ANDRA

Two thousand years in the future, a misfit yearns for a long-lost planet. Andra is a rather dull 15-year-old until a surgeon, to save her sight, grafts a 2000-year-old bit of brain onto hers. Centuries ago, a bomb pushed Earth into an inhospitable new orbit, forcing humankind undergound and ultimately into slavish conformity. Now, liberated by the pre-bomb cells, Andra's moods begin to swing from black to radiant rebellion. She refuses to conform, captivating all the young but particularly Syrd, an apparent refugeÇ but actually a spy from neighboring Uralia, sent to sabatoge Sub-city One. But even Syrd's preoccupation with Andra doesn't stop him from carrying out his orders: he sabotages the ships intended for emigration to a new earth; Andra dies. Hackneyed writing, lack of science, and general implausibility all weigh so heavily against this book that it's a wonder it works at all. Oddly, it does—by establishing Andra as the one striving, scornful, yearning person in a world of drones. Still, firmly rooting the speech in the vernacular of the 1960's, with cardboard villains playing out the Cold War after 2000 years, is disconcerting at best. Entertaining, but seriously flawed. (Fiction. 11+)