Joe Haldeman
Joe William Haldeman (born June 9, 1943) is an American science fiction author.
For the CBS television producer, see Joe Halderman.
Joe Haldeman
Joe William Haldeman
June 9, 1943
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S.
Robert Graham[1]
Writer
1972–present
Mary Gay Potter (m. 1965)
Jack C. Haldeman II, brother
He is best known for his novel The Forever War (1974), which was inspired by his experiences as a combat soldier in the Vietnam War. That novel and other works, including The Hemingway Hoax (1991) and Forever Peace (1997), have won science fiction awards, including the Hugo Award and Nebula Award.[2] He received the SFWA Grand Master for career achievements.[2][3] In 2012, he was inducted as a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.[4]
From 1983 to 2014, he was a professor teaching writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Work[edit]
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 mainstream and young adult.[15] 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.[2] He later wrote sequels.
In 1975, two Attar novels were published as Pocket Books paperback originals under the pen name Robert Graham.[1] 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).
In a college creative writing class in 1967, Haldeman wrote the first two SF stories which he (later) sold. "Out of Phase" was published 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."[15]
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.[16] 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".[17]
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 gotta get back to that damn novel again. I can always write a poem or something. ... "[18]