Norman Spinrad is a sci fi author who you probably haven’t read unless you read a lot of sci fi. Not that he’s not good, but he hasn’t been much of a crossover writer for a long time (crossover, in the sense of Ursual K LeGuin or Margaret Atwood crossing out of the genre trap into literary respectability or J.K. Rowling into widespread, if undeserved, fame).

While digging through the basement of my favorite local used bookstore, I picked up a book of his called Agent of Chaos. It was fast paced, decently written, leavened with an anarchist philosophy that was heavy handed, but not didactic. It was a slim, old fashioned sort of pulpy paperback that they just don’t make much of anymore. Love that kind of stuff.

After finishing it, I downloaded to my Nook a copy of Asimov’s Science Fiction, which is still a nice, pulpy magazine (at least in its physical format).  I did so simply because it had a story by Spinrad.

I like the idea of Spinrad. He writes politically tinged (charged?) sci fi, he lives in Paris now and sometimes publishes in French. He is a former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. And one of his novels was denounced on the floor of the House of Commons.

This particular story was very different, though, from Agent of Chaos, which is an old fashioned space opera at its heart. An odd story about the songs of whales and other cetaceans and a sort of eco-fable. Not sure what I thought about it. I certainly agree with its sentiments, but not exactly what I was looking for.