuality in the Forever War
12:16 Could the draft come back?
13:03 The ‘subtle’ message of the book
16:11 How sci-fi has changed over time
20:53 Winning the Hugo & Nebula
30:58 What is science fiction?
34:59 Making money & creativity
44:44 Joe’s other novels
46:08 Joe & Gay’s sci-fi book recommendations
#booktube #JoeHaldeman #ForeverWar #scifi #hugonauts #GayHaldeman
