Joe Haldeman
Joe Haldeman
Joe William Haldemanis an American science fiction author. He is best known for his 1974 novel The Forever War. That novel, and other of his works including The Hemingway Hoaxand Forever Peace, have won major science fiction awards including the Hugo Award and Nebula Award. For his career writing science fiction and/or fantasy he is a SFWA Grand Master and since 2012 a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth9 June 1943
CountryUnited States of America
I don't think I would have written a combat novel if I had just had peacetime military training. I think, in fact, I probably would have remained a poet and just written a short story every now and then.
If I had had a thing like an iPad when I was a kid, then I never would have gotten into the habit of writing things down by hand.
I carry a notebook and write down things to do, and I write out thoughts and stuff like that.
I met Heinlein after 'The Forever War' had won the Hugo and Nebula Awards. He shook my hand and said he loved the book so much, he'd read it three times.
You'd have to put yourself back in the 1960s to understand how separate from the mainstream of American life soldiers felt themselves to be, because we knew that students and others were demonstrating pretty violently against what we were doing.
Big money seeks out the company of its own, for purposes of reproduction.
A good sign that an army has been around too long is that it starts getting top-heavy with officers.
I have always valued quiet, and the eternity of it that I face is no more dreadful than the eternity of quiet that preceded my birth.
One thing most of us agree on is that the universe exists (people who deny that usually follow some trade other than science), so if some theoretical particle interaction would lead ultimately to the nonexistence of the universe, then you can save a lot of electricity by not trying to demonstrate it.
Maybe war is an inevitable product of human nature. Maybe to get rid of war, we have to become something other than human.
Rationalism doesn't require "belief," only observation. The real, measurable world doesn't care what you believe.
One cannot make command decisions simply by assessing the tactical situation and going ahead with whatever course of action will do the most harm to the enemy with a minimum of death and damage to your own men and materiel. Modern warfare has become very complex, especially during the last century. Wars are won not by a simple series of battles won, but by a complex interrelationship among military victory, economic pressures, logistic maneuvering, access to the enemy’s information, political postures—dozens, literally dozens of factors.
Relativity propped it up, at least gave it the illusion of being there…the way all reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity. Or Buddhism. Or get drafted.
All experience is memory, and so everything you write about is from memory-unless you're writing about typing.