About the book: 1996 / Norman Spinrad is an American writer whose works have successfully shocked more than one generation of readers, and not only in the United States. The rapid growth of science fiction in the seventies today is unimaginable without this outstanding literary figure. Moreover, true fans of science fiction see in Spinrad a subverter of canons and a worthy literary hooligan. One might say that he did no less for science fiction and fantasy than Henry Miller and Theodore Pynchon did for foreign prose of the twentieth century..