THE NINTH WAVE (332 pp.)Eugene BurdickHoughfon Mifflin ($3.95).
In this first-novel winner of the Houghton Mifflin award, Author Burdick gives a reverse twist to the cozy U.S. sociological convention that coarse, conservative fathers produce sensitive, nonconformist sons. It is a study of Mike Freesmith, whose father was a radical so militant he once smashed the family Christmas tree into bourgeois smithereens. To contrast his old man, Mike determines to become a "big wheeler and dealer." He starts rolling as a clean-limbed, sexually limber nihilist on a surfboard off the coast of South ern California....