*the third ear*
_by curt siodmak_
A quick book — I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a translation, but it almost reads like one. In it, a psychologist/scientist searches for a chemical substance that is extruded by psychics/mind-readers in the hopes of synthesizing it.
The book is written from the first person, and the doctor’s sense of paranoia really comes through to the reader — you can’t tell if he really _is_ being hounded by government agents and rival scientists, or if he only _thinks_ that he is.
A very good book, though it doesn’t really have an ending — it’s just, event-event-rising-action-end. No conclusion or anything — just… _ending_. You’d have to read it to know.
*Binary*
_By John Lange_
Not really a SF novel, but a sort of really quick Tom Clancy-esque super-government-agent novel, where a CIA agent has to stop a terrorist from killing all of San Diego! No, really, that’s what it’s about.
But it’s not as black-and-white as that — the book really gets into the the agent’s life and the meanings behind the terrorist’s plot, really making you think.
*From this Day Forward*
_By John Brunner_
A collection of short stories — the book was printed very weirdly in that none of the short stories told who the authors were… all I could tell from the index pages was that one of them was either written by or edited by Harlan Ellison.
Had quite a few good stories in it, including one about Vietnamese terrorists striking the United States in retaliation for the horrors committed during the Vietnam War, and one story (which I take it to be one of the first in this genre) featurning, literally, “Men in Black.”