Library Journal
The authors of the best seller Warday ( LJ 4/1/84) depict in powerful detail a 21st-century Earth with devastated environment and rampant overpopulation. A rich and comfortable elite coexists with malnourished, pitiful billions, ``the victim generation.'' The rich enjoy youth preservation treatments and other biomedical wonders while the rest just endure the toxicity and pollution. Hero John Sinclair and a few rich companies fight to thwart the leader of a burgeoning Depopulation Movement that would have each third person poisoned to ``solve'' the population crisis. Readers will follow with grim fascination these struggles to survive in a dying world. Sobering message eclipses story, and the book should strike home with a variety of informed citizens. Strongly recommended. William A. Donovan, Chicago P.L.

School Library Journal
YA As in Warday (Holt, 1984), Strieber and Kunetka combine scientific facts with projections of scientific probability in their speculative fiction of the near future. It is 2025 and the planet is rapidly approaching environmental death. Dr. Gupta Singh, a Hindu guru with a Jim Jones-like following, has proposed the suicide, by lottery, of one-third of the world's population. His followers have elected a Depopulationist majority in Congress. Led by journalist John Sinclair, a small group hopes to prove that Singh is a fraud. Singh is a formidable enemy: he cancels the medical-cosmetological treatment that the 72-year-old Sinclair (who looks 46 due to the treatment) receives, causing Sinclair to age rapidly. Singh sets the feared tax police after Sinclair, alters his records, and wipes out his wealth. Tension mounts as Sinclair stalks Singh and gains access to his ``conviction''an electronic document into Singh's true identity and character. While this is less straightforward and slower to start than Warday, it is just as sobering in its tragic possibilities. Diana Hirsch, PGCMLS, Md.