paranoia

[the Robot Vegetable]

	An excellent take on paranoia, pornography, international
conspiracies and the global weapons trade can be found in
_The Assignment_ subtitled _or on the Observing of the Observer
of Observers_ by Friedrich Durrenmatt.  This short novel, copyright
1986, translated from the German by Joel Agee ISBN 0-679-72233-5,
follows a maker of video portraits as she accepts the assignment
to find out what happened to his murdered wife.  The "accepts
the assignment" is about the only thing that is as it appears to
be.  One of the images I can't get out of my head is of the spy
satellite trained on another spy satellite to keep track of what
it's tracking.

    veg