Dream of Glass

After a long hiatus (his last novel, Algorithm , appeared in 1978), Gawron offers an intriguing if not altogether satisfying novel. Gawron's near-future world is a bizarre hybrid, half cyperpunkish datagrids and rebellious artificial intelligences, half sinister religious police state. Thankfully, the dominating religion is not one we already know: a hacker-prophet, Charles of the Rose, has spawned a religion of individual identity which has, predictably, evolved into a repressive system in which the Ministry of Persons can declare a citizen ``depersonalized'' and nonexistent, a la 1984 . Our heroine, Augustine, super-talented ``interfacer,'' has nearly been killed in an accident. Afterwards, she struggles to accept her restructured identity, wrestling with buried memories. Sent to a ``monastery'' for troublesome gifted personalities, she begins to uncover the elaborate schemes in which she's entangled. The state wants to use her talents to decipher an alien artifact and to purge the vast data net of a persistent and mysterious virus, and will use whatever force it takes. The author's speculations on the nature of identity and the unusual texture of his future world are engaging variants of common SF concepts. The plot, however, merely hobbles along, with much at the end resolved via graceless infodumps . (Apr.)