1983: Midas World (Pohl, Frederik)

Consumption of abundance spawns misery (4/5)

Reviewing my library, I've become aware that while I dislike much of Pohl's work in novels, it's his work in the short story form which has won me over. The short story The Man Who Ate the World has been featured in over ten publications, but only now have I come around to (1) realizing what Pohl was grasping at and (2) actually liking it. Plushly surrounded with similar stories of the consumption of abundance, The Man Who Ate the World sits on a sturdier platform than the collection with the same title.

With the advent of fusion power, humanity puts all the power to work! Everything is put into mass production so that everyone has everything. Where the proletariats struggle to consume their consumption quota, the lumpenproletariats suffer much worse as they live in huge houses with everything imaginable and live their days endlessly consuming. The privileged live in blissfully sparse one-room studios and savor the sensations of hunger and penury. But when the weight of the world presses down on society's shoulders, revolution takes on a form which no one saw coming. Rendering themselves useless, humans take to orbit to escape the robots who produce for the sake of their own consumption. Pohl's universe of run-away consumerism spawned by plentiful energy only becomes sillier and sillier through the pages.

The Fire-Bringer (1983) - 4/5 - Amalfi Amadeus invents fusion power, the world rejoices, the materialism of the world's people blooms, and Amalfi doesn't get any of the glory. Even with statues and mentions in history textbooks, Amalfi wallows in his profitless fame. 4 pages

The Midas Plague (1954) - 5/5 - Morey Fry is a Class Three consumer with his wife Cherry. Their rate of consumption is lagging, as the National Rations Board has told them, and extra rations must be consumed during the next month. When Morey visits a shady bar after his blissful one day of work per week, he discovers fellow consumers who have a hatred for the robots who produce for the sole reason so that the humans can consume. After a drunken night out, Morey learns that he unintentionally solved his own problem of his consumption quota. 77 pages

The Servant of the People (1982) - 3/5 - Fiorello O'Hare is running for his 23rd term as Congressman. His competition this year is a vote-casting robot named Mayor Thom, who has suffrage thanks to O'Hare's legislature. But the shifty campaigning of Mayor Thom catches the eye of O'Hare's wife when visiting robots at a factory, where robots build robots. 26 pages

The Man Who Ate the World (1956) - 4/5 - The poorest of the poor, Anderson Trumie grows up in a world bombarded by perpetual mass consumption. For want of nothing but his sister's teddy bear, Anderson is punished by having yet another lavish birthday party. Twenty years later when humans don't need to mass consume, Anderson continues his habitual consumption as he commandeers an island, his own Robot Central, and a small chunk of the world's resources. It's up to psychist Roger Garrick and statistician Kathryn Pender to make Anderson realize this tyrannical wars are petty. 44 pages

The Farmer on the Dole (1982) - 5/5 - Zeb Josephson is a robotic soybean farmer. When the government allows the farm to go bust, Zeb is shipped to Des Plaines for reprogramming. Losing his farmer accent in favor of a properly punctual literature critic with an expansive vocabulary, Zeb is programmed to become a mugger in Chicago, under the tutelage of fellow robot Timothy. After being busted for robbing a human rather than another robot, Zeb meets robo-hooker Lori who introduces him to a group of wanna-be revolutionaries. 42 pages

The Lord of the Skies (1983) - 3/5 - Orbital resident Michael Pellica-Perkins spends his luxurious days casually browsing the alphabetical list of nearby females and delinquently hunting Von Neumann machines returning earthside with some intersolar ore. Michael's landlubber brother Rodney isn't as much as a voluptuary as Michael and disdains humanity's use of earth as one big power generator for the people in orbit. Michael soon learns that his 21st sequential wife is in on Rodney's plans for saving earth. 78 pages

The New Neighbors (1983) - 4/5 - Homiform Ralph and his organic dog Cissie are befriended by the only human tenants in their Chicago apartment block--Mr. and Mrs. Albright. His fellow homiform residents witness his rubbing shoulders with the humans and air their grievances about the couple's petty complaints. As an archaeologist/historian, Ralph finds inspiration for the solution in a secret notebook of Amaldi Amadeus. 36 pages

1984: Pohlstars (Pohl, Frederik)

Some stars shine, others struggle to ignite (4/5)
From January 29, 2011

Pohl has 25 collections of his short stories, novelettes, and novellas published. From all the ones I've read, they're all been excellent. With stories reaching back as far as 1940 and as modern as 2010, Pohl has a huge wealth of select stories to put into each published collection. I would love to say that this selection process is hand-picked and careful, but some of the duds offered up are painful (see The Wizard-Masters of Peng-Shi Angle).

The Sweet, Sad Queen of Grazing Isles (1984) - 5/5 - The roaming behemoth ships of advantageous hydrothermal explorers of the initial investor and his financial conspirator reap the rewards of innovative marine technology but the death of the owner brings Jason (the ex-banker, shareholder and legal guardian of the captain's only daughter) into unfamiliar personal and mortal territory. 75 pages

The High Test (1983) - 3/5 - Galactic driving instructor writes a series of holiday letters back to his mother in Chicago depicting his daily routine with human and alien learners, some with and some without an agenda. 15 pages

Spending a Day at the Lottery Fair (1983) - 3/5 - The fair has come to town and the Baxter family pay to enter to be included in the job lottery and other lotteries for the day but it's the visiting Scot and the Japanese/Scot who just don't understand the American way of appreciating both life AND death. 12 pages

Second Coming (1983) - 2/5 - Starts like a bad joke: so, a spaceship finds Jesus on an alien planet and brings Him back to earth but after watching TV and speaking nothing but Aramaic, Jesus doesn't like what He sees and can't be bribed with having His own channel to preach on. 4 pages

Enjoy, Enjoy (1974) - 4/5 - Hired to live his life to the fullest in terms of `fun' and "excitement," Cowpersmith take on the challenge through extreme activities and depressions in the trough, but if the money is there for his pleasure and pain, he doesn't care who the end buyer is. 18 pages

Growing Up in Edge City (1975) - 4/5 - A boy finds himself outside the walls of a sheltered city but also finds that he is victimized because of it, yet the victim always finds a prey for his own shortcomings. 14 pages

We Purchased People (1974) - 4/5 - Because of Wayne's paranoid disposition and criminal history, he is enslaved as an alien/human surrogate liaison where he does the financial bidding of the trans-light alien signals but occasionally finds himself with free time when he likes to peruse the flesh trade and lust after a fellow alien mind slave. 14 pages

Rem the Rememberer (1977) - 3/5 - A boy ponders the future but current ecological disaster on earth all the while being educated by how bad it COULD have been if his ancestors hadn't implemented their wise eco-friendly ways. 7 pages

The Mother Trip (1975) - 2/5 - After an enlightening `encounter group' where Pohl was `having his sensitivities elevated and his inhibitions soaked away', a multi-partner experience is re-lived through the eyes of alien intelligences who have come to earth to view the passive and aggrieve ways of human nature. 18 pages

A Day in the Life of Able Charlie (1976) - 4/5 - Seemingly Average Joe product tester is put under then pressure of mechanically reviewing numerous product ideas and ultimately composing the perfect solution while the next product testis moments away and leagues away from `his' normal experience. 7 pages

The Way it Was (1977) - 4/5 - A man is paid handsomely to live the high life of exciting travels, adrenaline inducing thrills and the lavish consumption of luxury all the while having it be paid for by a secret organization who sells the experience to an unknown buyer who seeks not only the acme high of human experience, but also the sullen lows of depression. 15 pages

The Wizard-Masters of Peng-Shi Angle (1958/1984) - 0/5 - A mere novelty to Pohl, this re-translated version of the Chinese-translation of The Wizards of Pung's Corner is littered of Romanized Chinese words and over 80 footnotes relating to the translations. Ignore this "wax tadpole" and read the original version (5/5!) in The Man Who Ate the World. 45 pages

1979: Polaris (Perkins, Sheldon)

Dialogue! Characters! Plot! ALL GENERIC (2/5)

The Belmont Tower edition of Sheldon Perkins' Polaris novel is the only publication of the novel. It's also the only novel written by Perkins. Generically titled Polaris, the name of the starship within the novel, the entire book reads as dryly as this introduction paragraph. If Polaris is taken as a sample of the author's writing style, Perkins made a wise choice in finding a different line of work. Though a 208-page novel, the book reads like a choppy collection of seven sequential short stories. So instead of writing a review for a novel, I'll write one which is more geared to a collection.

Rear cover synopsis:
"Captain Alexander Traynor of the United Space Republic only got the tough assignments. And his current task was the roughest of his entire career. He had to overhaul the ailing starship Polaris. The Polaris, once the pride of the U.S.R., was only now in sorry condition. Her weaponry was sadly in need of repair, and her staff divided by internal strife. But these problems were eclipsed by an even greater danger--a danger that came from outer space and threatened not only Traynor and the Polaris, but the entire United Space Republic!"

Chapter I - 3/5 - Alexander Traynor has recently been promoted to captain of a war-stricken vessel near the star Alpha Barnard. The fleet cruiser Polaris and her crew of 250 are under the orders of the outsourced "Earther" captain with stronger "Outworlder" affiliation. When scanning staff records with the ship's doctor, they outline the possible troublemakers and their political affiliations--Earther or Outworlder. 14 pages

Chapter II - 2/5 - Captain Traynor assigns 220cm Ganymedan Lieutenant Harold Nater as his personal security guard. Tension among the crew rises when executive officer Carl Nelson and his fellow Earther extremists conspire to oust the gentle captain through subversive means. 36 pages

Chapter III - 3/5 - After engaging six enemy battlewagons, the captain becomes aware of false rumors being spread about his trust of the Vendran people, native to a planet with 2.65 earth standard gravity. To address this, the captain puts himself in the boxing ring to prove one thing... and another. 23 pages

Chapter IV - 2/5 - The Polaris is called to the rescue of the disabled ship USR Moscow. With mounting tension between Captain Traynor and the extremist Earthers, the captain has difficulty coping with the casualties suffered during the rescue of the crew within the hull of Moscow. 46 pages

Chapter V - 3/5 - The captain and his crew visit the day of declaration of independence of the planet Larandra. The Vice-premier Dravin Pasteur has a short bur fiery on-record dispute with the captain, but his anti-Interplanetary Council agenda won't allow the obvious feud to hamper his barbaric plans. 36 pages

Chapter VI - 3/5 - Twelve orbital stations in the Barnard system have been destroyed and the Polaris has been assigned to assist in recovery. Only when the Polaris approaches does the crew realize that the enemy is fleeing from the scene towards their unknown home system. Banking on the importance of this impromptu mission, the captain follows the enemy fleet at a distance as the Earther party concocts a grand scheme for mutiny. 37 pages

Chapter VII - 2/5 - The outcome of the mutiny and the stealth approach towards the enemy's home star is announced by Captain Traynor. Who is promoted, who is detained, and which party alliance comes out on top? 12 pages

The Interplanetary Council heads the decisions of the United Space Republic which is composed of planetary bodies orbiting extra-solar suns and the planets and moons in Earth's solar system. The Council has promoted and appointed Traynor to the captaincy of the temporarily disabled ship Polaris. Being an outsider and an Earther with Outworlder sympathies, the predominantly Earther staff aboard the Polaris seek to oust the newly appointed captain from his position. Where prior ship climate was simmering with hierarchical disobedience between Earthers and Outworlders, Traynor's new regiment supports the enfranchisement of the suppressed Outworlders and the return to strict respect for one's superiors.

The annoyingly likable and ne'er-do-wrong Captain Traynor assumes the captaincy but the Earthers have a serious problem with this. Executive officer Carl Nelson rallies his Earther cohorts and endlessly conspires to oust Traynor from his post, utilizing both informal ways and formal paths. Traynor easily sees past these slight-of-hand verbal discrepancies and confronts the affected staff with tact and intelligence. This high emotional intelligence wins the respect of the non-Earther crew.

From the sparse data I could gather from online, Polaris was written as a novel rather than a collection of short stories. However, the entire story was terribly choppy and disconnected and read more like a poorly glued together stitch-up rather than a holistically composed novel. The two chapters where the crew (1) speed off to rescue the crew of Moscow, (2) attend the celebration at Larandra are only included to weakly heighten the already established feud between the crude crew. The conspiracy is repetitious and the allegiance to the captain is predictable, given his charming ways and polite disposition.

There is very little attention given to the detail of the starship Polaris. There's no ambiance, no flare, no dramatic or artistic impressions... most of the novel is saturated, deep-fried, and smothering in cheap dialogue: one line commands and -flopping informal and formal approaches. Not only is it dry and predictable, but it also gather little momentum; the speaking carries on with little mass to drive it forward.

The cast themselves are as generic as the title and dialogue. The staff retain superficially diverse surnames such as McMasters, Trovonski, DeGaulle, Goldman, N'goto, and Antonozzi. The predictably stereotype are in place for the simply for the sake for diversity rather than characterization. Even the women are stereotypical: blushing, ditsy, romantic, abiding, meek, weak, and troublesome. They're always either crying, eagerly submitting to a superior, or flirting with th captain. Only Traynor and Nelson have any personality to put forth and ever than is slim to none.

There is very little actually redeemable to this book other than the fact that I did NOT throw it down... and that is what separates this two-star "novel" from a lowly one-star floor-licking, rug-surfing, tile-tickling mere "book." I don't know what a reader would emotionally or mentally retain from reading Polaris, but perhaps if you're an impressionable juvenile, your eagerness for generic detail and droning dialogue will wow you. To reiterate the first paragraph, Sheldon Perkins never wrote another novel... and for that, thank you Mr. Perkins.

1979: The Web Between the Worlds (Sheffield, Charles)

Lots of science with very little else (3/5)
From December 28, 2010

Combining a pedestrian plot with an endless stream of science, Sheffield leaves lots of open room for character development but obviously prefers to keep it simple... and by "simple" I mean throwing in phrases like Maclaurin and Jacobi ellipsoids, heuristic elements to optimized algorithms, nonlinear elasticity and thermal diffusion. If you have any inkling to what Sheffield is talking about, perhaps you might enjoy the instruction manual more than me but it read just like that as there was little emotion, personal development or greater "greatness."


"Rob Merlyn was the best engineer who had ever lived. That was why Darius Regulo, "The King of Space," had to have Rob for the most spectacular construction project in the history of the human race--even though Rob was a potentially fatal threat to Darius's power... Thus begins a breakthrough novel, written by the President of the American Astronautical Society, about an idea whose time has come: a shimmering bridge between earth and space, a veritable beanstalk that mankind will climb to the stars!"

Beginning with the unbelievable contraption of the Spider (which is made to expel 200km of silicon cable two meters wide in one day), some of the future science borders on ridiculous for the 2070. There's also a genetically modified Mole which consumes and mines coal, which is then further modified to work in vacuum and mine other materials. With personal earth-to-orbit craft a commercial norm and the transfer of asteroids from outer-Mars orbit a lucrative business, Sheffield's vision of the future is very optimistic but also very tedious to read.

It's all fine and dandy to base a novel around the construction of a space elevator, or a Beanstalk as it's called in the book, but the plot keeps returning to the conversation between the engineer Merlin (misspelled Merlyn on the rear cover!) and this financer Regulo about the nitty-gritty specifics about the Beanstalk. The novel is merely a steady unfolding of the schematics for the elevator between the two characters, perhaps a fantasy which Sheffield felt he just had to put forth in a novel.

Even with all the geeky science and unfathomable scenes of what all the contraptions must look like, there is a good amount of awe involved. The what-if factor for the space elevator was the biggest draw to the novel, in my opinion. It held my wonder and awe for a good amount of the length, but was getting annoyingly distracted by frivolous attempts by Sheffield to add sympathy and evil. It all fell very flat, very quickly. The evil was superficial and the sympathy was an exaggerated effort. It MIGHT have been a better novel is WAS just an instruction manual for the space elevator.

Regardless, I look forward to picking up another Sheffield novel to see if he has any other big ideas so fully worked out as in The Web.

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.

1970: The Simultaneous Man (Blum, Ralph)

Psychopharmacology and Russian Studies (3/5)

Ralph Blum has only this one sci-fi novel under his belt, but he's also published the non-genre novels The Foreigner (1961) and Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks (1972). Since 1982 he's written some non-fiction titles about Rune magic and UFOs. Raised under the shadow of parental Hollywood fame, subjected to early LSD testing, and speaking fluent Russian, Blum obviously brings to the table a lot of experience, albeit more randomness than anything concrete.

Rear cover synopsis:
"The agency specializes in surgical alterations. Government bureaucrats set about making one man's brain the receptacle for the memory of another. "Bear"--the input. "Black Bear"--the receiver. A research scientist and a convicted murdered become two men with one SHARED mind."

Andrew Horne is the Assistant Director of Research West Wing research laboratory at West Wing, where Project Beta has been running for over a decade. Horne has had his "beta" memory expressed through professional Hollywood cinematography so that it may be played back at a higher speed to a subject whose memory of self had been wiped clean. Subject 233/4 is a convicted murderer and has volunteered to be the vehicle for Horne's memory. When the wind wipe and beta memory transference are complete, Subject 233/4 will essentially become Horne.

Where past experiments have shown a rapid deterioration in the subject's physical condition, the team at West Wing hope that with Subject 233/4 the procedure has been refined. But the mental condition of Horne is thin, at best, when his conditional responses about his Korean War experience surface again and again. While in captivity, Horne was interrogated and tortured by his captors but also had the ear of a foreign man of persuasion, named Chon. Because of this Chon, Horne has been able to alter his memories of his Korean experience to make them more manageable.

When Subject 233/4 rises from his "coffin" of Horne's months worth of experience input, Horne is at the same time arrested and confined to a more luxurious cell--the entire estate of Compass Farm, just outside of Philadelphia. Horne experiences acute telepathic sensations that is "bets-self" has emitted but the flow of telepathy is limited to that narrow range of emotion and that line of communication. After nearly a year of house arrest, news comes from West Wing that Subject 233/4 has escaped... and defected to the Soviet Union. The American government allows Horne to fly to Leningrad so that he may make contact with his "beta-self."

Pulling Blum's biography from three different scant sources, it seems to be fairly complete and nearly everything is laid to bare here in The Simultaneous Man. He's noted to have studied at Harvard and includes that in this novel along with the Harvard rowing team (which I'm fairly certain he was part of). Other autobiographical elements Blum has inserted into this novel include Russian history (which he studied), Russian language (he's bilingual to an annoying extent), Hollywood names (of his parents persuasion), and his scientific forte of psychopharmacology. The novel didn't have a polymath feel to it, as Blum's range of knowledge is as scattered as it is in detail. It all comes off rather pretentiously, as if Blum includes these elements merely to show them off.

Besides the shade of pretentiousness overshadowing most of the novel, the plot unravels pretty well. Subject 233/4 (aka Black Bear) only awakens half-way through the novel, where the first half of the novel is dotted with segments of "input" from Horne to Black Bear. This input characterizes Horne at the same time as it does characterize his yet-to-emerge "beta-self." At times the medical language is off-putting and the reliance of the universal benefit of artificial pharmaceuticals (reflecting the mid-century belief the happiness can be found in a pill) is overdone. But the most repetitively annoying trait found in The Simultaneous man is Blum's long-winded insertion of random Russian words, Russian history or Russian geography onto each page:

Horne stood, suitcase in hand, in front of the Astoria Hotel, watching until the ZIM's red taillights faded from view. St. Isaak's Square matched his memory of old photograph albums: the equestrian statue of Tsar Nicholas, the park, a building of dull reddish stone that had once housed the Imperial German Embassy; and up toward the Neva, visible through the snow, the pillars and golden dome of St. Isaak's Cathedral. (134)

If Blum has a knack for anything literary, it would have to be his talent for setting the scene... at times. Sometimes he's monotonous when describing an office:

The door was open and he went inside. Through the one large window, afternoon sunlight entered to illuminate the dust. The window screen was torn. The room was unchanged: scarred Army-issue desk, two chairs, metal bookcase, security file with combination locks and drawers. There had never been a carpet. (61)

Other times it reads like an Updike nostalgia for life on the farm:

When he reached the stone wall he swung around and slipped the tractor into neutral. Crows drifted out from over the woods letting the wind lift them across the new furrows and the barn, to hover like cinders from a dead fire above his house. (108)

But mainly Blum is one of straight forward descriptions, not really putting any emotion into the scene or any flare into the personalities. The reader will mainly be engaged in trying to figure out what the whole novel is about... macroscopiclly and microscopically. Was the memory transference 100% successful and is Subject 233/4 now Andrew Horne in all but the flesh? What are Black Bear's objectives in defecting to Russia and why hasn't Horne been able to predict his behavior? But the main question the reader will have is... What will Horne find in Russia? THAT'S the one hook which will keep the reader on until the last five pages.