Summer of Love

If you think the 25th century sounds like a weird place to visit, imagine--or recall--San Francisco during the summer of 1967. When 21-year-old Chiron Cat's Eye in Draco teleports 500 years back in space-time to Haight-Ashbury in order to protect a teenage runaway from both Hippie drug dealers and cosmic demons (and thus preserve the future of all humanity), he learns more than he wants to know. Recycled premise and two-dimensional characters notwithstanding, Mason ( Arachne ) has created a quirky, psychedelic page-turner that walks a devilish line between social commentary and self-satire. Antimatter ghoulies are fought off with lyrics from the Youngbloods (``Come on, people now, smile on your brother . . . ''), while telespace (``the aggregated correlation of hundred million minds worldwide. A supernet, a hyper-reality'') is the 25th-century's unacknowledged LSD. The book is not for the technologically impaired. While cyber-junkies will have fun conquering Mason's invented jargon and heady concepts, other readers may struggle to keep up. Patience pays off, though, and Mason's extrapolations from currently existing theory and practice to future social and environmental conditions are so intriguing and plausible that only a real square would shrug them off. (June)