THE CAREFULLY CONSIDERED RAPE OF THE WORLD

Mead's new novel has less wit but is a better story than ""Dudley, There Is No Tomorrow!"" At its best moments it attempts a type of Swiftian satire in which baboons from outer space demonstrate superior adaptability to modern life, much like Gulliver's Houyhnhnms. The human Yahoos involved in this science fiction bombfoolery are a trio of screwball middleagers and their wives who inhabit a dilapidated Victorian mansion on Long Island. None of the wives has ever been pregnant. Suddenly all three are at once. Hanky panky? Not a bit. It is a 2000-year-old stud from outer space carrying super monkey sperm who has done the deed. Net only that, he has helped impregnate a whole convent and every student in a New England girls' college. Author Mead reveals some extensive' research on molecular biology on the Scientific American level, which is quite at odds with his hero's have-brained explanations as he publishes them in sensational Sunday supplements. As always in sci-fi, delineating the story rather shreds the characters in favor of the background. There are many funny scenes (none of which really cut) and we won't carp at the story as told; but we wish those baboons had been onstage about a hundred pages earlier. It would have obviated much Madison Avenue humor.