In THX 1138, Ben Bova adapts George Lucas' first film into novel format. The story focuses on THX 1138, who works in an underground city in the future where he has an illegal sexual relationship with his roommate, a woman named LUH 3417, who was herself born of "the sexact." The ever-watching Control officers catch them and sentence THX to reclamation, where his organs will be reclaimed for society, while LUH will face destruction. The story resembles other works of dystopian science fiction, such as George Orwell's 1984 or Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, and has a similar range of themes.
Like those works, it invokes the concept of the panopticon, proposed by Jeremy Bentham in the 1800s, and uses it in a manner such as that put forward by Michel Foucault wherein the behavior of the people is changed due to them being observed, but so too is the behavior of the observers who are themselves observed. Lucas drove this point home in the film with constant radio chatter from the observers that THX could hear and use as a guide to modify his behavior. Bova adapted this dialogue directly to the novel and the disembodied voices drive several scenes, reinforcing the idea of an impersonal observer. Lucas also critiqued a culture dependent on consumption and psychopharmacology in order to fill the void in their lives, and one of the first illegal acts that THX and LUH perform is to cease taking their pills. Finally, the novel comments on the increasing lack of person-to-person communication, the end result of which is the criminalization of physical intimacy in order to make every human an island unto themselves, answerable only to Control. Many reading this might be tempted to draw parallels to modern cell phones, but it is a false comparison as those devices encourage interpersonal communication. In truth, this is Lucas' most significant idea in THX 1138 (it is the reason why THX and LUH's relationship causes so much trouble) and it drives the titular character even during his bleakest moments.
THX 1138, based on George Lucas' student film Electronic Labyrinth TXH 1138 4EB, represents Lucas' work at the peak of his creative energies (he made America Graffiti two years later and Star Wars four years after that). Ben Bova was at the time and remains one of the most prolific science-fiction writers and it's only natural for him to adapt the film into a book (much like Alan Dean Foster writing the novelization of Star Wars). Those who enjoyed the film or found it thought-provoking will find the same in the novel, though this 1978 re-release that capitalizes on Lucas' new-found fame, might confuse readers looking for something just like Star Wars. ( )

I'm not rating this one; it confused me and I don't know what to think or rate.