Books like “The Forever War”

What to read after “The Forever War” by Joe Haldeman: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut · 1969
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
Billy Pilgrim, a chaplain's assistant and prisoner of war in Dresden, becomes unstuck in time, living his life out of order among moments in the war and on another planet. His flat, looping account turns a firebombing and a life's small cruelties into a dark joke about fate.
2
Starship Troopers
Robert A. Heinlein · 1959
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- War Fiction
A young man joins the mobile infantry and is shaped into a soldier through brutal training and interstellar war. Told as his reflections on duty, citizenship and violence, the novel follows his rise from recruit to officer against an enemy unlike humanity.
3
The End of Eternity
Isaac Asimov · 1955
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
Andrew Harlan works for Eternity, an organization that lives outside time and edits human history for what it believes is the greater good. His work is upended when he falls in love with a woman from his own past.
4
Childhood's End
Arthur C. Clarke · 1953
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
Giant alien ships appear above Earth's cities and impose a peaceful rule under the Overlords. Decades of calm and progress pass, but humanity's golden age hides a purpose no one can guess until the Overlords finally reveal themselves.
5
Foundation
Isaac Asimov · 1951
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
As the Galactic Empire begins to decay, mathematician Hari Seldon foresees thirty thousand years of chaos. To shorten the coming dark age he gathers scholars on the remote world Terminus, where the Foundation must survive plots, warlords and its own predictions.
6
Replay
Ken Grimwood · 1986
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
Jeff Winston dies in 1988 and wakes in 1963 in his eighteen-year-old body, with every memory of the years ahead intact. He lives that span over and over, each replay starting later, and slowly realises he is not the only one caught in the loop.
7
The Time Machine
H. G. Wells · 1895
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Time Travel
An inventor builds a machine that carries him far into the future. He finds a gentle people living above ground and a sinister race below, and slowly learns what became of humanity. A short, influential tale of time travel and a dark vision of the end.
8
Anthem
Ayn Rand · 1938
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
In a future run by the collective, the word I has no meaning and all work is done for the good of all. Equality 7-2521 breaks the rules by doing forbidden research and falling in love, then flees a society that cannot allow an individual to exist.
9
The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin · 1969
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
An envoy from a galactic federation lands on the frozen world of Gethen to invite its nations into an alliance. Its people have no fixed gender, and as he crosses the ice with a disgraced politician, he learns how much of his own culture he took for granted.
10
Earth Abides
George R. Stewart · 1949
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
A plague kills nearly everyone on Earth. An ecologist emerges from the mountains to find empty cities and a few survivors, and spends the rest of his life watching a new, smaller society take shape without the old world's machinery.
11
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch · 2016
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Star-Crossed Lovers
A physicist is knocked out and wakes in a version of Chicago where he never married and never had a son. To get home, he must cross a multiverse of his own choices while another version of himself hunts him.
12
Solaris
Stanisław Lem · 1961
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
A scientist arrives at a station orbiting the ocean planet Solaris, where the crew is haunted by visitors shaped from their own memories. As the planet resists every attempt to understand it, he confronts what the living sea seems to be doing to them.