Books: The Sinkable Blonde

A FOR ANDROMEDA (206 pp.)—Fred Hoyle and John Elliof—Harper ($3.50).

In the late 1960s, a top British mathematician, Dr. John Fleming, monitors the trial run of a newly built radio telescope at bleak Bouldershaw Fell. With just these few clues, any science fiction fan knows what to expect: signals from outer space.

Plugged Brain. Sure enough, within 20 pages the supersensitive reflector picks up a complex series of dots and dashes speeding earthward from the Andromeda constellation, a thousand million million miles away. Excitedly, Fleming discovers that the elaborate code is written in binary...