News broke yesterday that Fox 2000 has acquired rights to Joe Haldeman's novel The Forever War. It's kind of an anti-Starship Troopers, although Haldeman always played this down and eventually become a director of the Heinlein society. Here's the big news: Ridley Scott is planning to make it his return to science fiction films!
The book is about a soldier, William Mandella, drafted into a hellish war in space against alien clones. He returns to Earth after a tour of duty to find that - due to the effects of relativity - non-combatants back home have moved on centuries. Et voila : classic tale of alienation, an exploration of what the future holds for Earth, and a look at what motivates soldiers to keep fighting. It's available as the first in the SF Masterworks series from Gollancz if you want to read it, and you should.
Ridley Scott apparently first hoped to adapt the story (which he describes as "a bit of The Odyssey by way of Blade Runner") some 25 years ago but rights problems got in the way. Discover more at Variety or Firstshowing.net . Thanks to SF Signal and io9 .
