You’d figure… after reading
twenty books of a single author, you may become bored with the author’s prose,
ideas, or reoccurring themes. Every time I pick up another Brunner novel, I
open the pages expecting it fall between one or another of his novels—one with
parallelism or atmosphere. Even his bad books (The Wrong End of Time [1971]
and Give Warning to the World [1974]) maintain an intrinsic originality,
yet flawed in its pulp delivery or flat plot pulse. This here is my
twenty-first Brunner, a novel which I knew not to be the hardest of his science
fiction nor one of his more renowned novels. The fact that’s it not
well-known urges me on—I read it in one day. To say I relished it would be a
stretch, but to say I found it intriguing would hit the nail on the head.
Rear cover synopsis:
“Masses of meaningless wire.
Seeing-eye TV sets.
Hidden tape recorders spinning
subliminal suggestions.
With each discovery, Murray
Douglas’ alarm grows. But it doesn’t seem to affect the others.
It’s just Delgado’s way, they
say. He’s an oddball genius who has concocted his own method of writing and
directing a play. All we want is an opportunity to act for him.
But Murray Douglas wants to
know why Manuel Delgado has searches the stages of the world for these
particular actors. Why has he isolated them in an unused country club and
played to their weaknesses? Why are they being proctored by the odd, silent
servants? Who is Manuel Delgado and what’s his game?
Little do the actors realize
that the play is not the thing. That it is barely a cover for one of the most
astonishing and surreal events ever to unfold. That they are puppets of a
master intellect… pawns in the productions of time.”
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Murray Douglas has spent some
time in the sanatorium while
recovering from alcoholism. Once a well-known actor, the now has-been is trying
to recoup his losses by signing onto a play with a playwright of recent infamy.
The playwright, Manuel Delgado, staged a play where the one actress admitted
herself to a psychiatric ward, one actor committed suicide, and another woman
ate her baby. Had the production been doomed from the start or had the
dastardly result been Delgado’s intended goal?
When Murray arrives at the remote English estate,
he is escorted to his room where he discovers a wet bar. Angered by the
ignorance of his hosts, he demands the liquor to withdrawn from his room but
later finds an half-empty bottle of whiskey in his medicine cabinet and a open
bottle of Scotch in his suitcase, a bottle he didn’t pack. Smashing the bottles
in the tiled bathroom, Murray
confronts the director of the play, Mr. Blizzard. Blizzard pleads ignorance in
the matter, so Murray
turns to the other actors housed in the estate. They know him for his alcohol
problems and the scent of booze emanating from his room confirm their
suspicions.
Murray’s dislike for Delgado and Blizzard is heightened when he then
discovers metallic gossamer woven into this mattress which is attached to a
reel-to-reel machine in the bed’s frame. Without a speaker, the set-up isn’t
meant for nocturnal lullabies and the lack of a microphone discredits the rig
as an audio recording device. When Murray
confronts the playwright and the director, they, again, seem to feign ignorance
and blame the matter on the estate’s history as a country club. Unperturbed, Murray tells others of
his finding, some of who are alarmed at the invasion of privacy.
Murray is trusted by two other
members of the thespian troupe: a man with a heroine fix who finds copious
amounts of “horse” in his room but trusts Murray to dose it out to him,
otherwise he may double-dose himself to death; the other is a pretty girl
without vice or reputation. This girl’s normalcy contrasts the rest of the
thespians who have reputations of lesbianism, pornography, or pedophilia. Add
to this his alcoholism recovery and his friend’s addiction; the result is a
decadent mix of vices which no one could possibly want to organize together to
perform a play of any sort. What ideas had Delgado formed to compose the group
as such?
Murray’s infernal meddling in the estates electronics angers Delgado and the
estate’s butler, Valentine. The odd console has continuous power even when the
set it turned off; the power cord isn’t plugged into the wall but runs into the
adjoining room. When Murray
tugs the cord, a crash occurs and Valentine runs to the other room to attend to
the resulting crash. Again, Murray
is scolded but he continues his effort to persuade the other’s of the odd
happenings in the estate. He’s committed to production because of his need to
return to acting, but when circumstances become unbearable, Murray reflectively threatens his immediate
departure but his curiosity gets the best of him. When he overhears, “That wasn’t
the experience contracted for!” (106), Murray
organizes a quick set-up of his own to wring the truth from the conspirators.
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The commonplace, non-SF setting
with an actor as the protagonists was a tad unsettling. I wasn’t sure what to
expect as I tend to ignore reading synopses before reading the book, but I
maintain faith in Brunner (rarely has he failed me, but I once damned him for
writing the novella “No Other Gods But Me” [1966] in his Entry toElsewhen [1975] collection). Thanks
be to Brunner that he had talent enough to carry the reader through some good
amount of deception, chicanery, and good old-fashioned lying to rile up the
protagonist. Murray’s inquisitive nature spoils
the fun of the conspirators, though he has little idea who exactly they are or
what exactly they are up to; Murray
just knows that he doesn’t appreciate being played with and lied to. This
amounts to a good amount of frustration resulting in petty destruction,
something which the reader can empathize with.
The cast are scripted to be
have “been brought to ruin and disrepute by abnormal behavior” (1) but I found
them all to be interesting and was rooting for their latent revolt against
those conspiring and lying, whoever they turned out to be. They may be
“down-and-out actors” (1) with some inhibition to resist revolt because they
also need the acting job, but the reader actually puts a measurable amount of
faith in Murray
to continue his antics and get to the root of the meddling mystery. It’s fun…
something which is hard to say of other Brunner books which typically waver between
intellectually satisfying and curiosity stroking.
The inclination to the climax
is steady, with the climax itself being very abrupt and fruitful. It snapped
like a taught elastic band and stung like a being smarted by the same elastic band.
The conclusion to the mystery is a bit grandiose and far-fetched, but don’t
read any more of the page one synopsis (in the Signet edition) if you don’t
want any inkling as to what that conclusion rests upon. Maybe since I read all
139 pages in one day, I found the conclusion suiting, even with its ‘deus ex
machina’ quality (a lá The Wrong End of
Time).
The Productions of Time may not be Brunner’s most challenging book
or more intellectually satisfying book yet, but it’s one of his most fun reads.
Be open to Murray
as you are to the unique cast, and you may be open enough for the ‘deus ex
machina’ conclusion. Simple and charming… I’m wondering if Timescoop
(1969) holds a similar appeal.
Another Brunner for my list....
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