Rating: 
Summary: Get the ORIGINAL version--it's SF at its best!
Review: Technologically intriguing and emotionally moving. "Forever War" has something for everybody: SFbuffs and non-buffs alike. The characters are rich and full from the beginning and the action moves--quickly! My only complaint: It's too short!
Rating:
Summary: Expertly crafted with intelligence.
Review: Joe Haldeman is to be applauded, although with the acclaim he already has, he hardly needs this humble follower's comments. One of the hardest things to do in sci-fi is to not lose more than half of your audience in the science
of it. Haldeman, I suspect, has seen science, seen
life, from both sides of it. That is, from a layman's
standpoint and an "expert's," if you will; from inexperienced to experienced. This allows
him to convey a truer sense of emotions from
under the blanket of sci-fi, a genre which, at times,
does not accommodate easily for human emotion.
Hence, in "The Forever War," the reader is not only
held to the story by a humanistic, empathic bond;
He is grabbed and taken THROUGH the war.....thrust
THROUGH to the other side of the galaxy.....
Made to mourn at another's death there, as well.
With his ability to communicate, Haldeman has made
a masterpiece so universal that I suspect it will speak
for a long time to come..........
For Forever.
Rating:
Summary: Engaging Science Fiction
Review: This is, by far, one of the best sci-fi novels I've ever read. The first person perspective is fresh and draws readers closer to the characters. The book turns bittersweet somewhere in the middle but the ending washes away the bitter experiences.
Rating:
Summary: Comic edition
Review: Can't add anything to the reviews already posted, so I thought I'd point out there is a nice three-volume comic adaption of "The Forever War", done by Marvano and Haldeman. The graphics add to the dark mood of the story in an entirely fitting way. The series appeared in Germany in edition "ComicArt", and that is well-deserved. If you like comics that have nothing in common with Marvel :), then this is for you. Soenke
Rating:
Summary: The classic post-Vietnam sf war novel.
Review: Joe Haldeman's Forever War should be read in the context of his other war novels: War Year (far rawer), 1968, and Forever Peace, his most recent novel. Over the past 20 years, Haldeman's literary craft has continually excelled. Forever War is not his best work (I have a special fondness for The Hemingway Hoax and 1968), but it will probably prove his most enduring. Forever War can be seen as one of the first genuine post-Vietnam war novels, published (as a series of novellas in Analog) just a few years after the 1972 peace (and before the fall of Saigon). America was not yet ready for novels about Vietnam, for the war remained too fresh, the memories not yet faded. So in the classic sf tradition, Haldeman did an end run on reality and used an sf conceit--the neverending (literally!) space war--to examine what America dared not consider. It worked.
In this respect, Forever War transcends the genre: it is an American novel, the first of many literary balms to begin healing a long and bitter war. Joe also began a tradition followed by later Vietnam veteran authors, writing about the war from the relatively safe distance of speculative fiction. Compare it with another Nebula Award winner, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough's The Healer's War--also written by a Vietnam veteran, one of the forgotten vets, the women who served and had the difficult duty of patching together too many wounded.
As an introduction to Joe Haldeman's work, and to science fiction, Forever War is highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: SciFi at it's Best!
Review: Great story, great characters, great everything. An interesting way to re-read The Forever War is by substituting the middle section with Haldeman's original piece which is included as short story in his "Dealing in Futures" collection
Rating:
Summary: I read this book once a year to remind me what war is.
Review: This first time I read this book was it's first day on the rack! If one really wants to know why few warriors talk of war then one must read this book. War, military and soldiers don't change with time. If you're one of the walking wounded, and everyone in a war is, this book will not make you feel better but may help you deal with the pain. Joe Haldeman is one of the true literary giants today. He is a master story teller and a poet! As far as a movie I've always pictured Robert Mitchum in the leading roll of the movie alas. I also know of many others but most of them have their names on The Wall or in a V.A. Hospital.
Rating:
Summary: So that's what it's like, to be a Vietnam veteran.
Review: Mr. Haldeman's "War Year" had left me a
little puzzled: I could see clearly what
was happening, but what did it mean to the
narrator? "The Forever War" is an indispen-
sable complement to the earlier novel. "The
Forever War" has some features in common with
Remarque's classic "All Quiet on the Western
Front," which, in its day, brought home the
experience of veterans of WW I.
Rating:
Summary: Modern classic
Review: Looking at the graphic of the cover of this edition, and looking at the cover of the edition I have, it makes me wonder why they didn't just keep the original cover, which was far better than both of them. Old fans will know what I mean, the picture of the planets and the galaxies in the hourglass, slowly falling through.
But covers aside, it's great that the publisher keeps this book in print, because this truly is a classic. The story of the time displaced soldiers, going off each time in their ships knowing they are getting farther and farther away from the Earth that they knew, trapped in a war so long that neither opponent remembers what started the conflict, it is one of the most haunting moments in science-fiction, or in literature at all.
But Haldeman does it all with a bit of humor also, as evidenced in the first couple of pages, and a bit of irony (when the soldier gets back in the future, everyone on Earth is a homosexual), but the author makes it all hang together beautifully. The Forever War takes all the grittiness of Heinlein's Starship Troopers and puts more emotion into it, giving the reader a book that more than deserved the Hugo and Nebula awards
Rating:
Summary: Ohhhhhh. Boy! Whatta Book!
Review: First, I wish to note that I do not read many SF books. I have been hearing and reading references to The Forever War for the last 20 years and decided to finally read it. It was not what I expected. I thought this was going to be another space opera with strange names that only a linguist could pronounce, and flowery text aimed at 15 year olds in the midst of puberty. Not even close. This is an intelligent look at the nature of war and the individual's place in the military. It is about love, death, honor, and time, old devil time. But don't let me mislead you. The story is exciting and very believable. I settled in with this book, and by page five Hadleman had blasted through my reading room, dropped a grappeling hook, and pulled me along on a wild thrill ride that never lets up. His writing style is as slick and clean as a rocket, his ideas univeral, and his plot is wonderful. I defy you to predict the outcome
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