The Shockwave Rider, by John Brunner

Rating: 4
Pages: 280
Better than Moby Dick?: Yes

The world of The Shockwave Rider is dominated by the plug-in lifestyle. Citizens live fast-paced, high-tech lives, never putting down roots. People change jobs, change apartments, change friends as easily and as thoughtlessly as they change their clothes. One man, Nickie Haflinger, is a natural genius at writing worms. He can log into the net from any v-phone and punch in a worm to change his identity, or to manipulate the stock markets. His ability is critical, because he is running from the big bad government.

Interestingly, although John Brunner got a lot of things right, he got it wrong when it comes to surveillance: we don't need to be worried about the government as much as we do about private businesses. In The Shockwave Rider, the only malevolent force is the corrupt government. In the real world, corruption exists everywhere that power exists--government and private industry.

Further, Brunner falls back on his familiar socialist propaganda. Nickie Haflinger outwits the government hounds by writing a worm to reveal all the government's corruption. That's fair enough. But he's not content to stop there: Nickie offers the citizens two propositions:

THE CONTENT OF THE PROPOSITIONS

#1: That this is a rich planet. Therefore poverty and hunger are unworthy of it, and since we can abolish them, we must.

#2: That we are a civilized species. Therefore none shall henceforth gain illicit advantage by reason of the fact that together we know more than one of us can know.

Brunner would have you believe the correct vote to both propositions is Yes. But it isn't. Proposition #1 states that "this is a rich planet," which is a meaningless statement. A planet cannot be rich. Earth has many natural resources, but none of these are useful or valuable until an industrious, enterprising man figures out how to make good use of them. That is the source of property--and hence, ownership. A better proposition would be "That we are an industrious and enterprising people." But that doesn't segue into the whole socialist agenda of eliminating poverty and hunger, because it requires that each man work for his own living.

The second proposition is basically asking the people to choose between secrecy and transparency. I would choose transparency, but it's phrased in such a way as to make business seem an evil endeavor. Brunner's collectivist leanings betray themselves again.

Bedlam Planet, by John Brunner

Rating: 2
Pages: 159

John Brunner started with an interesting idea: colonists on an Earth-like planet must stop thinking like Earth-men, must break with millions of years of evolution that has shaped them to survive on Earth, and attune themselves to a new planet and a new evolutionary track. The realization of this idea is Bedlam Planet, and it's crummy book.

The planet is Asgard. It is almost perfect. The air is breathable, the climate and weather are welcoming, and natural resources are plentiful. Slight differences in biology make humans immune to local diseases. What more could colonists ask for?

Ascorbic acid. Man must have ascorbic acid (vitamin C) to live, but a local microbe has settled in the intestines of the settlers, absorbing all the ascorbic acid that the people ingest. Only massive doses of vitamin C supplements keep the settles from dying. Ascorbic acid is not present in the local flora; the colonists' supplements are running out. There is an epidemic of scurvy.

So far so good. This is an interesting book, with a decent science fiction puzzle to solve. But Brunner decides to go the surreal route.

Hoping to stave off scurvy, six volunteers begin to eat a diet of Asgard-grown Earth crops, despite not knowing if these are safe for human consumption. All six go stark raving mad. Brunner spends huge chunks of text describing their feverish visions. It's not pretty.

But they're not really insane, see. They are Asgard-sane. The temporary period of craziness is just their bodies forcing their minds to adjust to the new reality of Asgard.

"Did you ever keep a dog?" she said after a moment for thought. "Did you ever see one drag itself across country when it was so sick it could barely stand, in search of a special kind of grass which would make its belly reject the poison it had swallowed? We've got to be our own dogs, as it were. Our bodies know things which our minds never can. So what we have to do is turn our minds off, and bit by bit we're figuring out how."
Dennis stared in dismay at Dan.... "But if one has to go insane in order to stay alive--" he began, and Parvati cut him short.
"No, Dennis! That's the whole point! Don't think of what's happening to Dan, or what happened to you, as 'going insane.' It's the exact opposite. You went sane--totally and completely sane."

Asgard-sane just happens to look a whole lot like Earth-insane. Since they live on Asgard, they're A-OK. Eventually they force the other settlers to eat the crops and all become Asgard-sane too.

More Things in Heaven, by John Brunner

Rating: 3
Pages: 221

The Starventure is Earth's first hyperdrive spaceship. When Starventure returns from her maiden voyage to Alpha Centauri, impossible things start happening. Colossal ethereal monsters appear suddenly in the skies, and vanish into nothingness just as rapidly. Violent solar radiation storms hit the Earth, despite the sun being in the low part of its cycle. And the UN is withholding all information about Starventure and her crew.

Reporter David Drummond, whose brother is on Starventure, has experiences a more personal surprise: before the Starventure crew returns to Earth, David sees his brother Leon on Earth. David investigates relentlessly, and finally convinces General Suvorov to tell him the whole story. Starventure has returned, but the crew have been transformed into hideous monsters. Some unknown, possibly malevolent force, has converted the crew and given them new bodies--and the crew's bodies are on Earth, being used as vessels for these unknown powers. Faced with beings of such power, David feels helpless:

Suppose an ant, immensely proud of her race's vast public works, mastery of building techniques, and the art of farming and domesticating other insects, were suddenly to become aware of the existence of man: she would feel very much as I felt now.

David agrees to hide the truth, and to feed the public a cover story. And that is the weakest part of the book. There is no compelling reason to deceive the public. The public's reaction to the sky-monsters proves they will not panic. No good reporter would agree to play part in a vast conspiracy to deceive the public for no good reason--particularly when so many people are privy to the secret that the truth will leak out within weeks if not days.

The real mystery of More Things in Heaven is: who or what changed the crew, and why? The answer is interesting enough. Earth's universe--the Einsteinian universe--is a special case of the real universe, the hyperspace universe. Humanity has been condemned to its bubble of Einsteinian reality because of some crime it committed, eons ago. The crime is long forgotten by mankind; the hyperspace creatures are watching mankind, to see whether it will choose to emerge from exile and join the greater universe.

It's a satisfactory answer, and I almost gave the book a score of four. However, the flaws--particularly the deception of the public--ring untrue. More Things in Heaven scores a three.

The Traveler in Black, by John Brunner

Pages: 222

The universe hangs in balance between chaos and order. Magic is chaos; rationality and logic are order. One man's task is to bring order and eliminate chaos. He is the traveler in black.

The traveler brings order by giving people what they wish for. But he gives in a poetic sense. Those who are blessed by the traveler get exactly what they ask for, but not what they want. For example:

"By your favor, sir," said a boy of ten or twelve years, hunting a hedgerow near the village Wyve, "are such plants poisonous or wholesome?"
Offering for inspection a glabrous brownish fungus.
"Wholesome," said the traveler. "They may be fried."
With a moue, the boy tossed the toadstool aside.
"Are you not glad to have found that it's edible?" asked the traveler. "I took it you were gathering food."
"No, sir," said the boy. His voice and eyes were older than his years. "I seek poisons to give to my mother; she rules me unkindly and will not let me do whatever I like."
He sighed enormously. "Ah, that I might recognize instanter what may be relied upon to entrain death!"
"As you wish, so be it," said the traveler, and went on, leaving the boy weeping because he realized: no matter what diet is chosen, sooner or later death ensues.

The book consists of four separate stories. The prose is unlike any other Brunner book I've encountered. It sounds like Jack Vance. The stories are not compelling. The prose is interesting, but not sufficiently so. Give this a pass.

• Imprint of Chaos: The once-rational people of Ryovora demand a god, so the traveler gives them one: a man named Bernard Brown. When Ryovora is attacked by the overgrown Quadruple God of Acromel, Bernard Brown uses logic to see what the Ryovora's sorcerers cannot: Acromel's god is but an overgrown child.


• Break the Door of Hell: The people of Ys remember the golden age of their city, and lament its present condition. Rather than clean their rivers and rebuild their city, they use magic to reanimate their ancestors, expecting their ancestors to fix everything.


• The Wager Lost By Winning: Villagers in Wantwich are taken as slaves by Lord Fellian, upon whom Lady Luck smiles. Fellian intends to use them as stakes in gambling games, which are his pastime.


• Dread Empire: An unnatural night descends upon the world. Sorcerers conjure demons to fight the darkness, but fail. The traveler helps defeat chaos, and exits into nonexistence.

Players at the Game of People, by John Brunner

Rating: 2
Pages: 219

Players at the Game of People is a distinctly British science fiction novel. By British, I mean:


* Dystopian
* Critical of the useless upper class
* High regard for a man's honor and reputation


If it were an American book, it would be about enterprise, liberty, and a man's right to his property. Americans don't understand class distinction and don't value a man's reputation.

Plot synopsis: Godwin Harpinshield is one of the secret elite. He has access to every material thing that the world provides--food, drink, property, women. He is not bound by the laws of space and time; he can go swimming in Hawaii in the morning and have brunch in Paris. He does not age. For all this he pays a price: several times a year, he cedes control of his mind and body.

Godwin believes himself satisfied with this arrangement. Sometimes he gets jaded, but he always invents some new pursuit to amuse himself. But one incident causes him to doubt whether his loss of liberty is worth it: an encounter with a young girl who he saves during the London Blitz. A few discrepancies in his experience lead him to doubt whether his memories are accurate, whether the incident actually happened, and whether he is really who he believes himself to be. He has sold ownership of his body and mind to an alien possessor, but now he realizes he may have sold his soul as well.

Players at the Game of People is a hard book to read, because Brunner takes so long to reveal the nature of Godwin's possession. That's deliberate, because Godwin hides that knowledge even from himself. The climax of the book occurs when Godwin is finally forced to confront the facts. But that doesn't make the book any less convoluted and confusing.