The Forever War does not depict war as a noble pursuit, with the sides clearly defined as good and evil; instead, the novel explores the dehumanizing effect of war, influenced by the real world context of the Vietnam War. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. While Haldeman has stated that The Forever War is actually a result of his experiences in the Vietnam War, he has admitted to being influenced by Heinlein's work. Man is able to communicate with the Taurans, who are also clones. Forever Free (1999) and Forever Peace(1997) are respectively, direct and thematic sequel novels. The 1991 edition restored many expurgated sections, primarily dealing with the changes that befall human civilization over the course of William Mandella's life.

[13][14] In the summer of 2010, Scott revealed that State of Play writer Matthew Michael Carnahan was currently on the fourth draft of a screenplay originally written by David Peoples. We’d love your help. After briefly contemplating suicide, Mandella assumes the post of commanding officer of a "strike force", commanding soldiers who speak a language largely unrecognizable to him, whose ethnicity is now nearly uniform ('vaguely Polynesian' in appearance) and who are exclusively homosexual. [12] In March 2009, Scott stated that the film would be in 3D, citing James Cameron's Avatar as an inspiration for doing so.

"[10] This version was republished twice, first in October 2001 as a hardback with a cover showing spaceships in battle over a planet, and again in September 2003, with the cover art depicting a device worn over the eye of a soldier. The Forever War series is a series of science fiction novels by Joe Haldeman. In 1999, Haldeman, at the request of Robert Silverberg, wrote Marygay's first-person account of her time of separation from Mandella.

The story was included in Silverberg's anthology Far Horizons (1999), and later was the title story in the collection of Haldeman stories A Separate War and Other Stories (2006). December 5th 2017 In his "Notes on the Stories" for that collection, Haldeman commented that "it was fun to write her story, both as a bridge to the sequel (Forever Free) and as an oblique commentary on The Forever War, twenty years later.". For other uses, see, "Ridley Scott puts off Brave New World for The Forever War", "Ridley Scott Says Cameron Inspired Him to Make Forever War in 3D", "James Cameron's Avatar Influences Ridley Scott's Forever War", "Tony Scott Has To Choose Among Pic Trio", "Those two Alien prequels?

Stuart Gordon adapted the novel for Chicago's Organic Theater Company in 1983, in part as a reaction to what Gordon considered the "ultra-sanitized video game" style Star Wars brought to science fiction.

The novella A Separate War (1999) is another sequel of sorts, occurring simultaneously with the final portion of The Forever War. Belgian comic writer Marvano has, in cooperation with Haldeman, created a graphic novel trilogy of The Forever War.

Engaging in combat thousands of light years away from Earth, Mandella and his soldiers need to resort to medieval weapons to fight inside a stasis field which neutralizes all electromagnetic radiation in anything not covered with a protective coating.