Particivision and Other Stories

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

As the title indicates, this collection of stories is about getting into
the thick of things, taking sides, taking action, and speaking out loud
and clear, however unpopular your opinion may be.

Some of the causes Wind espouses will get no argument from any thinking
person. Ecology and the preservation of the environment, mandated by
legislation in his fantasy of the future “Tour of Duty,” concern all
of us. So do the restoration of some sense, decorum, and dignity to
Canada’s parliamentary system, as in “Answer Period”; the
production of uninsulting, rational advertising for sensible people
sickened by meaningless hype, as in “New and Improved”; and the need
to prevent the school system from becoming completely clogged with
unwilling louts who are incapable of profiting from the experience, as
in “School Board.” The title story advocates participation—rather
than a mindless, couch-potato frame of mind—for television
aficionados.

Wind’s view on the ethics of suicide, poignantly expressed in
“Coda: Canon,” his story about changes in human sexuality that will
all but do away with sexual intercourse, in “The Sexual Evolution,”
and his face-off between the forces of faith and those of secular
humanism, in “The Great Jump-Off,” will probably annoy at least half
of the people half of the time. His is an iconoclastic perspective, and
this collection’s 13 stories although of uneven quality, are
refreshingly out of the ordinary.