1968 (ePub)

Joe Haldeman began his writing career while he was still in the army. Drafted in 1967, he fought in the Central Highlands of Vietnam as a combat engineer with the Fourth Division. He was awarded several medals, including a Purple Heart.

Haldeman sold his first story in 1969 and has since written over two dozen novels and five collections of short stories and poetry. He has won the Nebula and Hugo Awards for his novels, novellas, poems, and short stories, as well as the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Locus Award, the Rhysling Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. His works include The Forever War, Forever Peace, Camouflage, 1968, the Worlds saga, and the Marsbound series.

Haldeman recently retired after many years as an associate professor in the Department of Writing and Humanistic Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He and his wife, Gay, live in Florida, where he also paints, plays the guitar, rides his bicycle, and studies the skies with his telescope.

“There are very few other SF authors better qualified to write about Vietnam—and America—during the war. . . . Haldeman fills the novel with recognizable artifacts of the ’60s, recreating that lost world with an exuberance that I found hard to resist. . . . It is by a considerable margin the best book I have read this year.” —Asimov’s Science Fiction
 
“With corrosive, unsentimental wit, dead-on observation, and a hovering, unspoken sorrow, Haldeman magically gives us the essence of the century’s single most traumatic year, when violence and madness asserted themselves as the real heart of the American experience.” —Peter Straub
 
“A well-crafted, biting novel set in Vietnam and on the home front in the momentous year of its title . . . The author’s voice of authenticity shines through in 1968’s in-country segments in which Haldeman creates true-to-life evocations of the physical and emotional landscapes of the American fighting man’s war in Vietnam.” —The Washington Post
 
“1968 captures the year in a prism, the nuances of the multitude of tragedies and triumphs of those 12 months weaving colored ribbons through his tale of an unhappy draftee and his girl back home. It’s a book that should be read by everyone who cared about what happened then and about what has happened since to those touched by the events of 1968. In fact, it should be read by everyone. . . . It’s a time that must be remembered and 1968 makes it come alive again.” —Associated Press