James Nicoll Reviews

John Brunner’s 1993 Muddle Earth is a stand-alone science fiction story. It is also, as far as I can tell, Brunner’s final novel, not counting posthumous collaborations. Various factors conspired against Brunner — actually, that describes his whole career — and his productivity towards the end of his life was affected.

Duckman’s Dumper is the unlikely name of the faster-than-light drive that gave humanity the stars. Other civilizations had FTL drives, but none as inexpensive as the Duckman’s Dumper. Earth licenses the Dumper and the licensing fees have allowed all of the better sort of people to leave Earth for better planets. This has left Earth with humanity’s dregs.

There was a further complication, one that had personal implications for one Rinpoche Gibbs.

The fad for cryonic vaults altered California’s climate and presented society with eye-watering liquid nitrogen bills. Faced with this and other seemingly insurmountable problems, humanity did what humanity did best: threw money at the problem to stick some other poor saps with the task of tackling the problem. Specifically, alien saps, the once-great Yelignese.

Having accepted the contract, the aliens began the long process of thawing out all the ​“cryonuts.” Among them, Rinpoche Gibbs, who wakes in an unfamiliar world. Too bad he missed the briefing.

In fact, Gibbs wasn’t so terribly upset at the prospect of dying of cancer. It wasn’t his choice to be frozen or cured of his terminal illness. Nevertheless, he was. Now he has to make the best of his situation.

Gibbs discovers that some insistent people appear to believe that he is actually the infamous gangster Guido Sansepolcro Verdi and that he is in possession of a vast and no doubt ill-gotten fortune that they desperately crave. Gibbs prudently flees.

Gibbs finds himself in a world he never could have imagined. Faced with the problem of managing a worn-out planet populated by no-hopers, the Yelignese have transformed it in to a vast theme park. Drawing on fact and fiction, the Yelignese did their best to make Earth attractive to tourists.

Bewildered Gibbs has many questions about the bizarre world in which he is now living, not least of which is ​“Why is the incredibly attractive Nixy Anangaranga-Jones pointing a pistol at me?” It’s just one of the many zany situations in which Gibbs will find himself.

~oOo~

I didn’t remember Muddle Earth at all [1], but I could tell I probably had not enjoyed it. My copy is absolutely pristine, as though it had been read once and never again. Most of my other Brunners are considerably more worn.

Muddle Earth begins with this author’s note:

[quote] If some of the jokes herein seem funnier than average, that’s probably thanks to Dave Wood. [/quote]

None of the jokes seem funnier than average.

Muddle Earth is Brunner’s stab at a zany comedy in the manner of Robert Sheckley and Douglas Adams, in which a hapless protagonist desperately short on information stumbles from one absurd situation to another [2]. The result is closer to Ron Goulart [3] (whom I have reviewed) or Craig Shaw Gardner (who I probably won’t review unless paid). This tale does follow the template, but it’s not amusing.

I could hammer on that note for a few hundred more words, but what’s the point? Comedy is hard. As well, Brunner was in poor health; the medications he was taking reportedly had debilitating cognitive effects; and his wife had recently died. I’m inclined to label this novel as I do the late Laumer [4] books: ​“not good but also not really the author’s fault.”

It’s a sad note on which to end a career. Howsomever, I plant to end my series of Brunner reviews not with this book, but with Shockwave Reader. Tune in in December!

Muddle Earth is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Barnes & Noble), and here (Kobo).

I did not find Muddle Earth at Apple Books, Chapter-Indigo, or at Words Worth Books.

1: Thanks to the title, I wondered if Muddle were a Lord of the Rings parody. Brunner didn’t do a lot of fantasy, but he did do some. Still, 1993 is kind of late for a LOTR parody. It’s not as if Tolkien’s books had been made into a movie….

2: It occurs to me that C. J. Cherryh loves that plot, except she presents it as the traumatizing experience it would be.

3: Who is referenced in the name of a minor character, Ron Ghoulart. Hilariously misspelled SF author names are just part of the wacky theme.

4: Laumer had a stroke that he insisted on treating himself. This had deleterious effects on his ability to write, without removing the need for him to write to support himself. It’s very unfortunate that the idea of turning his fictional worlds into shared universes occurred to Laumer’s editor so late.