Agent of Chaos

Before Spinrad made his name with Bug Jack Barron, his rude, energetic fourth novel, his earliest work had passed without much notice. In this second novel, written in 1967, the tyrannical Hegemony, which has given its citizens peace and prosperity, easily thwarts the small, gadfly Democratic League, with its goal of freedom, but is stung at the heart by the old and efficient Brotherhood of Assassins, whose object is simply to increase chaos in the placid utopia. Although there is nothing here of the verve, iconoclasm, rock rhythm or mass-media amplification that have characterized Spinrad's best work, the anarchic, id-driven social philosophy underlying this slight pulp adventure is certainly more interesting in the retrospective light of those later science fiction classics. (April)