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From: @RUTGERS.ARPA:donn@utah-cs
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Kate Wilhelm's WELCOME, CHAOS
Message-ID: <1738@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 23-Apr-85 06:01:50 EST
Article-I.D.: topaz.1738
Posted: Tue Apr 23 06:01:50 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Apr-85 04:24:05 EST
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Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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From: donn@utah-cs (Donn Seeley)

WELCOME, CHAOS (Berkley, 1985, 297pp.) is the most fun novel I've read
by Kate Wilhelm since the excellent WHERE LATE THE SWEET BIRDS SANG,
which won the Hugo award for 1976.  I won't flatly say 'the best',
because Wilhelm has written so many different kinds of books that I
don't want to make that kind of a judgment.  But this is one of those
stories I just love to come across -- a novel that works on many
levels, that grabs you with page-turning suspense at the same time that
it tickles you with interesting ideas.

Since WELCOME, CHAOS is (at one level) a suspense novel, I don't want
to spoil it by explaining too much of the story; but I will say that
the two main characters are a woman named Lyle Taney, an associate
professor of history who has published a popular book on hawks (of all
things), and a mysterious man named Hugh Lasater who arrives
unexpectedly in Lyle's life with a curious assignment: when she goes to
Oregon to research her next book, on eagles, he wants her to spy on
someone...  Who does Lasater work for?  What does he want?  That would
be telling, but I am willing to say that the novel works its way up
from suspense at the detective-novel level to an amazing climax where
literally billions of lives are at stake.  The characters are mostly
well-drawn and memorable; I have my usual complaint that the good guys
seem unbelievably calm, rational and nice, but Wilhelm makes up for it
with a solid, credible portrayal of the ambiguous enemies.  The last
hundred pages left me sweaty-palmed, and my only disappointment was
that the book had to end at all.

A few warnings: one element among the bad guys in the novel is an
American administration which looks suspiciously like the current one,
and you may find your politics clashing with Wilhelm's (mine didn't --
I find her description of world tensions at the breaking point all too
plausible).  Also, the blurbs and quotes from reviews on the cover of
this edition give part of the game away; if you dislike spoilers you
should at all costs avoid reading the cover material.  Fortunately I
had read Wilhelm's story 'The Winter Beach' in her collection LISTEN,
LISTEN and thus the cover didn't reveal anything.

This book is so well plotted that I'd almost suspect that Damon Knight,
an advocate of the tight plot, had an influence on it...  It's sort of
a pity that Knight's latest novel, CV, doesn't have more of a Wilhelm
influence in it, or so it seems to me.  Maybe they should collaborate?
:-)

Donn Seeley    University of Utah CS Dept    donn@utah-cs.arpa
40 46' 6"N 111 50' 34"W    (801) 581-5668    decvax!utah-cs!donn