The Day of the Dolphin. Robert Merle (Simon and Schuster, $5.95). Bug Jack Barron. Norman Spinrad (Avon, 95¢). Emphyrio. Jack Vance (Doubleday, $4.95). Best SF: 1968. Eds. Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss (Putnam's, $4.95). The Empty People. K. M. O'Donnell (Lancer 75¢)

All books ought to be masterpieces. The author may choose his genre, his subject, his characters, and everything else, but his book ought to be a masterpiece (major or minor) and failing that, it ought to be good, and failing that, it at least ought to show some sign that it was written by a human being.

Robert Merle, Prix Goncourt winner and author of The Day of the Dolphin may be a word-mill for all I know; the book is pure commodity, written by the yard to be bought by the yard. Out of 320 pages the author uses more than fifty to establish that there are dolphins, that they are intelligent, and that these facts interest the U.S. Government. Knowing the temper of his readers (whose delicate mental balance can be upset by the least sign of intelligence or originality) M. Merle introduces scores of characters to talk about dolphins and scores of others to listen to them; and when that runs out, the hero's lab assistants spend two hundred more pages (dear God) quarreling about each other's utterly stereotyped sexual proclivities without, unfortunately, ever doing anything even remotely indecent. I have been heard to complain that there is not enough characterization in science fiction, but I hereby repent in tears and blood. If characters have to be introduced to do utilitarian things in books – like turning on electric lights – I far and away prefer the lightweight, portable, flexible cardboard cutouts that science fiction writers are so fond of to M. Merle's well-rounded, “realistic,” ponderous, wooden dummies. The characters are supposed to be Americans, but they are all French, including two ex-Vassar girls with uvular r's (ah, those languorous Poughkeepsie summers!) and the plot proper starts on page 200. Everybody talks about the Vietnam war as if he had just heard of it. If the book had been cut by two-thirds, the material about the dolphins kept and the rest sketched in as lightly as possible, this could have been a bearable novel, for M. Merle's dolphins are interesting and likeable characters.