The Prometheus Project: Mankind's Search for Long-Range Goals. Gerald Feinberg (Doubleday, $4.95). Let the Fire Fall. Kate Wilhelm (Doubleday, $4.95). World's Best Science Fiction: 1968 (Ace, 60¢). The Last Starship from Earth. John Boyd (Berkley, 75¢). The Da Vinci Machine. Earl Conrad (Fleet Press, $5.95)

Of the making of many books there is no end. And they are all published, too. And the people cried out, saying: Give us a sign, we would have a sign. So Doubleday gave them a sign.

Virtual immortality, space travel, the extension of consciousness, artificial intelligence – topics like these have been explored in science fiction for years. The Prometheus Project: Mankind's Search for Long-Range Goals by Gerald Feinberg adds nothing to the exploration but an appalling naiveté. Prometheus is a stupid book, stupid beyond description, shallow beyond bearing, and as devoid of subtlety as it is of logic. To say that Dr. Feinberg is not equal to his subject is nothing; none of us is equal to the question of whether mankind ought to have conscious, long-range goals and what these ought to be, but some of us at least are troubled by the doubts that intelligence brings. Some of us at least have an inkling of the difficulties involved, let alone the agonizing choices one would have to make, let alone the problems of even defining the subject. Prometheus is sillier than the worst Flying Saucer scare book; it is written on the village-atheist level and riddled with inconsistencies; and Dr. Feinberg's attempt to keep moral considerations out of his discussion only exposes him to the oldest and most vicious of ethical fallacies. For example (p. 166):