Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ncoast.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!cwruecmp!atvax!ncoast!bsa
From: bsa@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Here's another book that needs identification:
Message-ID: <619@ncoast.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 1-Mar-85 10:05:27 EST
Article-I.D.: ncoast.619
Posted: Fri Mar  1 10:05:27 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 4-Mar-85 08:05:16 EST
References: <578@topaz.ARPA> <776@ukma.UUCP>
Reply-To: bsa@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery)
Organization: North Coast XENIX, Cleveland
Lines: 34
Summary: 

> Article <776@ukma.UUCP>, from red@ukma.UUCP (Red Varth)
+----------------
| This book starts out about a professor whose wife has left him. He gets
| depressed one night, and tries to commit suicide. He's saved by his hat.
| His wife is a nurse, I think. 
| 
| Anyway, his sister comes to visit him (she's had a falling-out with her boss),
| and ends up living with him for a while. Then she gets kidnapped. The prof just
| about bankrupts himself trying to track her down, and finally pinpoints her
| location. Then he gets caught by the same guy who kidnapped her.
| 
| At this point, the story shift to another person. This guy officially doesn't
| exist -- he doesn't have the equivalent of a SS number. He's a burglar by 
| profession (and a good one, too). Then he breaks into this apartment, and 
| discovers that the tenant (a woman about 24-26) is trying to commit suicide.
| 
| [Note: This society has something very similar to the "tasp" from Ringworld,
| except that anyone can buy one. They call it "wire-heading" in this book]

AARGGGH!  Niven INVENTED wireheading!  It's mentioned in PROTECTOR, is
a major part of one of his ARM stories (THE LONG ARM OF GIL HAMILTON),
and in RINGWORLD he says that the tasp is a remote wirehead thingie, not
in those words... also, in THE RINGWORLD ENGINEERS, Louis Wu is a wireheader,
thanks to Nessus and Halrloprillalar having fiddled with his karma in
RINGWORLD followed by her disappearance when he took her back to Earth...

The story is MINDKILLER, by Spider Robinson.  The story shift was in
OMNI under the title, "GOD IS AN IRON".

--bsa
-- 
Brandon Allbery, decvax!cwruecmp!ncoast!bsa, ncoast!bsa@case.csnet (etc.)
6504 Chestnut Road Independence, Ohio 44131 +1 216 524 1416 -- CIS 74106,1032
		 -=> Does the Doctor make house calls? <=-