FRIDAY

Friday's an Artificial Person, a product of test-tube eugenics, with enormously enhanced intelligence, senses and reflexes (she's beautiful too). In a balkanized US, she's the top agent/courier working for Boss (alias Kettle Belly Baldwin, whom Heinlein-ers will recall from Assignment in Eternity), head of a vague, benevolent security network. And though Friday's idyllic group marriage falls apart (her partners are prejudiced against A.P.'s), she soon hitches herself—via the usual Heinlein consciousness-raising—to a more suitable family: microbiologist Georges, pilot Ian, and architect Janet. Then, however, during a wave of assassinations, riots, and terrorism (possibly fomented by multinational companies), Friday is cut off from Boss—who's planning to use her as a super-genius problem-solver. And finally Boss dies, his organization disintegrates . . . and so does the novel: Friday (swindled into courier-ing a live fetus) heads for a colony planet where, in an absurdly contrived windup, she's reunited in marital bliss: "I'm secretary of the Town Council. I'm program chairman of the P.T.A. . . . Yes, I belong." Despite some original touches and flashes of excitement: a limp, talky, implausible rehash—but the Heinlein label remains a major attraction.