Joe Haldeman was a Guest of Honor at Readercon and in 2010 was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He was born in Oklahoma and lived many places as a child, notably Alaska before it was a state, and the suburbs of Washington, D.C. He was drafted into the Vietnam War, saw some combat, and was wounded. He has a B.S. in astronomy and M.F.A. in writing, sold his first story in 1969, and has been a writer ever since.

Joe's first novel, War Year (Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston, 1972; original ending restored, Pocket, 1977), was not sf. His next was: The Forever War (St. Martin's, 1975; with restored text, Avon, 1997) incorporated the 1972 Hugo and Locus novella finalist "Hero" and won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Ditmar; Ridley Scott recently bought the film rights. The sequel, Forever Peace (Berkeley, 1997), won the Hugo, Nebula, Campbell Memorial, and foreign novel Ignotus (Spanish SF Society), was a Locus finalist, and was selected by Damien Broderick and Paul Di Filippo for Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985-2011. Forever Free (Ace, 1999) completes the trilogy; Peace and War (Gollancz, 2006) is an omnibus. Mindbridge (St. Martin's, 1976) was a Hugo and Locus finalist. It was followed by All My Sins Remembered (St. Martin's, 1977); Worlds (Viking, 1981), the first of a trilogy including Worlds Apart (Viking, 1983) and Worlds Enough and Time (Morrow, 1992); There is No Darkness (Ace, 1983), with his brother Jack C. Haldeman II; Tool of the Trade (Morrow, 1987); Buying Time (Easton/Morrow, 1989); The Hemingway Hoax (Morrow, 1990), an expansion of a Hugo and Nebula winning and World Fantasy, Locus, and SF Chronicle finalist novella; 1968 (Hodder and Stoughton/Morrow, 1994); The Coming (Easton/Ace, 2000), a Locus finalist; Guardian (Ace, 2002); Camouflage (Ace, 2004), a Nebula, Tiptree, and Southeastern SF winner; Old Twentieth (Ace, 2005); The Accidental Time Machine (Ace, 2007), a Nebula and Locus finalist; and the Marsbound trilogy for Ace: Marsbound (2008; Locus finalist), Starbound (2010), and Earthbound (2011). Attar's Revenge and sequel War of Nerves appeared from Pocket in 1975 as by "Robert Graham." He also wrote two Star Trek novels for Bantam: Planet of Judgment (1977) and World Without End (1979).

Joe's short fiction has been collected into five volumes. Infinite Dreams (St. Martin's, 1978) was a Locus finalist and includes 1976 Hugo and Locus winner and Nebula finalist short story "Tricentennial" as well as "Frights" from the 6^th Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year (Dozois, ed.), "A Time to Live" from The 1978 Annual World's Best SF (Wollheim and Saha, eds.), and "The Private War of Pvt. Jacobs," selected for The Norton Book of Science Fiction (Le Guin and Atteberry, eds.). Dealing in Futures (Viking, 1985) includes the 1985 Nebula short story finalist "More Than the Sum of His Parts," "Blood Sisters" from the 9^th Dozois Best SF of the Year, "Manifest Destiny" from the 1^st The Year's Best Science Fiction (Dozois, ed.), and his Rhysling winner long poem "Saul's Death" (see below) . Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds (NESFA, 1993) accompanied his Boskone 30 GoH appearance.

None So Blind (Avonova, 1996) won the Locus and includes the novella version of "The Hemingway Hoax," the 1992 Nebula and World Fantasy winner and Locus finalist short story "Graves," and the title short story, which won the 1994 Hugo, Locus, SF Chronicle, and HOMer and was a Nebula finalist, as well as "Feedback" from the 11^th Dozois Year's Best and the poems "DX" and "Time Lapse" from the 1^st and 3^rd The Year's Best Fantasy (Datlow and Windling, eds.). A Separate War and Other Stories (Ace, 2006) includes the 2003 Hugo and Locus short story finalist "Four Short Novels" and Southeastern SF short fiction winner "Faces," as well as "For White Hill" from the 13^th Dozois Year's Best and selected for The Hard SF Renaissance (Hartwell and Cramer, eds.), "Memento Mori" from Science Fiction: the Best of 2004 (Haber and Strahan, eds.), and "Heartwired" from the 2006 Science Fiction: the Best of the Year (Horton, ed.). The next collection should include "Angel of Light" from the 23^rd Dozois Year's Best, "Expedition, With Recipes" from Year's Best SF 12 (Hartwell and Cramer, eds.), and "Sleeping Dogs" from the 28^th Dozois. Other as-yet uncollected fiction appears in Showcase (Elwood, ed.), Destinies (Baen, ed.), Off Limits (Datlow, ed.), Redshift (Sarrantino, ed.), In the Shadow of the Wall (Tetrick, ed.), Writers for Relief (Beauchamp, ed.), TRSF (Cass, ed.), Asimov's, F&SF, Aboriginal SF, Rod Serling's Other Worlds, Fantastic, Analog, Vertex, and Amazing.

Joe's poetry collection Saul's Death and Other Poems (Anamnesis, 1997) includes the title poem (1983 Rhysling winner, long form) and "Eighteen Years Old, October Eleventh" (1990 Rhysling winner, short form). He has since won a third Rhysling, 2001 long form, for "January Fires" (in Nebula Awards Showcase 2003, Kress, ed.) and been runner-up twice: 2005 long form for "Old Twentieth: a century full of years" from the Readercon 16 Souvenir Book (Matthew, ed.) and 2006 short form for "god is dead short live god" from Mythic (Allen, ed.). They can also all be found in the annual Rhysling anthologies. Much other poetry, from anthologies and magazines, remains uncollected. The omnibus War Stories (Night Shade, 2005) includes "Saul's Death," "DX," the novels War Year and 1968 and related short fiction.

Joe has edited the anthologies Cosmic Laughter: Science Fiction for the Fun of It (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1974), Study War No More (St. Martin's, 1979), Nebula Award Stories 17 (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1984), and Future Weapons of War (Baen, 2007), plus a trio with Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg from Ace: Body Armor:2000 (1986), Supertanks (1987), and Space-Fighters (1988).

In 2009 Joe received the Robert A. Heinlein Award from the Heinlein Society to honor had sf that inspires human space exploration. Since 1983 he has spent the fall semester teaching writing at M.I.T.