Joe Haldeman

Joe William Haldeman (born June 9, 1943) is 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 Hoax (1991) and Forever Peace (1997), 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.

Many of Haldeman's works, including his debut novel War Year and his second novel The Forever War, were inspired by his experience serving in the Vietnam War, where he was wounded in combat, and by his adjustment to civilian life after returning home.

Life
Haldeman was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His family traveled and he lived in Puerto Rico, New Orleans, Washington DC, Bethesda (Maryland), and Anchorage (Alaska) as a child. In 1965, Haldeman married Mary Gay Potter, known as "Gay". He received a BS degree in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Maryland in 1967. Haldeman is the brother of Jack C. Haldeman II (1941–2002), also a science-fiction author whose work included an original Star Trek novel (Perry's Planet, February 1980).

He was immediately drafted into the United States Army, and served as a combat engineer in Vietnam. He was wounded in combat and received a Purple Heart. His wartime experience was the inspiration for War Year, his first novel; also later books such as The Hemingway Hoax and Old Twentieth which deal extensively with the experience of combat soldiers in Vietnam and other wars.

In 1975, he received an MFA degree in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Haldeman resides alternately in Gainesville, Florida and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1983, he has been an Adjunct Professor teaching writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is also the fictional setting for his 2007 novel, The Accidental Time Machine. Haldeman is also a painter.

In 2009 and 2010, he was hospitalized for pancreatitis.

Work
Haldeman's first book was a 122-page novel, War Year, published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in May 1972. The novel was sold with the help of fellow writer Ben Bova. It was based on his letters home from Vietnam, and was marketed as both mainstream and Young Adult. His most famous novel is his second, The Forever War (St. Martin's Press, 1974), which was inspired by his Vietnam experiences and originated as his MFA thesis for the Iowa Writers' Workshop. It won the year's "Best Novel" Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards. He later turned it into a series. In 1975, two Attar novels were published as Pocket Books paperback originals under the pen name Robert Graham. Haldeman also wrote two of the earliest original novels based on the 1960s Star Trek television series universe, Planet of Judgment (August 1977) and World Without End (February 1979).

Haldeman wrote the first two SF stories that he (later) sold, in a college creative writing class in 1967. "Out of Phase" appeared in the September 1969 Galaxy magazine, and "the other worked its way down to a penny-a-word market, Amazing Stories, and netted me all of $15 -- but then years later it was adapted for  The Twilight Zone, for fifty times as much. Not bad for a story banged out overnight to meet a class deadline." Haldeman has written at least one produced Hollywood movie script. The film, a low-budget science fiction film called Robot Jox, was released in 1990. He was not entirely happy with the product, saying "to me it’s as if I’d had a child who started out well and then sustained brain damage".

In a 2016 interview, Haldeman said, "Jack of all trades, master of none I think. It’s a way to go. Not all writers go that way, but many of them do. On a day-to-day basis I wake up in the morning and I can do anything I feel like doing. I don’t say, uh oh, I’ve get back to that damn novel again. I can always write a poem or something. ... "

Major awards
The Science Fiction Writers of America officers and past presidents selected Haldeman as the 27th SFWA Grand Master in 2009, and he received the corresponding Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement as a writer during Nebula Awards weekend in 2010. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted him in June 2012.

He has also won numerous annual awards for particular works.

He is a lifetime member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), and past-president.

Hugo Award

 * "Hero" (1972) - Novella
 * The Forever War (1974) – Novel
 * "Tricentennial" (1977) – Short Story
 * The Hemingway Hoax (1991) – Novella
 * None So Blind (1995) – Short Story
 * Forever Peace (1998) – Novel
 * "Four Short Novels" (2003) - Short Story

John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel

 * Forever Peace (1998)

Nebula Award

 * The Forever War (1975) – Novel
 * The Hemingway Hoax (1990) – Novella
 * "Graves" (1993) – Short Story
 * Forever Peace (1998) – Novel
 * Camouflage (2004) – Novel

Locus Award

 * The Forever War (1976) – SF Novel

Rhysling Award

 * "Saul's Death" (1984) – Long Poem
 * "Eighteen Years Old, October Eleventh" (1991) – Short Poem
 * "January Fires" (2001) – Long Poem

World Fantasy Award

 * "Graves" (1993) – Short Fiction

James Tiptree, Jr. Award

 * Camouflage (2004)

Forever War series

 * The Forever War (1974) (Nebula Award winner, 1975; Hugo and Locus SF Awards winner, 1976 )
 * "A Separate War" (1999, short story; appeared first in the anthology Far Horizons, now collected in War Stories and A Separate War and Other Stories) (The story of Marygay Potter after she parts with William Mandella in The Forever War)
 * Forever Free (1999) (a direct sequel to the first novel)

Attar (the Merman) series

 * Attar's Revenge (1975) (published under the pseudonym Robert Graham)
 * War of Nerves (1975) (published under the pseudonym Robert Graham)

Worlds series

 * Worlds (1981)
 * Worlds Apart (1983)
 * Worlds Enough and Time (1992)

Forever Peace series

 * Forever Peace (1997) (while thematically linked to Haldeman's The Forever War series, Forever Peace is not set in the same universe)
 * "Forever Bound" (2010, short story; appears in the anthology Warriors) (a prequel to Forever Peace, it tells the story of Julian Class being drafted and trained as a soldierboy while falling in love with Carolyn)

Marsbound trilogy

 * Marsbound (2008) (also serialized in Analog Science Fiction and Fact) – placed fifth in annual Locus Poll )
 * Starbound (2010)
 * Earthbound (2011)

Star Trek: The Original Series novels

 * Planet of Judgment (1977) – a Star Trek novel
 * World Without End (1979) – a Star Trek novel

Non-series

 * War Year (1972) – nongenre Vietnam War novel, hardcover and paperback endings differ
 * Mindbridge (1976) – Hugo nominee, placed second in annual Locus Poll
 * All My Sins Remembered (1977)
 * There is No Darkness (1983) – cowritten with Jack C. Haldeman II
 * Tool of the Trade (1987)
 * Buying Time (1989) – published in the UK as The Long Habit of Living
 * The Hemingway Hoax (1990)
 * 1968 (1994) (novel) – Vietnam War novel
 * The Coming (2000) – Locus SF nominee, 2001
 * Guardian (2002)
 * Camouflage (2004) – Nebula Award winner, 2005
 * Old Twentieth (2005)
 * The Accidental Time Machine (2007) – Nebula Award nominee, 2007; placed fifth in annual Locus Poll
 * Work Done For Hire (2014)

Short fiction collection

 * Infinite Dreams (1978)
 * Dealing in Futures (1985)
 * Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds (1993)
 * None So Blind (1996)
 * War Stories (2006)
 * A Separate War and Other Stories (2006)
 * The Best of Joe Haldeman (2013)

Anthologies edited

 * Cosmic Laughter (1974)
 * Study War No More (1977)
 * Nebula Award Stories Seventeen (1983)
 * Body Armor: 2000 (1986) (with Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg)
 * Supertanks (1987) (with Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg)
 * Space-Fighters (1988) (with Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg)
 * Future Weapons of War (2007) (with Martin H. Greenberg)

Comics

 * The Forever War drawn by Mark van Oppen (better known as Marvano) (original edition La Guerre éternelle (1988–1989))
 * Forever Free drawn by Mark van Oppen (better known as Marvano) (original edition Libre à jamais (2002))
 * Dallas Barr drawn by Mark van Oppen (better known as Marvano) based on Buying Time (1996–2005)

Collections

 * Saul's Death and Other Poems (1997)

Interviews

 * as part of the Authors@Google series (2007)
 * Interview conducted by Roger Deforest (2006)
 * The Craft of Science Fiction hosted by MIT Communications Forum (2006)
 * All of Joe Haldeman's audio interviews on the podcast The Future And You (in which he describes his expectations of the future)