- HALDEMAN, Joe (William)
- (1943-)US writer who took a BS in physics and astronomy before serving as a combat engineer in Vietnam (1968-9), where he was severely wounded, earning a Purple Heart; later, in 1975, he took an MFA. The range of degrees was an early demonstration of the complexity of his interest in the HARD SF with which he has sometimes been identified; and his experiences in Vietnam have marked everything he has since written, including his first book, War Year (1972), a non-sf novel set there. He began publishing sf with "Out of Phase" for Gal in 1969, and came to sudden prominence with the critical and popular success of his first sf novel, THE FOREVER WAR (1972-4 ASF; fixup 1974), which, with "You Can Never Go Back" (1975), makes up a series whose description of the life ofsoldiers in a future WAR counterpoints and in some ways rebuts Robert A. HEINLEIN's vision in STARSHIP TROOPERS (1959). In THE FOREVER WARinterstellar travel is effected by "collapsar jumps", which are subjectively instantaneous but which in fact take many years to accomplish, so that they work as a kind of one-way TIME TRAVEL; sent by this means to fight in engagement after engagement on different planets, soldiers are doomed to total alienation from the civilization for which they are fighting, and if they make too large a jump face the risk of coming into battle with antiquated weaponry. Their deracination is savage, their camaraderie cynically manipulated. As a portrait of the experience of Vietnam the book is remarkable. It won a Ditmar (AWARDS), a NEBULA and a HUGO; the first volumes of a GRAPHIC-NOVEL version are The Forever War 1 (graph 1991) and The Forever War 2 (graph 1991), both illustrated byMarvano.Mindbridge (1976), a novel whose narrative techniques are suggested by its dedication to John Dos Passos (1896-1970) and John BRUNNER, is composed in alternating sequences of straight narration,reportage, excerpts from books (some written long after the events depicted), graphs and other devices. The story itself is a not unconventional space epic, with MATTER TRANSMISSION, telepathy-inducing "toys"-actually small aquatic animals - abandoned by an extinct race ofgodlike aliens, and so forth. All My Sins Remembered (fixup 1977) returns to the existential chaos of Earth, and introduces an enduring model of the JH protagonist: a competent hero whose identity is threatened fromwithout, by the manipulations of worldly powers, and from within, by the need to make sense of an existence without ultimate meaning. In JH's novels, making sense of things is itself an act of heroism. As his most typical books revolve around this task - and are resolved in its often ambiguous accomplishment - it is not surprising that he has rarely written sequels. Once the goal has been reached, the story ends.The only exception to this pattern is the Worlds sequence comprising WORLDS (1981), Worlds Apart (1983) and Worlds Enough and Time (1992). These books, which alsodiffer from his typical work in featuring a female protagonist, are distinguished by the broad compass of their portrayal of a NEAR FUTURE Earth under the threat of nuclear HOLOCAUST, which is soon realized. Inthe surviving SPACE HABITATS-each a small world representative of a different kind of civilization - some sense must be made of the human enterprise: the relict planet must be preserved and, in the third volume, humanity must attempt to reach the stars. JH's other novels of the 1980s are only intermittently successful. Tool of the Trade (1987), a TECHNOTHRILLER, repeats in a damagingly affectless manner the themes ofearlier books; and Buying Time (1989; vt The Long Habit of Living 1989 UK) weakens a central tale about the purchasing of IMMORTALITY by a displeasing failure to address the kind of society in which this might be acceptable, or the kind of human who might pursue the goal. But THE HEMINGWAY HOAX (1990), the magazine version of which won a Nebula as BestNovella, movingly entangles its typical JH protagonist in a complex set of dilemmas (and ALTERNATE WORLDS) which test to the utmost his capacity to retain moral choice, to remain even approximately whole.JH's stories, assembled in Infinite Dreams (coll 1979) and Dealing in Futures (coll 1985), are of subsidiary interest to his novels - though "Tricentennial"(1976) won a Hugo, and "Graves" (1993) won a Nebula - but sometimes illustrate with clarity the themes which drive them. Throughout his career there has been a sense - not usual in US sf - that JH thinks of his novels as necessary acts in a lifelong enterprise, a moral theatre whose meaning will be defined only when he finishes. It is perhaps for this reason that he is not good at repeating himself, that those books in which he attempts to do so are surprisingly bad, and that after two decades his readers continue to await each new title - each new act in the existential drama - with very substantial interest.JCOther works: Two borderline sf Attar spy novels, Attar's Revenge (1975) and War of Nerves (1975), under a Pocket Books house name, Robert Graham; two Star Trek novels, Planet ofJudgment * (1977) and World without End * (1979); There is No Darkness (1983) with his brother Jack C. HALDEMAN II (whom see for details); More than the Sum of his Parts (1985 Playboy; 1991 chap).As Editor: Cosmic Laughter (anth 1974); Study War No More (anth 1977); Nebula Award StoriesSeventeen (anth 1983); three anthologies with Martin Harry GREENBERG and Charles G. WAUGH, being Body Armor: 2000 (anth 1986), Supertanks (anth 1987) and Space-Fighters (anth 1988).About the author: Joe Haldeman (1980) by Joan Gordon.
Science Fiction and Fantasy Encyclopedia. Academic. 2011.
