Russian Spring

In the near future, the debt-laden U.S. owns a technology that renders it "e;the world's best-defended Third World country."e; The only real outer-space planning is in Common Europe, so young American "e;space cadet"e; Jerry Reed goes to work in Paris. He falls in love with and marries Soviet career bureaucrat Sonya Gagarin and the story jumps ahead 20 years, blending world events with a focus on their family. Sonya's star has risen with the Euro-Russians' while Jerry has been stymied by pervasive anti-Americanism. Daughter Franja has her father's space fever and enrolls in a Russian space school; son Bob, fiercely curious about an earlier, admired America before it was run by xenophobic "e;Gringos,"e; enters Berkeley. Ten years later the U.S. is a pariah, Euro-Russia the pet of the civilized world and the Reeds scattered - politics forced Jerry and Sonya's divorce, Franja speaks only to her mother and Bob is trapped in "e;Festung Amerika."e; A series of odd, occasionally tragic events brings the family (and the world) together. Despite some tech-talk this is not science fiction: the first two-thirds of this hefty book is chillingly logical, if sometimes very funny, and while the "e;happy"e; ending may seem forced, Spinrad ( Bug Jack Barron ) gives us a wild, exhilarating ride into the next century.