Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 5, 1995                   TAG: 9503040027
SECTION: BOOK                    PAGE: F-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY PAUL DELLINGER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TERROR ON TV IN LOS ANGELES

Norman Spinrad has been best known since the 1960s as a leading writer of science fiction, using it as a lens to focus on many contemporary issues. But in ``Pictures at 11,'' the terrorist takeover of a Los Angeles TV station has no fantasy about it and seems all too real. But, as always, Spinrad manages to give reality a twist.

In this instance, the twist is that the terrorists - who take key TV employees hostage and mine the studio with explosives - are seduced by the same entertainment medium they hope to exploit.

The self-styled Green Army Commandoes want to use TV only to defeat a California referendum that would allow nuclear installations on earthquake-prone foundations. But then some of them see additional possibilities.

We see it all through the eyes of the hostages - the handsome news anchor whose courage is yet to be tested, the knockout weather girl whose bimbo-like exterior conceals a steel-trap brain and others. They alternate between being terrorized by their captors, some of whom seem quite willing to blow everybody including themselves to bits to make their point, and manipulating those captors by introducing them to the intricacies of show biz.

The terrorists are also manipulated by those outside the station, especially a seemingly laid-back country boy hostage negotiator. If the plot seems like something you've seen before, it's not. This time around, we get to know the terrorists as people almost as well as we know the hostages. And considering the callous government representatives ready to write off the hostages to avoid more negative programming, and the network representatives all too ready to risk the lives of the hostages for another exclusive, the reader will begin to wonder who are the real victims in this scenario before it ends.

Paul Dellinger reports on Pulaski for this newspaper.