In the book The Forever War, author Joe Haldeman centers his novel on the epic journey of Private William Mandella. In the beginning of the book, the setting is 1997, and William Mandella his swept from is average life to become an elite soldier fighting a nascent intergalactic war, with an enemy so vicious it kills harmless colonists. The enemies are the Taurans, a race of aliens that seem to be hostile. In this impressive novel, Haldeman has Mandella fight a war with no end, climb through the ranks, and understand the importance of this war to the world.

The book, The Forever War, is about a man, William Mandella, who is drafted into a special branch of the army. His branch is a group of specially picked people who are going to be sent to fight aliens who are thought to threaten Earth. People have discovered things in space called collapsars, which are like wormholes in the way that they can instantly send anything to different parts of the universe if it goes through the collapsar. Mandella is among the first group sent out to find the Taurens, the aliens, and destroy them in 1996-97.