Joe Haldeman

Life

Haldeman was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His family traveled and he lived in Puerto Rico, New Orleans, Washington DC, Bethesda (Maryland), and Anchorage (Alaska) as a child. In 1965, Haldeman married Mary Gay Potter, known as "Gay". He received a BS degree in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Maryland in 1967. Haldeman is the brother of Jack C. Haldeman II (1941–2002), also a science-fiction author whose work included an original Star Trek novel (Perry's Planet, February 1980).

He was immediately drafted into the United States Army, and served as a combat engineer in Vietnam. He was wounded in combat and received a Purple Heart. His wartime experience was the inspiration for War Year, his first novel; also later books such as The Hemingway Hoax and Old Twentieth which deal extensively with the experience of combat soldiers in Vietnam and other wars.

In 1975, he received an MFA degree in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Haldeman resides alternately in Gainesville, Florida and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1983, he has been an Adjunct Professor teaching writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is also the fictional setting for his 2007 novel, The Accidental Time Machine. Haldeman is also a painter.

In 2009 and 2010, he was hospitalized for pancreatitis.

Work

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 both mainstream and Young Adult. 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. He later turned it into a series. In 1975, two Attar novels were published as Pocket Books paperback originals under the pen name Robert Graham. 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).

Haldeman wrote the first two SF stories that he (later) sold, in a college creative writing class in 1967. "Out of Phase" appeared 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."

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. 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".

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 get back to that damn novel again. I can always write a poem or something. ... "

Major awards

The Science Fiction Writers of America officers and past presidents selected Haldeman as the 27th SFWA Grand Master in 2009, and he received the corresponding Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement as a writer during Nebula Awards weekend in 2010. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted him in June 2012.

He has also won numerous annual awards for particular works.

He is a lifetime member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), and past-president.

Hugo Award

John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel

Nebula Award

Locus Award

Rhysling Award

World Fantasy Award

James Tiptree, Jr. Award