Struggles to find a
toehold or point of advance (2/5)
The year 1965 was a busy
year for John Brunner; he published seven novels: five with Ace (The Altar
of Asconel, The Repairmen of Cyclops, The Martian Sphinx, Enigma
from Tantalus, and The Day of the Star Cities), one with Ballantine
(The
Squares of the City), and one with Faber & Faber (The
Long Result). However, unlike many other Brunner novels, this novel was
neither serialized nor stitched-up. One might assume that this would make the
novel more coherent, more focused… yet, one would be incorrect in that
assumption. The Day of the Star Cities fails to find its voice amid the
characters’ conjecturing, flaccid hypnotic slant, and hollowness of the aliens’
intentions.
The Day of the Star
Cities has an alternative title of Age
of Miracles (1973), but this is a revised edition and, by simply looking at
the page count, a substantially longer book—158 pages and 300 pages,
respectively.
Rear cover synopsis:
“The first hint that
Earthmen had that aliens had come to their planet was a catastrophic one.
Suddenly, without warning, all the atomic weapons and fissionable material on
Earth were blown up. Panic, death and chaos reigned for months before things
began to get back under control.
By that time reports were
already coming in of five mysterious star-shaped cities scattered over the
globe—huge area [sic] of flickering light and awesome free energy,
disorganizing to human senses and impregnable to attack. The aliens had built
their bases on Earth.
But were they only bases,
or—something else?”
------------
Though called “cities” by
the helpless natives of Earth, the actual purpose of the towering translucent
structures is unknown, yet some hold a theory that, rather than housing alien
intelligences, the “cities” are actually the nodal points of an alien
interstellar transportation system. The five “cities”—located in Russia, Brazil,
America, Australia, and Antarctica—are
each shaped like a star and are also arranged in array, a fact which leads
credence to the transportation theory.
Humans are barred from entry
by subjection to permanent delirium; those who have entered and returned are
called “crazies” yet rumor has it that a Russian child possesses the ability of
entering the city and returned unscathed. Members of a resistance group in
opposition to the militant dictators kidnap the boy and aim for the western
American coast, where they happen upon rescue by American sympathizers.
In America, too,
there is rumor of one child’s ability to enter the city and return with a
glowing artifact. These live artifacts are very rare as most of the detritus
surrounding each city is dead, inoperable and without notable function; the
American separatist state of Grady’s Ground was founded on the trade of these
artifacts and Grady himself is very eager to collect functioning pieces of alien
technology. However, other people, as equally as unscrupulous as Grady himself,
are also after the artifacts which could bring huge amounts of money and,
thence, power. In an era where the governmental reach has collapsed, holding
power is greatly beneficial to survival, expansion, and control.
Dennis Radcliffe is once
such swarthy peddler. In a bar, casually having a beer like any man, a crazy
materializes in the bar and assaults Den screaming “Damn you … you did this to
me, you bastard” (6). Never having seen the man before, Den is perplexed by the
accusations and, as any man would have, defends himself against the crazed man,
killing him. Sheriff Waldron questions Den, without much success, and attempts
to solve the mystery of the crazy, whose innards are laterally swapped and
whose face is exactly similar to Corey Bennett… who is without twin and still
alive in Grady’s Ground.
Confounded by the mysterious
crazy, hampered by the fanaticism of the religious zealot’s outside the city,
and impelled to seek answers to the Star Cities’ origins, Waldron, a band of
Russian dissenters, and a host of minor characters aim to settle the rumors,
quash the untruths—hypnotism may be a key in understanding why children can
enter the Cities while adults turn crazy.
------------
Essentially a mystery filled
with knavish characters, The Day of the Star Cities isn’t very enticing
as a mystery. The Cities are dull monoliths as are the aliens; neither are
explored to any length, so rather than being awed by the pellucid behemoths,
the reader diverts attention to future history within. With the destruction of
all nuclear piles under 1.2 kilograms (or thereabout), industrializes countries
have been ravaged by blasts and radiation, thereby crippling the power of each
government. Sadly, how people fare in the headless Union
isn’t covered very well.
The knaves which inhabit the
plot are all pretty uniform—out for themselves, out for money, or out for
power: “Greedy, unscrupulous, careless of the future” (120). Things are so bad
and unpredictable, some claim that it’s “a damned sight safer dealing with the
aliens than with our own lunatic species” (103). Ever since the occupation,
humans have been unable to contact the aliens so any such dealings with the
occupiers are pure myth. The only glimmer of light shed on the aliens is when a
nebulous clouds descends on a stolen artifact (a mystery of which is left to
taper off and die).
Eventually, Brunner returns
to two time-honored favorites of his: spies and hypnotism. Psycho-spies are a
minor element of the plot but the existence of it irks me endlessly along with
hypnotism, a seemingly faultless science of the future, which is used to
resolve a key plot hole. The solution is lazy and overused, lazy being an
adjective which could encompass much of the book—perhaps this is why Brunner
rewrote it, extended it, and republished it eight years later in 1973. I can’t
compare the two, so this is purely hypothetical.
------------
Some earlier Brunner is
surely much better, The
World Swappers (1959) and Meeting
at Infinity (1961) among them, both Ace paperbacks. Naturally, some
later Brunner also suits my tastes: Quicksand
(1967) and Stand
on Zanzibar (1968), for example. Though one of my favorite authors,
Brunner is still hit-or-miss. This being the 27th Brunner book I’ve
read, I stand by my conviction with an air of reassurance gained through the
thick and thin, good and bad of what Brunner has had to offer the reader… yet,
this journey is far from complete.
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