Dream Maker

British journalist and screenwriter Harbinson seems to have learned his SF tricks from the worst 1950s B-movies-- Plan 9 from Outer Space , say, with bits of Earth Versus the Flying Saucers thrown in for good measure. The plot here concerns two NASA scientists, Tony Rydell and Clare Holton, who discover an invisible alien intelligence (referred to as a ``virus'') living inside a hole in the ozone layer. The virus does all the things that invisible alien intelligences are expected to do: takes over people's minds, affects the weather, causes pilots to crash their planes, etc. Harbinson ( Genesis ) describes all this in prose that would be considered too stilted for a government report. Neither a pointless subplot involving Tony and his estranged wife Suzy nor the inevitable romance between Tony and Clare generates any interest, because the characters are not so much cardboard cutouts as tissue-paper cutouts. They spend a great deal of time psychoanalyzing themselves and explaining to each other things they already know. By the end of the book, they have grown so whiny and wearisome that the reader starts rooting for the virus. (Sept.)