Product Description
Ronnie Appleyard hosts a TV panel discussion show. Push-button sincerity is his stock in trade, and his ambition is "fame and money with a giant's helping of sex thrown in."

Then he meets Simon, a strange and moody girl. He fears getting serious, then discovers her family has money. Renewing the pursuit, he wonders about his motives. Surely it's Simon's money he's after, but there is something about this erratic girl that threatens his cynicism.

"At the center is a relationship which, in its struggle to survive, illuminates the precarious role of honesty in a success-addicted age." (Publisher's Source) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not Free SF Reader
A really pretty decent anthology, given I remember it decades later, with several good stories. Not quite a 3.50.

Spectrum 5 : Student Body - F. L. Wallace
Spectrum 5 : Big Sword - Pauline Ashwell
Spectrum 5 : The Far Look - Theodore L. Thomas
Spectrum 5 : Grandpa - novelette by James H. Schmitz
Spectrum 5 : Commencement Night - Richard Ashby
Spectrum 5 : Mother of Invention - Tom Godwin
Spectrum 5 : Crucifixus Etiam - Walter M. Miller
Spectrum 5 : Noise Level - Raymond F. Jones


Things change really fast around here.

4 out of 5


Mini seed people biology telepathic revelation.

2 out of 5


Moon team handover.

3 out of 5


Big ol' beast ride.

4 out of 5


Fast growth.

3 out of 5


Martian labor aeration.

4 out of 5


Genius opposition.

3.5 out of 5




3.5 out of 5 ... Read more

Product Description
Award-winning writer Kingsley Amis's newest novel is a dazzling romp through a territory he has made triumphantly his own--the battle of the sexes and the conflicting claims of love and integrity. Art, literature, political correctness, and the gender war all come under Amis's seasoned scalpel in this corrosively funny academic satire. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Another good one
Well-written, entertaining, and a bit surprising. I've read almost all of his novels ... most are good, a few are great, a couple are marginal.This is a good one.It is not at all obvious that the hero is better off at theend than at the beginning. Thinking is required of the reader so if thatisn't your thing, don't bother.

Kingsley Amis - in aworld of his own
What does this writer intend exactly? Hollow charcters you would personally boot out of a dinner party, plus linguistically dubious attempts at Russian double talk. An utter bore this book: God! I'm beginning tosound like Sir Kingsley himself.

entertaining, not involving
A decent novel but nothing spectacular. Amis is (wordily) witty as always, but the conflict here seems contrived and the whole thing runs out of energy near the end. Too much dialogue with the prof's various friends,most of it repetitive. After reading five Amis novels I'm beginning tothink his Lucky Jim was a bit of a fluke.

Amis crafts a timely story of post cold war social comment.
Not content to limit himself to his usual playgrounds of lampooning modern English society and exacerbating the battle of the sexes, Amis shows off a scholarly appreciation of the differences, once shrouded by the ironcurtain, between conservative and corrupt post-Soviet Russian society andthe Western world.In a very readable yarn Amis does all this withoutbogging down in heavy moralization.The story of the romance between abookish British professor of Russian and a young Russian Poet in the westfor the first time is entertaining, sharp, witty, and wise.This is Amisthe writer as a mature sophisticate who manages to keep his erudition incheck. ... Read more

Product Description
Teenager Clive Rayner becomes involved in a raid on a warehouse in which the night watchman is accidentally injured. In the aftermath, Clive is reassured by his mother, the vicar and the social worker that it wasn't really his fault, when in fact his need is for confirmation of his guilt. ... Read more