1973: The People of the Wind (Anderson, Poul)

Laden with misplaced details and reasoning (3/5)

Of the most prolific authors lining my shelves, just behind Greg Bear (21), John Brunner (19), Larry Niven (18), Frederik Pohl (16), and Iain Banks (16) is Poul Anderson. This 15th book of Anderson's is one of my dwindling supply of classic Anderson, whose paperbacks are increasing difficult to find in second-hand bookstores. Like Banks, Bear, and Brunner, Anderson's works are usually a hit, which can't be said for Pohl's works that tend to be misses more often than not. Unfortunately, Anderson doesn't pen one of his best with The People of the Wind. Much like Anderson's bibliography, there are some "hit" elements and some "miss" elements that compose The People of the Wind.

Rear cover synopsis:
"Terra + Ythri + Avalon = Universal War!
THE TERRAN EMPIRE: Behemoth, reaching ever further across the star systems, seeking to suck the entire universe into its gigantic maw. In its favor it must be said that the Empire offers peace and prosperity to its subjects.
THE YTHRIAN DOMAIN: Medium-sized empire with room to grow... except where it borders meet those of the Terran Empire! Peopled by the Ythri, birdlike beings with a culture and intellect that is easily a match for the Terran way of life.
AVALON: Colony planet of the Ythri but inhabited by human and Ythri alike, Avalon is the Domain's secret weapon--or is it? For Avalon has formed a culture all its own, which it will defend against all comers. And Avalon seems quite capable of defying the combined might of the most powerful empires in the universe!"

Chris Holm is well-adjusted to the unique culture of the planet Avalon. With human parents in the upper echelons of the planetary military infrastructure, Chris sits on the social cusp between the human culture and Ythrian culture, a culture he has embraced by befriending the avian aliens and assuming the Ythrian name Arinnain. His Ythrian "sister" Eyath is very close to him and he often regards her as his spiritual partner, but she has become betrothed with a space pilot, soon to put into active duty against the approaching Terran navy.

The Human/Ythrian loose government takes a seemingly pragmatic approach to the navy's war stance. When two Ythrian planets fall to the Terran navy, the last battle and the occasion of "death-pride" is left to the planet of Avalon, whose human contingent has seen the planet through its military preparedness. The aggressive Terran navy seems set on subsuming all three planets for the Terran Empire, with no compassion for cultural sanctity.

When a Terran ship crashes upon Avalon, Chris's possible female human interest, Tabitha, is quick to charm the captain in a nubile fashion. Chris realizes the ultimate gain when applying a guilt trip and hopes for a positive outcome for his clan, his family, his love life, and the bi-cultural planet of Avalon.

Anderson put some very careful detail in making the Ythrian race of bird-like creatures. Their physiology is well detailed along their tacit beliefs and cultural heritage. Most of this is viewed through the eyes of the young protagonist Chris or through dialogue between him and his avian kin. It pays to keep close attention to the cultural details because they spring up throughout the book, highlighting the difficulties the planet faces against the Terran navy and the personal problems Eyath experiences after the human crash land on Avalon.

I wish the same attention was kept when describing the planet of Avalon. The physical characteristics of its orbit, density, atmosphere, moon system, etc. is thrown in during the first 25% of the book. The number-heavy details shown a lot of thought, but the way it lacked integration was off-putting. The same goes for Anderson's laborious insertion of the names of planetary fauna, the name of function of each are all peripheral and adds little but words to the passages involved. The insertions are awkward and generally lack relevance.

I never found the logic behind the Terran attack on the Ythrian Domain to be sensible. It seemed as if they were attacking in order to subsume the Domain simply because they didn't want the Ythrians to expand any further into the Terran Empire. If each race has their own sphere of colonization, the border between the two should be very limited. If this one border is blocking each others colonization plans, there are many other directions to expand: up-galaxy, down galaxy, spinward, anti-spinward, up, down, left, right... however you want to describe the directions of galactic flight. This ONE conflict seems senseless to concentrate the entire Terran naval fleet at that one point against three planets. The planets aren't even part of any greater strategy.

Besides the Ythrian descriptions, the depth of the harmonious human/Ythrian relationship on Avalon is great to delve in to. The relationship on government level all the way down to personal level is full of nuances and subtleness. The Ythrians obviously have their cultural weaknesses, and considering that the planet of Avalon is part of their Domain, the humans accept their minority and fill the leadership niche which is left void by the Ythrian's disinterest in larger organization.

Many of the parts of this novel are noteworthy, but its Anderson's early inability to weave all of this into a dense but savory 176-page novel that ultimately let me down. When Anderson has a larger canvas to work with, like in The Boat of A Million Years (1989), he has the freedom to explore the intimate details of his bursting creativity and the ability to pen a fulfilling novel with as many ideas as he can shake a stick at. The People of the Wind was just to dense to feel like a smooth Anderson novel. Whether there were to many ideas bursting at the seams or just a limited number of pages restricting Anderson's creativity, a rewrite of this book into a fuller 300-page novel would have been epic to witness.

1954: Brain Wave (Anderson, Poul)

Linguistic and scientific advances in IQ advanced humans (4/5)
From May 25, 2009

This was my seventh Anderson book, a book which I had heard much about and was easy to find as there were many editions published. Typically, this is a signifier indicating the quality of the work, but my doubts were banished with the trust I held in Anderson writing a smart, spanning novel. Reading an Anderson novel is rarely a miss (i.e. The Day of Their Return [1974] and Orbit Unlimited [1961]) and usually a success (i.e. Tau Zero [1970] and Three Worlds to Conquer [1964]). This is one of Anderson's earliest long works, but it doesn't have the implied sense of immaturity or silliness. Rather, this is one of Anderson's strongest works for its creativity and follow-through.

Rear cover synopsis:
"'Imagine that an I.Q. of 500 becomes commonplace, a moron has the thinking capacity of yesterday's intellectual, and animals begin to pass the mental levels of humanity. This is the provocative and absorbing thesis upon which Poul Anderson has based his novel; and his plausible exploration of the theme makes for an unusually stimulating book, admirably balanced between the logical world-changes and the intimate human story of some individuals. Few novels have revealed more skill simultaneously in scientific speculation and in fictional warmth and feeling.' - New York Herald Tribune"

A "brain wave" sweeps across the path of earth's galactic orbit and changes the intellect of all life. The brain wave is described as being, "a gyromagnetic action within the atomic nuclei near the center of the galaxy which has inhibited certain electromagnetic and electro-chemical processes." Once earth had passed out of this cone of influence, all the sudden the brains of earth life increased in efficiency as did electrical conductivity in metals. The novel follows the stories of two men: Archie Brock, the farmhand who isn't the sharpest pitchfork in the shed and Peter Corinth, the New York City physicist who is the bee's knees of intellectualism.

Within Archie's story, we find him reluctant to leave the farm after others there had already left to find more mental stimulation elsewhere. Archie then houses other sub-intellectual individuals (including an elephant and chimps) who help around the farm. Archie confronts his newly-found intelligence and leadership skills against the bucolic life in upstate New York.

Peter, on the other hand, stands witness to the monumental intellectual growth (and seething animal instinct) that humanity is experiencing during this blossoming of IQ. He and his peers add their discoveries to the plethora of new technologies and wares which propel humanity into an entirely new era. But can he maintain a relationship with his simpleton housewife amidst these a-changing times?

Poul takes an inventive look at how a more mature, intelligent humanity may hone their language into something more logical and context-rich. Poul tends to explore languages in his novels, but here he takes it to a whole new realm. Along with the linguistic discoveries, Poul takes us for a little side trip to look at space technologies, a brisk walk through weather control, and even a glimpse of alien civilizations--he spans a vast array of scientific curiosities.

One additional note: the cover itself lends to a time of reflection after finishing the novel. Did the cover artist just want a semi-lame cover for the novel? Or did the cover artist (Phil Kirkland) convey a deeper sense he probed within the novel? It's quite different, that's obvious, and garners some attention after completion of the novel.

2008: The Gabble and Other Stories (Asher, Neal)

Asher finding and filling his niche (4/5)

Compared to Asher's one other collection, The Engineer ReConditioned, this volume has a better focus on the Polity universe. If you're used to any Asher novel, then you'll be happy to know that his short stories contain the exact same elements as his larger works. Unlike Asher's novels, however, is the inclusion of some steamy sex scenes in three of the ten stories. Considering Asher's thousands of pages of novel text without any sex scenes I can remember, the inclusion of sex in the short stories is odd... perhaps the stories were too dry and needed to be lubricated to give them that certain "oomph."

These stories also represent an author finding his niche as a science ficiton writer. Sometimes called "post-cyberpunk" but really just action/horror/noir, the author can see the author settling into the niche which has made him famous... and so deep in the pit that I don't think the author could ever redefine himself. Whereas his previous collection was dating from 1995-2001, this collection mainly includes stories from 2001-2008.

------------

Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck (2005 novelette) - 3/5 - Incestuous siblings on homicide safari: Tameera, Tholan, and his assistant Anders hire a safari guide on the planet Myral. When Tameera snipes a C-grade sentient and later becomes abducted by the hextet of Sheq, the shagging siblings take revenge upon the Sheq, and the assistant and the safari guide who have witnessed the crime. When the gabbleduck appears in the shrouded mist of a valley waterfall, someone is bound to die. 33 pages

Putrefactors (2008 novelette) - 4/5 - Unauthorized android attacks assassin Ansel: The Company's assassin's mission is to kill a villager on a gastronomically uninhabitable planet, but Earth Central is onto his plot. The tables are turned on Ansel when the same company he works for seeks to kill him off, one way or another. 25 pages

Garp and Geronamid (2005 novelette) - 4/5 - Salind snoops simulacrum, snubs safety: A reporter follows a murder victim reification, who later becomes an unwilling assassin for a non-Polity world's mafia queen. The ruthless police rear their ugly head in matters the visiting AI Geronamid considers vulgar. With the mafia's drug-crazed grip and vise-like clutch of fear over the people, a fair and democratic vote towards Polity integration looks unlikely, unless Salind can find a newsworthy story to broadcast back to the Polity. 45 pages

The Sea of Death (2001 short story) - 4/5 - Sub-zero subterranean sarcophagi sleep soundly: Millions of kilometers of tunnel lie below the surface of Orbus, each tunnel loaded end-to-end with frozen sarcophagi. The aliens within have been scanned and studied but only Duren the loosecannon was crazy enough to actually open one. The passing planetoid of Corlis is about to add some unexpected geothermal energy to the usually frigid Orbus. 18 pages

Alien Archaeology (2007 novella) - 5/5 - Rho's rare relic releases rampage: Rho's Atheter memory store is so valuable that pirate Jael steals is and offers to transfer its store into a gabbleduck, a creature which is thought to be a non-sentient de-evolution of the Atheter race. Havoc breaks loose as she attempts to sell the gabbleduck to the Prador, a situation which involves a reclusive rogue AI named Penny Royal, who inhabits the Prador/Polity borderland known as the Graveyard. Rho simply seeks revenge against Jael, but he becomes mixed up in Earth Central's attempt to hinder Jael's plans for the Prador. 76 pages

Acephalous Dreams (2005 novelette) - 4/5 - Murderous Daes dons Geronamid's node: Daes decapitates a man who once hurt him long ago, but he has no doubt that he'll be caught for his actions. The regional AI Geronamid's Golem offers Daes the chance to be given a cephalic implantation of a Csorian node. Should he survive, the charges will be droped. Once quarantined on a remote planet, Daes is quickly subsumed by the node and Geronamid's plans are soon revealed. 26 pages

Snow in the Desert (2002 novelette) - 3/5 - Arid assassins aim at albino: On a desert planet where water is scarce and highly valued, an albino man named Snow has a bounty placed on his testicles. Having fought off assassins before, the level of guile to retrieve his DNA has reached unexpectedly high levels. 41 pages

Choudapt (2008 novelette) - 2/5 - Mycelia medic manhandles malicious mold: Simoz carries a doctor mycelium inside himself. A virus keyed into the genetic augmentation of the population of Wrack has them hostile against outsiders like ECS Simoz. He and his mycelium, named Mike, must produce a retro-virus and find the perpetrators releasing the terror. 24 pages

Adaptogenic (1994 short story) - 4/5 - Antiquarian acquires autogenic at auction: Jason Chel bid for a hammer-whelk shell, a related early Golem series, and a box of miscellaneous items. The Golem is missing its long-term memory, something which fellow bidder Grable is eager to attain. When it's found inside the shell, Chel journeys to the Golem's last known planet of service to learn more of the story, only to be met by Grable, an uncooperative AI, and a planet on the cusp of a world-time. 30 pages

The Gabble (2006 novelette) - 3/5 - Spastic speech spurs corpse search: Jonas is eager to dissect a hooder in situ but gabbleduck researcher Shandelle has the only available ATV. The two decide to investigate a gabbleduck on the way to the forensic dissection. With dracomen, tricones, mud snakes, and heroynes littering the surface of Masasa, the 530km journey is as interesting as their discoveries. 48 pages

1986: The Forever Man (Dickson, Gordon R.)

Frustratingly tedious dialogue moves nowhere (1/5)

I've read time and time again that Dorsai is Dickson's major work and is essentially considered a classic. While I have yet to obtain a copy of Dorsai (1959), after reading two of Dickson's novels I'm in no hurry to pick up a copy even though it's a so-called "classic." More notable would be Dickson's collection entitled In the Bone (1987). He can write some great short work with clever unfolding and wrapping up. The same can't be said for the two novels I've read.

Rear cover synopsis:
"The ancient starship La Chasse Gallerie is found drifting perilously in space. Despite heavy damage from alien Laagi warships, incredibly the ship is still intact and the voice of its pilot, Raoul Penard, comes through loud and clear. But Penard died over one hundred years ago... On earth, frantic investigation reveals that Penard may be dead but his mind is very much alive.. merged with the ship itself. The staggering potential of this evolutionary breakthrough compels the scientists to embark on a technological journey of astonishing discovery..."

Jim Wander is an ace space fighter pilot who loves his ship, AndFriend. When a call from General Mollen comes, Jim is eager to return to flight and fight the Laagi aliens in the space border between the two civilizations. However, the word comes that a 100 year old derelict ship has been found within the Laagi sphere of influence, a border war which has spanned five generations. The ship rings of the voice of its pilot, and the mission is to return with the ship and pilot intact. Aboard with Jim is the psychologist Mary Gallagher.

After recovery of the vehicle, it's soon revealed that the pilot had died decades ago but still lived on as an insane non-corporal form; the pilot had miraculously transfered his mind into the structure of this ship! Because of Jim's proximity to this earth-shattering discovery he is detained in the same building as the laboratory which investigates the mind of the insane disembodied pilot and the ship he resides in. Now the science is in the hands of the military: "the living human essence could exist independently of the normal human biochemical machinery" (47) which "breaks loose from the rest under the strain of what, to the person involved, is an intolerable situation." (59)

Soon, Jim finds himself under such intolerable strain as he's kept away from his pride and joy: his fighter AndFriend. Mary and Mollen have schemed to place Jim's "essence" into his fighter for a secret mission based on information gathered from the rambling pilot of the stricken vessel he helped save. Mary, too, has left her body to ride shotgun on the trip around Laagi space. Together, they are aiming from the region of space closer to the galactic core.

But again, Jim plays the part of the pawn when Mary allows the ship to be captured by Laagi forces. The alien race, culture and physiology unknown to humans, is set to be under examination by the psychologist with methods learned from the "essence" displacement. What they discover on the alien planet is a mystery which serves for long-term study and extensive examination, all of which they must undertaken while being embodied in the captured ship.

This premise sounds excellent with alien cultural anthropology as the main focus of Jim and Mary's Laagi region exploration. Unable to leave the ship, they embed a sliver of the ship into the body of a janitor. This enables Jim to impart some of his essence in the commanding of the low-intelligence alien, whose species acts as servants to the larger Laagi. Jim has a hypnotic lock placed on his capabilities with the ship while Mary pours over the abundance of information being fed through the eyes of the little janitor alien.

In regards to the xeno-anthropology, the Laagi civilization in very interesting. The Laagi aliens are driven to work and only work. There's no sign of art or leisure time with all their waking time being dedicated to work. They even hunker down and takes naps while working. They have a butler species, nicknamed the Squonks, which have a similar sleep and work pattern. When either the Laagi or the Squonks die during their duties they are simply removed and placed with the other trash. The treatment of the Squonk that Jim and Mary employee can be seen as a sort of torture. Given that work satisfaction is what the alien enjoys, they torture by sending the little creature on a quest through the city to find a nonexistent key, thereby robbing the Squonk of any satisfaction from completing his task. The Squonk is simply used as a vessel to witness the customs of the Laagi race. This just adds a whole new level of dislike for Jim and Mary. Jim's frustration builds for months while they overwork the poor butler-cum-snoop. The alien's culture is interesting enough to warrant to novel a high rating... if it weren't for the perpetual back-and-forth dialogue.

The 375-page novel is simply too long to have tiresome ping-ponging dialogue through and through. There's also hypothesizing between Jim and Mary, arguments, moody outbursts, grand assumptions, and casual information diarrhea. If either of the two characters were written to be likable, then Dickson failed miserably because the duo are quarrelsome with Jim being the hotshot pilot know-it-all with always accurate assumptions and a encyclopedic knowledge base; contrastively is the ever questioning female who's submissive to demands, asking for forgiveness, and always on the heels of Jim's assumptions resulting in argument after argument. This ping-pong dialogue stretches for scores of pages even when they finally reach the space beyond the rear of the Laagi frontier. The dialogue becomes steeped in the basics of initial language contact becoming drawn out, tedious, tedious, tedious, tedious, and unmoving.

It felt like Dickson wrote his novel like a shot from the hip, typing words that streamed from his mind to never become edited. There are chunks of pages which are dedicated singlehandedly to interstellar navigation... which is all basically unfathomable. The navigation technique is referred to later in the book but I had very little foundation, even after 8 pages of dialogue about navigation, to understand the importance. It's one of the more shoulder-shrugging aspects of the book besides some awkwardly written passages which, again, read as if shot from hip: "[...] he thought of human dancing, real dancing, and he had to admit to himself that in essence, it was communication in a sense." (314) Some sentences beg to be reread because, as petty as they are, the message within was conveyed in a convoluted manner.

What once sounded as an interesting premise of essence displacement ultimately weighed down the possibilities of the plot. With Jim and Mary stranded within the confines of a metallic hull, only speculative dialogue can occur in tedious chapter after tedious chapter. There's a serious lack of "oomph" which propels the plot to a grand conclusion. Instead of that oomph, the reader is given a plodding plot that tiptoes and ping-pongs until the last page of the book, where a raised eyebrow or pained grimace meets the closing words, "[...] and they walked out together." (375) I will happily part ways with this book. Dorsai may eventually be purchased and read but I hesitate to dive in. I do, however, lustily eye another Dickson collection on my shelves: Mutants (1970).

1965: Mission to Universe (Dickson, Gordon R.)

Poor execution after a warmly ominous start (2/5)
From June 29, 2011

Having never read any Dickson before, I did a bit of research on him and found that he's best described as a romanticized sci-fi writer, which told me one thing: he sticks to sci-fi tradition. Being "romantic" is just about the only adjective given to the man, so my initial hopes were low. I know of his Dorsai series but it seems to be hard to find in these here parts. It's a must-buy for me but after reading Mission to Universe, I'm reluctant to pick up another Dickson novel of any sort: classic, relatively unknown, or short story collection.

Rear cover synopsis:

"General Benjamin Shore was heading for the stars under forged orders - and in defiance of the commands of the President. He was leaving Earth in an untested ship with a crew chosen by necessity and with nothing but faith to guide him. His only hope was to find habitable worlds in the unexplored reaches of space ahead. Thus began Man's first mission to the uncharted universe. Shore had no illusions. Before him lay danger, probable disappointment - even death. But nothing had prepared him for the nightmare he would have to face on the planet of the Gray-Furs... for the menace of the Golden People who had driven all other races from Galactic Center--or for what awaited him if he returned to the world he called home!"

The two chapters (of thirteen) of Mission to Universe are ripe with potential: Benjamin Shore quietly assembles his crew in the dead of the night, awaking their prone bodies to congregate in the shift-ship. With presidential orders in hand denying the launch of the ship to orbit, Benjamin alters the order and tells his crew to prepare to embark to earth orbit, to Andromeda and beyond. The mainly narrative text of the first two chapters has a creepy, ominous aura to it. It's a sinister invitation not traditional in any sense.

Thereafter, from chapters three to thirteen, we witness why Dickson has been described as romantic: the ship's air recycler needs repair so they land on a planet with tragic consequences, they land on another planet with tragic consequences... and yet again, and again. It's almost as if Dickson wrote the novel by stream-of-thought, himself thinking, "OK, now that I've written them into this situation, how will I write them OUT of it?" What follows is a ragtag attempt to snare the reader into the adventure and danger of the shift-ship's journey to Andromeda.

Nothing very clever ever surfaces from Mission to Universe. There are many dead ends in the details, like the stowaway cat which plays no part through the novel and only goes to characterize the female love interest as girly and to draw her closer to Benjamin (I had other grander ideas of why the cat was on the ship). When the ship discovers life on two planets, I could quickly draw conclusions as to the state of their civilizations. Dickson may have written Benjamin as a quick thinker, but he never saw me coming.

(And you can't put yourself into orbit around a planet without having any velocity. The shift-ship only shifts and has no means to physically propel itself. Dumb point, but still.)

All in all, it may have been written for the YA age bracket. When the rear cover synopsis reads "A riveting space adventure," that kind of language gives it away. BUT, like I said about the first two chapters, there is potential in Dickson and I've already bought a short story collection In the Bone and another lengthier novel entitled The Forever Man. I won't whitewash Dickson with criticism yet, but he already has negative marks in my book.

1959: The World Swappers (Brunner, John)

Phantom dictator wields teleportation and benevolence (4/5)

One of Brunner's earlier novels aside from his Interstellar Empire series, The World Swappers captures Brunner's authorship in a state of budding creativity but still immature in regards to subtleness. This doesn't necessarily mean that his early novels aren't enjoyable (with the exception of The Wanton of Argus [1953]) but the don't have the special Brunner quality which is found in the late 60s and 70s with such classics as Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up. With early Ace paperbacks like The World Swappers (1959), the story is condensed into a readable 153 pages and exhibits a hurried yet dense plot.

Rear cover synopsis:
"The galaxy was caught in the crushing vice of a struggle for power. The political titans of the planets of mankind were making their bids for supremacy. The contestants: Counce, a man of strange powers, authority in the spheres of the intellect; and Bassett, a man of money-power, financial and business wizard. As the association of human worlds drew near the teetering edge of internal revolutions, one of these men would be in a position to triumph. The only thing that neither side could foresee was that there were others hovering among the stars, looking for new worlds to conquer!"

Counce is a man of many mysterious resources. The inventor of the transfax three hundred years earlier, the technology is only available to him and his band of intellectual cohorts who are too secretive for any proper title. Able to leap parsecs, infiltrate FTL spaceships, and transport stellar plasma, the teleportation device is also the key to his longevity. If he or one of his cohorts were to be killed, a new yet different body is prepared for them with the data sent from their previous transmission. Counce's influence reaches farther than the earthly domain.

Earth has been cleared of "misfits and malcontents" and the banished persons were shipped off to the thirty-one habitable planets in the surrounding 200 parsecs of space. One planet of such named Ymir was the first to be settled but little did they realize that the planet was entering a glacial period. Stubborn and proud, the people of Ymir endure the three hundred years freeze with reluctant acceptance of aid. One Ymirian, Jaroslav Dubin, acted as ambassador to Earth and resided in the decadent city of Rio; now his earthly pleasures are known to all Ymirians and their ultra-conservative mentality abhor his being. Jaroslav also now acts as a Ymirian secret agent for Counce's transfax fealty.

Counce's group realizes that humans aren't accepting enough to integrate other planetary colonial cultures, so they understand that contact with the Others must be avoided. The alien race, outside of the human sphere of colonization, are discovered to have once visited the human planet Regis and are now headed to the planet Ymir. With the aid of the transfax and a menagerie of magnificent minds, the group intercepts the spacecraft in-flight and transfaxes it to the surface of Regis. Their plans for peaceful contact are interrupted by the violent rebuttal of the Others' weapons. The lone alien survivor, Friend, is fostered by Counce so that a mutual between species understanding can be settled.

Seeing that Ymir is unfit for human habitation yet ideal for an Others colony, Counce uses his age-wizened mind to manipulate Bassett's lust for control of all the colonies so that mankind can avoid contact with the Others and for both races to get what they want. Bassett is cautious of the manipulation but is unable to penetrate Counce's deeper plans for power and peace.

On the surface, it looks like the plot is about the classic case of the good guys duping the bad guys. However, while Counce is indeed a classic "good guy" with cool technology and the brains to match, the seeming nemesis Bassett is more like Counce's unknowing pawn, an easily malleable commodity to benefit Counce's agenda. Even the aliens aren't seen as "bad guys" through the eyes of Counce, but the hostile actions of the Others is seen as a miscommunication. And since the eighteen deaths experienced by Counce's clique were all recoverable due to their transfax data, no deaths were permanent except for the deaths of the aliens themselves. (Could they have been recovered too since they were teleported to the planet by the telefax?)

Counce sets lofty goals onto his organization's shoulders. He has set out to protect humankind from itself--to postpone their confrontation with aliens--because how could they get along with a race not even remotely similar to their own when they shun even the customs of other human planets. Counce acts on behalf of no Earth government or interplanetary government... the buck stops at Counce. He could be seen as a pretentious deductionist or a benevolent phantom dictator, but his treatment of the frozen and famished people of Ymir is a little shocking. Counce basically bullies the stubborn government through refusal of dire aid, where the society eventually give into their misplaced pride and hunger "when a half-eaten child's body was found on the street." (130) That's pretty grim for a 1959 novel. With the downfall of a small planetary society, it is hard to invest sympathy into Counce's self-professed benevolent actions.

The technology of the transfax is the major fulcrum to the plot. If you can believe (1) that one man invented the technology and withheld its existence from the public for three hundred years, (2) that each person who has come across the same mathematics for the transfax becomes subsumed into Counce's organization, and (3) that the transfax can perform amazing feats, then the fulcrum of the entire plot may be a bit more stomachable. It's not major flaw, but the lofty idealization of future technology is often the only fulcrum to earlier novels while serving up ample opportunity to gouge holes in the plot... too many "what-ifs" spring to mind.

For my nineteenth Brunner book, this was a joy to experience some of his earlier non-Interstellar Empire work. With ten more unread Brunner books on my shelves, ranging from 1965 (The Day of the Star Cities) to 1980 (Players At the Game of People), I continue to look forward to experience the wealth of science fiction Brunner penned for nearly four decades!

1980: The Infinitive of Go (Brunner, John)

Modes of Reality & The Ebon Tigress (4/5)
From September 22, 2011 

Brunner has remained one of my favorite authors (this book being fifth for the year and fourteenth for all time) over the years as, through his novels, he presents flexibility for subject matter and uniqueness over those in the same genre of science fiction. He's hit on colonizing planets (Bedlam Planet), future-dystopia of earth (The Sheep Look Up), seeding planets (A Maze of Stars) and a whole slew of other themes. In 1974, Brunner wrote about matter transmission as a mode of people transport in the very short novel Web of Everywhere. Brunner revisits this idea in The Infinitive of Go.

Rear cover synopsis:
"The first practical matter transmitter was a success, or so everyone thought. In spite of paranoid security restrictions. Justin Williams and Cinnamon Wright, co-inventors of the device, counted on it to revolutionize civilization and gain them an honoured place in history. But the first long-distance field test with a human being - a diplomatic courier carrying a vital message - somehow misfired when the courier killed himself on arrival at his destination. To prove his faith in his invention - and to escape charges of sabotage - Justin had himself 'posted' thousands of miles. He came through unchanged. It was the world that was somehow different..."

When things aren't going so smoothly back in the lab because of the courier's explosion, Justin transmits himself to prove that he isn't a saboteur. When he returns to the lab via matter transmission, he finds his car is messy, there's a new restaurant he's never heard of... and some love he's never had before. In addition to this twist and revelation, there's an extra twist when an orbital astronaut transmits himself from space to earth... only he isn't himself anymore. This is when he plot becomes thicker, more pseudo-scientific with jargon thrown around. Take a minute to try and understand the infinities on top of the infinities and you'll find yourself pleased with Brunner's work.

The direction of the plot isn't too difficult to discern (one of two plot directions popped into my head within the first five pages - the first guess was correct!). It's curious why Brunner went back to his 1960s-ish novel format rather than continuing with intriguing social fiction in The Sheep Look Up and Stand on Zanzibar.

It's not a perfect novel. The 154-page book doesn't paint a worthwhile cast, as most stend to omit. The politicians are political, the military are militant, and the scientists are scientific. The addition of a female scientist is welcome... it's a bonus that she's an African-American scientist, but the way Brunner characterizes her borders on racist. Her name is Cinnamon but Brunner might as well had called her Sugar, Coco or even Chocolate. She's got an attitude, likes to mouth-off, ends sentences with "man" and "honey" and likes to wear tribal-print dresses. A few passages definitely had me raising an eyebrow. One final gripe: Brunner overuses the phrase "of course" through this novel. I'm a stickler for word repetition and Brunner has never failed in this category until now.

It's BRUNNER though, so all is forgiven. I've got eight more Brunner novels lining my shelves so it's only a matter of time before I pick another one up. This is the second 1980s Brunner novel I've read (the other being The Crucible of Time) and the quality just isn't the same as it was in the 1970s.