Greenhouse Summer

Spinrad's latest, an uneasy blend of SF, suspense thriller and political commentary, offers grim hope for our planetary ecology. In the future, the United Nations Annual Conference on Climate Stabilization meets in Paris to discuss the possibility that the world's worsening climate may degrade into a chaos of white tornadoes and desert temperatures code-named ""Condition Venus."" Corporations such as Breads & Circuses, p.r. spinmeisters extraordinaire, will go to any length to learn the truth, and so their operative, sexy Monique Calhoun, is instructed to book the scientists for a dinner on a river boat that's a ""data sponge""--in other words, bugged. In preparation, Calhoun meets the boat's master, ambitious Eurotrash thug Prince Eric Esterhazy. The two fall for one another; and, teaming forces, they discover a diabolical corporate plot. Spinrad remains a whiz with smart dialogue and sharp obsevation of people and place. He buries his theme of biospheric disaster underneath silly spy shenanigans, however, and ends the novel on an unsatisfying note, with the global ecological situation unresolved. (Nov.)