1968

1968, by Joe Haldeman (Autographed) Hodder & Stoughton, 1994  True first edition, British first ed. Spider is an ordinary US soldier with a taste for science fiction. Beverly is the girl he leaves behind when he is sent to Vietnam. Together, the stories of these two young people make a painfully vivid testament to one of this century's most troubled periods. For Spider's problems are not over when he returns home. Badly traumatized by his combat experiences, he is woefully mistreated by the psychomedical establishment before being put back into a community in which all the customary safety nets -- family, social after-care and so on -- either are nonexistent or prove heartbreakingly inadequate. And Beverly has, somehow, to come to terms with the demands of the sexual revolution of the time…