Paris 2005

Set 15 years in the future, this too labyrinthine techno-thriller posits a France (and Western Europe) overrun by the Soviets; the U.S., in hock to Japan, has sworn nonintervention; the World Peace Agreement has made nuclear war obsolete. In France, where everyone is called ``Comrade,'' Star--a mega-computer based underground beneath the Arch of Triumph--functions as Orwellian ``Big Brother,'' controlling an abject populace. Robert Landry, Star's American designer-inventor, now a fugitive, illegally accesses the computer to abet the French resistance and to help his lover, Chantal Senac, rescue her son whom the Soviets apparently ``transported'' to a remote country. The cat-and-mouse game of Russians, resisters and collaborationists is the substance of Zezza's nightmarish fantasy which, despite plenty of action and a French milieu, is not particularly effective either as political parable or as espionage tale. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selections; paperback rights to Fawcett. (Mar.)