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The Forever War is a 1974 science fiction novel by Joe Haldeman. It won the Nebula Award in 1975 and the Hugo Award in 1976. Both an action-laden and contemplative story of an interstellar war between humanity and the enigmatic Tauran species, it deals with themes like the inhumanity of both war and its attendant bureaucracy, as well as with the results of time dilation space travel which may cause a soldier to return to his home only after centuries have gone by.

Plot Synopsis:

The novel tells the story of William Mandella, a university student conscripted for an elite UN task force being assembled for a war against the Taurans, an alien species discovered when they suddenly attacked human colonists' ships. They are sent out for what might be described as reconnaissance in force, though the politics of revenge are also a major factor in their formation.

The army recruited for the task is composed of elite recruits; IQs of 150 and above, highly educated and at very high levels of physical health and fitness. The story begins during the training of the first group of recruits. They undergo a grueling training regimen on Earth and later on Charon, which results in a number of casualties - mainly due to accidents in hostile environments but also due the use of live weapons in training. The new soldiers then depart for action, traveling via wormhole-like phenomena called 'collapsars' that allow ships to cover thousands of light-years in a split second. However, traveling to and from the collapsars at near-lightspeed has massive relativistic effects.

Their first encounter with (unarmed) Taurans on a faraway planet turns into a massacre, with the unresisting enemy base wiped out. Mandella melancholically reflects on how typical the encounter was for humanity's previous record in interaction with other cultures. This first expedition lasted only a few months from the soldier's perspective, but due to time dilation, upon return to Earth many years have passed. On the long way home, the soldiers experience future shock firsthand, as the Taurans employ increasingly advanced weaponry against them while they themselves did not yet have the chance to re-arm.

Mandella, together with fellow soldier, lover and companion Marygay, initially returns to civilian life, only to find humanity drastically changed. He and his fellow soldiers have difficulty fitting into a future society that has evolved almost beyond their comprehension. The veterans learn that, to curb overpopulation, which led to world-wide food wars, homosexuality has become officially encouraged by the world government. The changes within society alienate Mandella and the other veterans to the point where many re-enlist simply to escape, even though they realize the military is a soulless construct. The inability of the military to treat its soldiers as more than valuable, highly complex machines is a major theme of the story.

Almost entirely through luck, Mandella survives four subjectively experienced years of military service, which time dilation makes equivalent to several centuries of combat and change. He soon becomes the 'oldest' surviving soldier in the war, attaining high rank through seniority, although not from personal ambition (he is portrayed as an eternally reluctant soldier, who acts mostly from natural talent and a melancholic sense of duty). Despite this he is separated from Marygay, who has remained his last contact with the Earth from his youth, by inexorable and impersonal military machinery. As the commanding officer of a 'strike force', Mandella now commands soldiers who speak a language completely unrecognizable to him, whose ethnicity is now nearly uniform, and are exclusively homosexual.

Engaging in combat thousands of light years away from Earth, Mandella and his soldiers need to resort to medieval weapons in order to fight inside a force-field which neutralizes all energy weapons and instruments. They battle to survive what is to be the last conflict of the war; which unknown to them, has already officially ended. During the time that has since passed on Earth, mankind has begun to employ human cloning, resulting in a new species calling itself Man. Man has developed a means of communication unique and inherent to clones, which allows them to communicate with the Taurans, leading to peace. It turns out the war was a colossal mistake - the Taurans are a naturally clone-based species and could not communicate with the pre-clone humans. Misunderstandings, especially by the trigger-happy humanity, led to the conflict.

Man establishes several colonies of old-style, heterosexual humans, just in case the evolutionary change proves to be mistake. Mandella travels to one of these colonies, named 'Middle Finger' (instead called 'Index' (possibly for index finger) in some of the graphic novel adaption). There he is reunited with Marygay, who had been discharged much earlier and had intentionally used time dilation to age at a much slower rate, hoping and waiting for Mandella's return. The epilogue is a news item from the year 3143 announcing the birth of a "fine baby boy" to Marygay Potter-Mandella.

Many years afterwards, Haldeman, at the request of Robert Silverberg, wrote Marygay's first-person account of her time of separation from Mandella. It included not only the military details but also the difficulty of coping as a lone heterosexual woman with a society where same-sex relations are the inflexible norm - which was included as the title story in the collection A Separate War (2006). Haldeman commented that "it was fun to write her story, both as a bridge to the sequel (Forever Free) and as an oblique commentary on The Forever War, twenty years later".