E-mail

While the cybersex and cyberromance depicted in this debut novel isn't nearly as cutting-edge as the author and publisher suggest--real-time online ``chat'' having supplanted E-mail as the cyberlover's medium of choice--it does allow debut author Fletcher to spin a fanciful, if strained, variant on the traditional epistolary novel. Katherine Simmons, 44, bored with her routine life as mother of teenage twins and taken-for-granted wife of a successful businessman, signs on one morning to the Adult Topics Bulletin Board of LuxNet. It's not long before she responds to an invitation to a ``party'' at Buck's Basement, an online bulletin board run by Buck Brazzmore, a chatty 40-year-old Texas oilman. Within a few weeks, Katherine and Buck have exchanged secrets and photographs and have announced to their fellow bulletin boarders that they are hosting a beach party to celebrate being ``on a slow cruise on the sea of love.'' But when Buck goes to Israel on business, Katie starts hitting the hot E-mail with John Kelly, a Marin County cardiologist. Before long, she's juggling computer sex fantasies with John, offers of phone sex from Buck and a surprising revival of real-life sex with her husband. While Fletcher, a ``special contributor''on the Prodigy Network, seems to think love on the Internet an intriguing and often positive new adventure, many readers may find her vision of computerized passion a disturbing ode to what is, at best, a poor substitute for the real McCoy. (Jan.)