Science fiction books are often about our future, but few give the feeling of tasting and touching a near-future world. Maxine McArthur's Less Than Human succeeds where other writers merely doodle.

Less Than Human unfolds at a sedate pace to begin with. Eleanor McGuire, a gaijin (Japanese for foreigner) and computer engineer, lives in a near-future Japan, just after the United States has cut itself off from the rest of the world.

All factories are run by robots. But one of these robots murders its human supervisor. Such an attack is considered to be impossible, beyond the capabilities of a mere robot.

Switch scenes: four Japanese teenagers walk into a high-tech apartment, switch themselves into a device that gives them an electronic high. All four die quickly and horribly.

Assistant Inspector Ishahara begins his investigation of the case, which his superiors believe looks like a straightforward group suicide.

But it isn't.

The novel really sparks into life when these two stories merge.

McGuire finds out that somehow robots are being used to murder humans, although nobody seems prepared to believe her but Ishahara.

In turn, the policeman needs to tap into McGuire's expertise to understand how and why the teenagers were murdered.

Near-future Japan is both the background for the story and the subject of the story itself. McArthur, an Australian who lived in Japan for 16 years, tells of a society brutally divided between haves and have nots, with computer engineering the glue that keeps the country together.

An overall attack on this glue would disassemble Japanese society, and perhaps that of the whole world.

Somebody has discovered how to unstick the glue. Follow the intriguing steps that lead to a suspenseful climax. The one thing you won't say is that it can't happen soon.