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Summary: Commander Chico Mangwella of The USS Cuban Missile says....
Review: "Perfecto!"
Rating: 
Summary: pretentious
Review: I've now read this book, and to be honest, don't find it to be worth a lengthy review. Spinrad proposes three social forces in conflict - the Hegemony, the Democratic League, and the "chaotic" Brotherhood of Assassins - and populates each with two-dimensional stick-figure heroes and villains. It's ok if you are into lasgun assaults under plasteel domes on Mercury, but it's not the philosophical conflict of ideas that it pretends to be. No way it was "the great science-fiction novel now an underground classic in colleges all across America".
At times it can be just ridiculous; for example, when the first intersteller probe comes back from Cygnus 61, everyone sits around waiting for the film to come back from the lab. And a secret agent travels to Mercury under cover as a business man deciding whether to relocate his desk calculator manufacturing plant there, as if that makes economic sense. Sheesh.
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Summary: Star Trek's Norman Spinrad
Review: It's a little known fact that Norman Spinrad wrote one of the most beloved, yet dunder-headed Star Trek episodes of its second season on NBC. This episode was called "The Doomsday Machine." I know you're probably standing there right now, arms folded, tapping your space-booted toe, and looking down on me for remembering such an obscure piece of ****. I don't blame you. I'm ashamed and sorry. I promise it won't happen again. However, I did read "Agent of Chaos," and I found that it lived up to the description of its contents printed across its colorful, and hilariously chaotic front cover. It promised to be An Agonizing Science Fiction Adventure, and man o man was it ever. This book made me physically and mentally ill. By the end of chapter one, I got this sick, chalky taste in my mouth. Then, I rushed to my bathroom mirror to find my face had grown fat with three double chins covered with zits. By the end of chapter two, my brains had turned into puree.... And by the final chapter, I felt the uncontrollable urge to shave my eyebrows off. In conclusion, Norman Spinrad's "Agent Of Chaos" is a fat, gum-chewing sci-fi novel, and it gets five stars for being so, and for delivering just what its jacket advertises:-AN AGONIZING SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURE.
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Summary: Who is Norman Spinrad
Review: Norman Spinrad is one of the best writers of the 1970's. His novel Bug Jack Barron is considered one of the 100 best SF books of all time. This is one of his first novels and as such is a precursor of the technique and themes appearing in later books. I would buy this book. But then again, I know a book with Spinrad's name on it will not be a waste of time or money.
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Summary: ULTIMATE CHAOTIC ACT
Review: The author opened each Chapter with a verse from George Markowitz, fictive author of the Theory of Social Empathy. He draws his characters in this story to produce conflict between the theory of social order and of that of social chaos. Sprinrad presents human emotions as random factors serving the forces of chaos. This is a very good job of using his characters to teach his anti-utopian ideal. Basically he is telling his reader to stop fighting the entropic degradation of the universe--just lay back and enjoy it. That one group committed suicide, as the Brotherhood of Assassins did, in order to accomplish their mission of universal planetary exploration was a paradox that enthralled the author. Thus he labeled victory by suicide as the Ultimate Chaotic Act.
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Summary: ULTIMATE CHAOTIC ACT
Review: The author opened each Chapter with a verse from George Markowitz, fictive author of the Theory of Social Empathy. He draws his characters in this story to produce conflict between the theory of social order and of that of social chaos. Sprinrad presents human emotions as random factors serving the forces of chaos. This is a very good job of using his characters to teach his anti-utopian ideal. Basically he is telling his reader to stop fighting the entropic degradation of the universe--just lay back and enjoy it. That one group committed suicide, as the Brotherhood of Assassins did, in order to accomplish their mission of universal planetary exploration was a paradox that enthralled the author. Thus he labeled victory by suicide as the Ultimate Chaotic Act.
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Summary: The Publisher Is Crazy
Review: The publisher is crazy. This book stank. It's only meant for people who take notes while they're watching Star Trek. I also felt the urge to shave my eyebrows off, but I found it's better to set such an act to music-preferrably, The Theme To The Pink Panther.
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Summary: Back cover of Agent of Chaos
Review: This is one of the most amazing science fiction novels ever written. First published in the late sixties, Spinrad was one of the first writers to perceive the totalitarian implications of the cradle-to-grave welfare state. But at the same time he was too organically a radical ever to be confused with a conservative. Result: Agent of Chaos!Boris Johnson thinks he wants democracy. But in the course of his adventures he discovers that democracy to him means freedom. It's a banned concept from the Millennium of Religion. Like God. He finds himself dealing with a byzantine political situation worthy of anything from the banned past. The dictatorship is the Hegemony. Opposition is provided by the aptly named agents of C.H.A.O.S. Meanwhile, the Brotherhood of Assassins plays a game that no one can fathom. Whose side are they on? Whose fool are you? Spinrad explores his philosophical theme in a manner all too rare in contemporary science fiction. The problem is that Order will always try to eliminate any random factors. By its very nature, it encourages opposition and that feeds the forces of chaos. But chaos has a built in problem as well. Its victories cannot help but feed the forces of reaction, of order. The heroes in this novel ultimately opt for personal freedom. The villains try to establish a dictatorship over the very nature of reality itself. And then Spinrad throws in the discovery of aliens. A starship sets forth to meet them, the Prometheus. The Hegemony doesn't like that. Norman Spinrad has written one of the most important science fiction novels about anarchy that will ever be written.
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Summary: One of the finest books of all time
Review: This is the best! Norman Spinrad writes a novel that cuts to the heart of modern existence and is a complete guide on how and why to live.
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Summary: A Thief From Seattle Washington
Review: Why are some people readers, and others shoppers? Maybe Amazon.com is what really stank. I read Agent of Chaos after I stole it from a local bookstore (that will go nameless from the get-go) and I must say I enjoyed the time I spent reading it. In fact, I made a great event out of it. What I did was this: I bought me a bottle of Bacardi Rum; walked on over to Stromboli's Wash N' Shop Laundromat with a full sack of quarters; got high off of some University District MaryJane, and read that thar book while I lost at every video game, including the Star Wars pinball machine.
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