E Pluribus Uni

THIS PERFECT DAY by Ira Levin. 309 pages. Random House. $6.95.

This novel, the author's first since Rosemary's Baby, has odd minor fascinations--like the work of a soap sculptor or a first-rate Christmas cookie frost-er. It is set a couple of centuries hence and rather predictably envisions mankind living passive and at peace under the tutelage of a gigantic computer named Uni. It doles out compulsory, will-killing drugs and makes the major decisions of every man's life. Yet the characters seem more pompous than drugged. The plot, despite a few captivating wrinkles, is the classic man-beats-awesome-machine gambit borrowed from science fiction.

Perfect Day's main appeal, however, is not to sci-fi addicts but to collectors of Utopian minutiae. In Uni-land, for instance, men have no beards. Women have no breasts, but whether for sheer efficiency or simple streamlining one never knows. Everybody dies at exactly age 62. Sex begins at 14 and can be had with anyone one likes, but on Saturday night only. So much for tub night.

Instead of A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, people sing "One mighty Family, A single noble race,/Sending its sons and daughters/Bravely into Space ..." The common obscenity is "fight," as in "fight you" or "you brother-fighter." On less vehement occasions the universal expression is "Christ, Marx, Wood and Wei," the four deities of the drugged society. Christ and Marx, O.K. Wei is a mischief-making Oriental seer who appears in the book. But who's Wood? The author has hinted that he made Wood up. But could it possibly be Speed-Reading Guru Evelyn Wood, who has, after all, taught millions to read by waving their fingers over the text?

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