The Forever War, 1974

Here's another book that has me coming back for more every now and then: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman is an account of a space war against an alien race, fought with super advanced weapons. Due to the faster-than-light travel through so-called collapsars, the Earth ships are able to reach far-off galaxies, but because of the time-dilation that slows down their subjective ship-time, they never know if they are going to meet an enemy with seriously far-advanced technology, or old-school weapons. It is all very cleverly built up and the tone of the novel is great.

“Tonight we’re going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man.” The guy who said that was a sergeant who didn’t look five years older than me. So if he’d ever killed a man in combat, silently or other wise, he’d done it as an infant.

I already knew eighty ways to kill people, but most of them were pretty noisy. I sat up straight in my chair and assumed a look of polite attention and fell asleep with my eyes open. So did most everybody else. We’d learned that they never scheduled anything important for these after-chop classes.