This first Avon printing, featuring a “futuristic soldier who looks like Robin Williams in a funny hat”, is the first edition to include expurgated sections, earlier editions being abridged by the original editor due to spacial concerns. A recounting of the author's Vietnam War experiences through the veil of Space Opera, The Forever War won The Nebula, Hugo, and Locus awards in 1976 and spawned the two sequels Forever Peace (1997) and Forever Free (1999) as well as the companion novella, A Separate War. .... “SPACE WAR IS HELL... Especially for Private William Mandella, drafted into a brutal interstellar conflict that raged millions of light years from Earth. But battling a savage alien enemy was not the hard part. Nor was fighting alongside a promiscuous co-ed cadre of misfits who considered Mandella a degenerate.” “The real test would be coping with the astonishing changes the Earth would undergo during Mandella's tour of duty. For a while the loyal soldier aged mere months... his home planet was aging centuries.”