1964: To Conquer Chaos (Brunner, John)

Light and swift, yet hearty and fulfilling (4/5)

You could say I'm a bit of a Brunner fan... this is my 17th Brunner book and I have thirteen more on my to-read shelf. If you have any more than this, then we should talk. To say the least, when I open a Brunner novel I only expect the best. Period. His diversity is what keeps me coming back--he's the king of the stand-alone novel in my opinion. Out of his whole collection, he only wrote three series (can't that that for nearly modern sci-fi authors) but even those are loosely woven together, so perhaps "theme" would be a better word than "series." I own the original 1964 Ace cover (mint condition, thank you very much) which trumps the 1981 DAW cover with a damn dragon on the front.

Rear cover synopsis:
"On the face of the Earth only the Barrenland remained an impenetrable mystery--a blasted radioactive area the size of a small state where no man dared to venture. But Jervis Yanderman was one of the more courageous souls of that future day when men at last were starting to reconstruct the vanishing civilization of the dim past. Jervis knew that the secret of the Barrenland had to be solved. For things from out of this world still emerged from it to terrorize neighboring lands and strange weird visions haunted those who even approached it."

The Grand Duke Paul of Esberg has received rumors of a strange barren land one fortnight's march away. When his northern scout, Ampier, returns to Esberg maimed after a brief with a creature near the Barrenland, the Duke becomes interested in what lays beyond the border of that barren land. Infected with a curious green mold, Ampier accompanies the Duke's troops to investigate what lies at the edge of this Barrenland.

Militarily led by Jervis Yanderman and spiritually led by Granny Jassy, whose visions of the Barrenland intrigue the Duke, the 1,000-man army treks to the town of Lagwich, which borders the Barrenland and is prone to attack by the things which escape. Conrad is the resident chandler boy who also has visions of the mysteries which lie beyond the border. Frustrated by verbal jousts and ignored pleas, Conrad seethes with hatred for his peers and seeks a life with Jervis's army.

Nestamay Maxall is being tutored by her grandfather in the art of defense. Her lineage is dedicated to the protection of the Station, where occasional monsters "hatch" and escape the dome. However, the 400-year long inbreeding of the Station's staff has left her with only one ideal mate, who she can barely talk to let alone romanticize with. When a polypedal monster is reeking havoc under the dome, the Station personnel don't understand by the alarm wasn't triggered, but Nestamay understands why.

To Conquer Chaos is very cleanly written. At the same time, the novel is linear but mysterious; rustic yet futuristic; passive yet horrific. If you ask me, a classic science fiction novel isn't that unless is has monsters in it! Brunner makes the monsters interesting by making them all different and, in the end, providing a reason for it. As the characters battle the beasties and Jervis expounds upon the likely source of the critter-chaos, the reader is sucked into the three thread narrative. How are the Jervis and Conrad threads tied to the Nestamay thread, if at all?

The light characterization of each character goes hand-in-hand with the 192-page length of this earlier Brunner novel. Because the plot is so swift and the tale so intriguing, the light characterization accomplishes a lot when Jervis, Conrad, and Nestamay are in the height of action or concocting a Plan B withdraw from their established life. It's a whirlwind of not only action, but also of sympathetic emotion. I'm not quite sure if Brunner has ever penned such lightly sculpted yet such interesting pawns in his marvelous plots.

Common to an early Brunner novel (and an early Poul Anderson novel, as well) is his written style. Dry as it may be, it imbues a sense of antiquity. Where Poul Anderson in Three Worlds to Conquer (1964) used words like behoven, erstwhile, belike, nigh and thundersmitten, John Brunner has uses words like hitherto, afresh, amiss, impugn, and addlepated. If any other author were to try using such words, the attempt would feel awkward. But the 1960s use of this Olde English by Anderson and Brunner is most welcome.

The one flaw which haunts To Conquer Chaos is Brunner's trope of the six sense--extra-sensory perception or remote viewing. This hypnotic state is found is other Brunner novels such as The Whole Man (1964) and Bedlam Planet (1968). While the latter two examples of extra-sensory perception in Brunner's novels were somewhat persuasive, his use of this trope of fairly dull in To Conquer Chaos. I can see the necessity for it in the plot, but the answer to its existence fails, not because the ending is bad because of the disconnectedness to Conrad's and Granny's remote viewing.

A very satisfactory novel by Brunner, yet again; even the last page conclusion produced a nodding, smiling satisfactory ending. If you can stomach the ESP trope and monster invasion better than I can, then perhaps you'll enjoy this novel even more than I did! This mint condition Brunner novel has a rightful place atop my fourteen-high stacked Brunner pile.

1964: The Whole Man (Brunner, John)

Very un-Brunner-like: psychology & telepathy (3/5)
From July 13, 2011

It's odd that I've read twelve other Brunner novels and yet I can't compare The Whole Man with any of them. The Whole Man is part of Brunner's bibliography but better resembles aspects of other science fiction writers. The writing style, too, feels very un-Brunner-like. I can't pin the assumption on any one part, but the prose feels more akin to an Aldiss novel.

Rear cover synopsis:
"Howson's mind could get legions to do his bidding--but not one doctor to release him from his hell that made him A Whole Man. Gerlad Howson wanted nothing more than to be like other men--to move without pain, to live without ridicule--even after he discovered hsi remarkab;e telepathic powers. But the quirk of genetic fate that had warped his body and gifted his mind had also rendered him impervious to medical science. And if, as others before him, he gave in to the dazzingly rich but deadly fantasies that allowed him to escape his torment, it would mean death or madness for anyone who tried to save him--and a human loss as great as any the world had ever known!"

Telepathy is the main theme and I can't name another Brunner book which includes this. I'm not a fan of science fiction books with telepathy or telekinesis or any of those other pseudo-sciences. Most of these plots have a poor basis, much like The Whole Man. The source of telepathy is an organ in the brain called the Funck which is composed of only one hundred cells. Gerald, our super-telepath, has an organ twenty percent larger than this (one hundred and twenty cells?). It's also not described how a telepath earns their mental powers. All it says is that it happens after twenty years of age--batta-bing, batta-boom.

Gerald comes the employment of the UN because of his skills. With this, he is trained as a curative psychologist, or a telepathist who is able to cure patient's psychoses with the deft touch of the long arm of the mind. Being the big shot he is, Gerald only takes the most severe cases, including the cases involving other telepathists. A certain psychosis which telepathists are prone to is something called catapathic grouping in which a telepath lives out a detailed mental fantasy by assimilating other minds.

If you can swallow the plot line involving a telepathic cripple with hemophilia based in Ulan Bator, then scenes of using telepathic skill and natural wit to release the hold of the catapathic grouping is a good show. One excellent scene is Gerald's involvement of a catapathic group fantasy which takes place in ancient China. The picture Brunner paints if rich and deep, but unfortunately this only takes place over the course of twelve pages... which felt climatic even though there were still sixty unclimatic pages remaining. This is where the book begins to drag.

After the climatic ancient Chinese fantasy battle of magic, dragons and tigers Gerald returns to his hometown to hang out with some friends for forty pages. Seriously un-cli-ma-tic. In the end there's an out-of-place inclusion of some multi-sensory art form. The ending did not capture any previous red-flag in the plot, any nuances which may have been picked up on, or any intensity in previous climaxes. Flat, just flat.

If you pick up DelRay edition of The Whole Man with the flowery cover art, stop after page 130 and consider he book to have a rather abrupt ending rather than reading the remaining fifty pages of tapering filler without the whiz-bang. Read it for its take on telepathy and psychology AND because it's a Brunner novel, but stay clear if its merely a causal read.