Vintage Treasures: Agents of Insight by Steven Klaper
These days blending genres is fairly routine. Like supernatural mob crime novels? Try Chuck Wendig’s The Blue Blazes. Enjoy human P.I’s in a fantasy setting? Try Glen Cook’s Garrett, P.I.. Vampire detectives? P.N. Elrod’s The Vampire Files. Zombie private eyes? There’s lots to enjoy! Check out Tim Waggoner’s The Nekropolis Archives or Stefan Petrucha’s Hessius Mann series.
Science fiction and spy thrillers… now that’s a slightly rarer breed. There are a few, but you have to look around. The earliest one I can think of is Agents of Insight, a mid-80s SF novel by Steven Klaper. Agents of the psi-spy agency Insight are being murdered around the world, and two agents have to expose the sinister nemesis behind the scenes, in a fast-paced race for the truth across a futuristic Earth — and beyond.
I don’t know much about this Steven Klaper fellow. Nuthin’, really. He published this single novel, and nothing else. No short stories, no articles, no reviews. Is Klaper a pseudonym for a more well-known writer? I have no idea. Anybody know?
Agents of Insight was published by Tor Books in October 1986. It is 224 pages. priced at $2.95. It has never been reprinted, and there is no digital edition. The cover is by Barclay Shaw. See all our recent Vintage Treasures here.
There’s some discussion of this book over on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/john.oneill.9469545/posts/10154506328497680?pnref=story
And Tor editor Beth Meacham shared the following with me:
“It was my book. Steve Klaper was his name, and he never delivered anything else. I don’t remember much about him. The book either came in through the slush, or from a “friend of the house” — sales rep or something like that. Not agented. I liked the book, and thought the genre-blend was really interesting.”