Thursday, September 13, 2012

The 12 greatest science fiction war stories

Charlie Jane Anders and io9 crowdsourced a list of the twelve most important science fiction war stories of all time.

One title on the list:
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

Even decades later, Haldeman's depiction of the realities of interstellar travel — and particularly, of the time dilation that traveling light years would cause — still seem groundbreaking and unique. The war against the Taurans goes on and on, and William Mandella is more and more a man out of time, facing a universe that no longer makes sense to him. This book pulls no punches in depicting the culture shock that a returning veteran faces, when everybody else has moved on in the meantime. By the time the war is over, Mandella has only aged a decade but it's been over a thousand years — and then we find out the war wasn't even really worth it. Ridley Scott was going to film this book at one point, and it would be great to see that happen instead of Prometheus 2.
Read about about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue