THE KINSMAN SAGA

A massive put unoriginal tome; in fact, a rewrite combining two previously published works, Millennium (1976) and its later "prequel" Kinsman (1979), itself a rewrite of various short stories that appeared during the 1970's. This amalgamation, then, is the life story of one Chet Kinsman, a heroic young military astronaut, and, among other things, the first man to make love in weightless conditions. He fights in orbit and kills a Russian cosmonaut, rescues an injured fellow-astronaut on the moon, and battles the Washington bureaucracy over establishing a base there. Later, Bova sets forth his predictions on the power politics of laser-satellite defenses; the protagonist becomes a suffering Christ figure, aiming his social-political manipulations at ending the threat of nuclear war forever and establishing a unified, forward-looking world government. Overall, Bova has expanded some sections, cut others, and zippered up all the seams as neatly as you please. Still, if you don't go along with Bova's rah-rah, pro-Star Wars posture, you'll find much here that's hard to swallow. Kinsman fans and tree believers only.