John Brunner (1934–1995)

Gah, dystopian fiction is so depressing; yet when it's done well, it is such a good read. This is one such book. It came up on my Goodreads recommendations, and I'm surprised I hadn't encountered it before, since I've been reading a lot of science fiction & futuristic fiction in the past few years. I hadn't read or heard anything about the author before, which usually makes me a little wary. However, once I started this book, I didn't want to put it down.

In the novel, a company called show more Bamberly Hydroponics has created and is distributing a food product called Nutripon. Several batches of it are sent overseas as humanitarian aid; shortly thereafter, terrible sickness and mental illness strikes those countries. Meanwhile, the pollution and contamination are growing stateside; the water supply, being diverted from rural areas into the city, is recycled without proper sanitation and perpetuates a cycle of sickness that is deadly for the very young, very old, and poor; acid rain, crop failures, and transmissible disease compound the problems. Still, the wealthy business owners, such as Mr. Bamberly and his officers deny any implication of wrongdoing in the nationwide problems.

This book chronicles one year in an ambiguously future America; technology is not described at length, but the economy is faltering, food supplies are either contaminated or prohibitively expensive, air quality is so poor that you cannot be outside without a filtermask for more than a few minutes, the rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer. It all seems so conspiracy theoretic, but on second glance, it's not too hard to see our own situation growing into this chaotic state -- the "Puritan" health food craze, the use of military force in developing countries, the manipulation of food and water supplies, the corporate zeal for profit at the expense of humanity.

This is one of those books akin to "1984" -- you shake your head and think, "That will never happen here," -- yet it is happening all around you. show less

Don Miguel Navarro is a man with a most unusual job. As a Licentiate of the Society of Time, he is a time traveling agent for a Spanish Empire that continues to thrive four hundred years after the Armada successfully conquered England in 1588. Tasked with observing the past, he is always on the lookout for improper uses of time travel lest it bring about changes to the present. A casual encounter at a party results in just such a discovery, one that leads Don Miguel to a sinister conspiracy show more that threatens to alter history and undo the entire empire itself unless it is stopped.

John Brunner's novel is a cut above most of its counterparts. A collection of three interlocking tales that were originally published as separate short stories, together they offer a series of entertaining adventures in an imaginative setting. His Spanish Empire is one not much more advanced technologically than its 16th century predecessor, with time travel apparently more an accident of alchemy than science. Such a premise allows Brunner to offer some fresh approaches to the concept, most notably in the notion of the careful management of time travel by religious authorities. This serves as a springboard for some interesting metaphysical observations that, when combined with Brunner's entertaining writing style, makes for a time travel novel that any fan of the genre will enjoy. show less

It takes time for the plot to unfold to the point that the inverted Cold War setting comes into focus: Russia is the enlightened, hip, and more open society; U.S. is the isolated, aggressively exploitative (both globally and towards its own citizens) society; and the narrative POV is that of Russian agents planted in the U.S. (It's unclear to me if Brunner's use of "Russia" over "Soviet Union" is deliberate and knowing, or reflects Western sloppiness prevalent at the time.) Brunner toys with show more reader expectations in a number of ways in this brief novel, and handles them adroitly enough not to require lots of padding to hide it in.

Brunner also weaves in multiple themes, with two I found most mysterious or intriguing actually receiving the smallest word count. That was not detrimental, and while initially taken separately these are threaded together in the end, in a satisfying way. Though I suspected from the beginning they would link up, precisely how was not clear. Setting the plot in motion is intelligence that an alien species has been detected outside Pluto, with communication possible but limited to images. Separately; a character's clairvoyant powers strongly suggest by their presence as a pivotal "new perspective" for making communicating more effective. What wasn't evident is that both the alien species and the clairvoyance are directly linked to time's arrow. The alien species lives through time in "reverse" sequence from human species, and clairvoyance somehow accesses time from the other end of lived experience, allowing Danty to know in advance ("wrong end of time").

Brunner glances over a premise explored iconically in Clarke's 2001 and later by Banks in his Excession novel of the Culture: the Out of Context / First Contact threat. Brunner places the alien threat "outside Pluto". Funny it's there, knowing as we do now there is nothing "there" to park around, and assume that decision is simply Brunner's alignment with then-accepted model of solar system. The resolution is interestingly anticlimactic, ending on a note of interspecies communication, handled offstage.

As with my reading of Sturgeon, the classic SFnal plot and premise are slight at first blush, but Brunner is unconstrained by this, leavening his tale with all manner of ideas and cultural observations, the cumulative effect of which is denser world-building than suggested by the small page count. Among these: future dialect used realistically in dialogue and left for the reader to interpret; global political alignments, permutated from 20th Century but not always in orthogonal directions; consumer trends reflecting political balance of power; the further development of familiar racial relations, at least in the US. There's a lot to take in as the landscape flashes past the novel's windows. show less

2010's world of 7 billion humans as seen from 1968.

This tour de force of world building combines broad strokes through media snapshots and a focus on a few characters. Much of John Brunner's vision has come true and much has not, and it's worth pondering what trends continued into the present confirming his predictions and what trends suffered discontinuities.

It's in the relationships between the main characters and particularly between the main characters and their "shiggies" that the show more difference between the prediction and the reality is most glaring but nevertheless, I am glad to have revisited this book because despite the gloomy atmosphere, it is fun. show less