Door Number Three

O'Leary has filled his intriguing debut with tantalizing inside jokes and asides that are well nigh impossible to understand the first time through; one must really read this novel twice. This isn't a mis-step, however, since the device reflects perfectly the condition of the narrator, therapist John Donelly. Upon meeting Laura, a young woman who claims to be an alien abducted to Earth by other aliens (and who shows him her square nipples to prove it), Donelly begins to blip back and forth in time, rather than pass sequentially through it as the rest of us do. Donelly, who narrates, warns us that his story involves a year in which he ``fell in love with an alien, discovered the secret of forgotten dreams, saved the earth... and killed myself.'' Lighthearted, funny dialogue and apt characterizations spin the story along as Donelly links up with ``the most bizarre detour in this convoluted tale,'' a diminutive renegade theologian, formerly an entrepreneur, who guides the befuddled therapist as he probes not only the mystery of Laura but also the riddles of paranoia, evolution, dreaming and consciousness. A highly appealing mix of skilled writing and zany imaginings, this novel bears positive comparison not only to the work of the late Philip K. Dick but also to the earlier SF of Kurt Vonnegut. (Nov.)