Bestseller Foster (Drowning World) offers brisk, lightweight SF entertainment in his eighth novel about Flinx (aka telepath Philip Lynx) and his Alaspinian flying snake (or minidrag) Pip. On the planet Goldin IV, Flinx discovers that his dreams about a monstrous evil beyond the Great Emptiness are now reaching other people with deleterious results. He also learns that he's being chased by the Order of Null, dedicated adepts who want a cleansing death for the whole universe and are afraid he'll prevent it. Fleeing in his alien-built supership to the paradise planet New Riviera, he takes up with his old lover, Clarity Held. Unfortunately, she's picking up the dreams, too. Still more unfortunately, Clarity's fiancé, Bill Ormann, is becoming homicidally jealous. In fact, he's about to kill them both when Flinx's old mentors, the thranx Truzenzuzex and the human Tse-Mallory, do a good imitation of a deus ex machina and dispose of Mr. Ormann. Much of the rest of the book dissolves into informational dialogue about several long-vanished alien species who may hold the key to preventing the evil from coming out of the Great Emptiness and making an end to all things. Fans of serious SF will give this a pass, but Foster's large following should ensure another bestseller. (Nov. 4)
