Sweet first draught with tiresome
and bitter aftertaste (3/5)
Show me a man who has read more than 24 Brunner novels and I’ll
show you a new unsung hero of mine; that man would have read just as any as I
have. It ain’t easy being a Brunner fan: the pain of reading “No Other Gods But Me” (1966), the tediousness of spies and hypnotism, but also the joys of
discovering gems amid his prolific career, the brilliance of some older Ace
paperbacks like Meeting at Infinity (1961). I admit there are ups and
downs, but like the Chicago Bears fan that I am, I vigilantly stick through the
bad and relish the good, occasionally waxing poetic during the great.
Stardroppers starts as an “up”, finds some time-honored but
unappreciated Brunner themes, and ends on a flat note… yet another mediocre
Brunner novel.
Rear cover synopsis:
“A stardropper got its name from a belief that the user was
eavesdropping on the stars. But that was only a guess… nobody really knew what
the instrument did.
The instrument itself made no sense scientifically, but what you
got from it were some very extraordinary noises and the conviction that you
were listening to being from space and could almost understand what you were
hearing.
What brought Special Agent Dan Cross into the stardropper problem
was the carefully censored news that users of the instrument had begun to
disappear. They popper out of existence suddenly—and the world’s leaders began
to suspect that somehow the fad had lit the fuse on a bomb that would either
destroy the world or change it forever.”
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The accidental invention of the stardropper was due to the
device’s simplicity. The inventor, Rainshaw, “brought together a powerful
magnet, a chamber containing a hard vacuum into which he was introducing
counted quantities of ionized and non-ionized particles, and delicate
instruments for tracking those particles” (42). Resembling a portable radio, the
signals which the device received and transmitted to the listener did not come
from an external source. Another scientist, Berghaus, offered his best
hypothesis based on a non-Einsteinian continuum that “the normal sense of
space-covered-in-measure-time” (71) did not exist and that instantaneity ruled
(Feynman’s One-Electron Universe?).
The phenomenon of listening to the stardropper had spread worldwide,
but the center of the buzz is in England. Special Agent Dan Cross has been sent
to England to penetrate social circles dedicated to listening to the
stardropper and talking about the stardropper because curious, unexplainable
incidences have begun to arise: twenty people have been documented who had
“literally and physically vanished” (18) while listening to the stardropper.
Governments have begun to worry about the knowledge which the device may be
imparting, knowledge which may point to teleportation. Whose hands could grasp
this knowledge and how would a country defend itself against instantaneous
teleportation of, say, a nuclear device? Dan Cross is on it.
Dan’s own stardropper model is an elite, homemade kit which
everyone envies. He doesn’t feel drawn into the secrets in the soundwaves, but
many others have become addicted to the alluring susurrus of the mysterious
signals claiming they are on the verge of some greater understanding. Others
maintain they are eavesdropping on the minds of great alien beings. Regardless,
top scientists understand that this is a “totally new phenomenon, unforeseen,
inexplicable” (102). People are willing to steal to hear it, willing to risk
insanity to understand it, and actually eager to transcend into oblivion with
its knowledge. Is this all an “escape from reality, like drugs” or “a path to
new knowledge” (77)? One thing was known: stardropping could provoke a
form of trance and in this trance, exactly like a hypnotic trance, the person
was capable of incredible feats such as superhuman strength and total recall.
To Dan’s Agency, this sounded dangerous.
Gathering this common knowledge from the social circles, Dan Cross
informs his department of his findings. His official presence and task hidden
behind his tourist façade, Dan makes his report in the agency’s secretive way,
which relies on hypnotism and idiosyncratic syllogism. “Ordinary language was a
series of labels invented by other people; Agency codes were derived from
remembered events that were exclusively significant to the user” (63) where the
clarity, length, and grammar “depended on Dan’s personal memories and not on a
process that could be attacked statistically” (62). With the addition of
standard Agency vocabulary implant by deep hypnosis, the method of transmitting
information data to the Agency was secure. “Dan himself could not decipher a
transcript of one of his reports; it required a post-hypnotic trigger” (62).
Public knowledge of the disappearances had been muted. Dan’s
penetration into the social circles of stardropping seemingly scrapes the
surface of the global addiction, but soon Dan finds himself too deep in the
cover-up. He befriends a scampy girl who tries to steal his own stardropper
and, feeling sorry for her but also seeing a chance to delve further into the
circles, Dan goes to the community house where she stays. He lets her listen to
his ‘dropper alone in her own room; the only sign of her disappearance is a
note which reads “Thanks”.
Uncanny but still possibly explainable, Dan shrugs it off and
attends a meeting a store, Cosmica Limited, which acts as a hub for stardropper
sales and stardropper seminars. Sitting in the group expecting to be
entertained by the charlatans and antics, Dan is soon entranced by the shared
aural spectacle of stardropping. He awakes with a thud, lying on a seat that
was once occupied but now empty, having been vacated by a sudden “pop”. This is
the most public of disappearances and Dan is unfortunately at the center of it
all when he should be keeping low-key. Dan is anxious to solve the mystery and
the Agency is upset with his open cover. For Dan, it is now or never.
------------
The premise of the transmission of an undecipherable signal which
cannot be detected is, in modern physics, a bit far-fetched. Suspending this
disbelief, I found myself being snared into Brunner’s plot featuring a popular
device (the stardropper) which spurs social intercourse, hermetic intrigue, and
unexplainable disappearances. The gravity of the trio captured my attention and
plunged me into a 5-star sense of wonderment and into a well of ruse; my mind
pivoted on the idea that everything wasn’t as clear as Brunner was making it—a
realistic basis based on having read prior Brunner novels…
…yet, having read other Brunner novels, I also foreshadowed a few
of his pet plot twists for his pulpier novels: the importance of the spy agency
and the stratagem of hypnotism. Naively, I held out on my suspicions yet fell on
my face when Brunner’s typical turns were finally unveiled.
Aside from the expectedness, Brunner, as mentioned, does spin an
entrancing web of addiction around the stardropping. Each stardropping receiver
transmits different transmissions, so not all people experience the same signal
at the same time, yet a very rare few are able to decode the “alien” signal and
supposedly “sublime” from the translated data. The addiction comes from the
common user’s cups on this translation—some continue on the verge of
understanding while others plunge from the precipice of sanity, the ridge of
perception which separates what is corporeally perceived from what is only imagined.
Dan pertinent mission and lingering theories fall upon the question: Do the
sublimed transcend from their former or latter state?
Brunner poignantly touches upon the focus of recreational drug
use: Do most people use consciously for relaxation or for habit? Yet,
Brunner skirts the users’ responsibility aspect of partaking through occasional
use for easement or habitual use for addiction. Addiction seems widespread but
goes undefined.
Other Brunner morsels of knowledge find their way in the novel,
possibly a forced insertion into the narrative but, in when reading, imparting
a glimmer of needed intellectual depth (though actually superficial) into the
144 pages. One ort of insight comes from a brief oration on evolution:
So
what’s human evolution? Basically a story of learning to impose a desired form
on environment, right? But not just physical environment: also the sequence of
events experienced. The more man evolves, the more he consciously plans ahead
and … manipulated randomness, trying to ensure that future experience are
desirable ones. (80)
On the same page, Brunner continues this string of intrigue with
the propagation of knowledge à la knowing of knowledge versus use of
knowledge:
[C]an you think
of a better niche [the sales of stardroppers] in a commercial society
for someone who’s concerned to propagate knowledge he considers important? … So
tell me what makes knowledge dangerous. Which seems more innocuous, in your
view—to teach a man to read and write, or to make gunpowder? Yet more
revolutions have been carried through with literacy than with shot and shell.
(80)
This intellectual interlude spans the gap between the novel’s two
parts: the enticing trio (social intercourse, hermetic intrigue, and unexplainable
disappearances) of Dan’s investigation and the unraveling of said investigation
in a very Brunner pulp style. It’s reminiscent of, if not a complete rip-off
of, Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination (1956).
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The Stardroppers doesn’t so much draw the reader in and repel the
reader away as it does draw, settle, and tepidly stew. Like many Brunner
novels, this is one for Brunner completists or maybe someone who hasn’t read The
Stars My Destination and needs a few hours to kill on a
plane. Memories of this novel's onset will linger with me, but I will most
likely forget the entire middle half.
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