Welcome to Thunderdome

Audio book.

This book was written in 1974, and the audio book recorded 1999ish.

I'd always heard this was a classic, so took the long drive as an opportunity to listen to it.

Broad strokes, slightly spoilerish:

It's "the forever war" because Earth is waging an interstellar war without faster-than-light ships. Soldiers get drafted for a 2-year hitch, and subjective time lasts two years, but then they get back to earth after their single battle and 35 years have gone by. The time jumps get bigger with each battle, as the planets they go to get farther and farther away. Large parts of the book are simply dealing with how they are adapting to the changes on earth each time they come home.

The author did a DAMNED good job predicting they year 2021, from 1970. I think the most prescient thing was predicting that people would be choosing their own pronouns, this year. No shit.

The book isn't quite the wall-to-wall epic war story I expected, but both the kid and I liked it well enough, and it inspired some discussion and analysis when we were done.

I read it like 20+ years ago; remember thinking it was good.

Supposedly was often touted as the "left-wing" answer to Starship Troopers, but I don't recall it being explicitly anti-war, although it wasn't rah-rah about the military IIRC. Both had military experience: Haldeman was wounded in combat in VietNam, whereas Heinlein was invalided out of the Navy in the 30s and never saw combat.