Book summary

Centuries after aliens conquered the Earth, humans live on colonized planetoids. A hack reporter with a death wish (named Hildy Johnson after a reporter in the play "The Front Page", a part variously played in film versions by both Rosalind Russell and Jack Lemmon) can't stop trying to kill himself. After he hooks up with the colony's computer overseer to try and find out why, Johnson begins to suspect that the root of his problem may lie in the computer's subroutines, several of which also seem to be suicidal, and threaten the colony's continued existence.