Ray Goulding

In growing numbers, the space-age talent hunters comb the campuses — and each other’s laboratories — in search of brains. Bob and Ray, creators of“Mr. Trace, Keener Than Most Persons” and “Jack Headstrong, All-American American,” follow up their fantasy about the proposed National Data Center (“The Day the Computers Got Waldon Ashenfelter ,”in the November ATLANTIC)with a guide to co-option, presented in all its military-scientific-industrial complexity.

The chroniclers of the life and times of Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife, of Steve Bosco the sportscaster, of the Piels brothers, and other almost fictional characters here prove that they can be as telling in print as on the air or the TV screen. Ashenfelter thought the computers would help him trap Y. Claude Garfunkel, but he was tripped up by his own shoe size.