James Nicoll Reviews

John Brunner’s 1968 Bedlam Planet is a stand-alone science fiction novel.

Most of the nearby solar systems visited by humanity’s first faster-than-light probes contained only dead worlds. Sigma Draconis was the notable exception. Asgard is in many ways Earth’s twin, a world on which humans can survive unprotected. Or so the initial scouting mission suggested. The colonists planned to test Asgard’s habitability for themselves, assisted by two of the original scouts, Pyotr Tang-Lin and Dennis Malone. Starflight being fearfully expensive, the settlers will be left to succeed or fail without help from Earth¹.

The settlement begins badly, with a tragic mishap.

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1973’s Age of Miracles is an expanded and revised edition of John Brunner’s 1965 The Day of the Star Cities.

First contact with a vastly superior alien civilization came in the form of catastrophe: every lump of fissionable material larger than two or three kilograms on the surface of the Earth abruptly blew up. Chaos and mass death followed. By the time surviving governments were able to take stock, vast, enigmatic, alien structures had planted themselves in the American Midwest, in western Brazil, near the Russian Urals, on Australia’s Nullabor Plain, and in Antarctica. Armies dispatched to drive off the invaders went mad. In the end, humanity had to accept that new owners now dominated Earth.

Near the alien city in the American Midwest, a madman staggers away from the city. He had clearly ventured too close. He dies and is then identified as government employee Correy Bennett. The only problem with this is that the original Correy Bennett is still very much alive.

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John Brunner’s 1967 The Productions of Time is a stand-alone contemporary science fiction novel.

A broken marriage and alcoholism destroyed Murray Douglas’ once-promising acting career. With great effort, Murray dried out. Now he is ready for a comeback. But few companies seem interested in hiring a prematurely aged former wunderkind.

Enter famed avant-garde director Delgado. Murray Douglas suits Delgado’s purposes very nicely. If Douglas accepts, the pay will be very welcome indeed. There is one small catch. Delgado’s productions are infamously cursed, leaving a trail of dead and deranged actors in Delgado’s wake. Only a very desperate actor would say yes to Delgado.

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John Brunner’s 1967 Born Under Mars is a stand-alone science fiction novel of interstellar intrigue.

Mars-born engineer Ray Mallin is an expert in four-space engines, which makes him a useful crewmember on superluminal starships. Mallin is not engaged in any form of espionage, which makes his current circumstances — being tortured for information by people in masks — hard to explain.

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John Brunner’s 1965 The Long Result is a stand-alone science fiction novel.

Roald Vincent is a functionary in the Bureau for Cultural Relations, a functionary who is bright but deficient in driving bureaucratic ambition. He has set his heart on Patricia Ryder and plans to marry her¹ as soon as he deals with a daunting career challenge.

The matter of the aliens from Tau Ceti.

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John Brunner’s 1962 The Ladder in the Sky is a stand-alone science fiction novel. It was published under a penname, Keith Woodcott.

Kazan has lived all his eighteen years in Berak’s notorious Dyasthala, a slum from which escape seems impossible. Now escape of a sort presents itself, as a human sacrifice to forces from beyond the stars.

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John Brunner’s 1962 No Future in It and Other Stories is a short story collection. As far as I can tell, it was John Brunner’s first short story collection.

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John Brunner’s 1959 The World Swappers is a first-contact science fiction novel.

Four centuries earlier, bold visionaries embraced the promise of the stars. Hundreds of thousands left Earth to whatever dismal fate awaited them. They found thirty-one known habitable worlds within two hundred parsecs of Earth. The colonists had different notions of the utopias to which they aspired, but all of them found difficulty in achieving them.

Meanwhile, Earth did not descend into the over-populated, poverty-stricken hellhole predicted by doomsayers. Twenty-sixth century Earth is rich and lazy. However, the end of the golden age is in sight, unless adjustments are made in interstellar relations, adjustments that would allow emigration to restart.

Top oligarch Bassett is that confident he alone has the vision and the resources needed to restart and manage emigration. Shadowy cabal leader Uncredited social activist Saïd Counce knows that Bassett’s schemes are doomed. Were that not serious enough, Counce knows that the alien Others are about to stumble across humanity.

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John Brunner’s Times Without Number is a collection of time travel stories later re-published as a fix-up. For reasons that will become clear, assigning this work a publication year is not straightforward. This review is of the 1969 edition.

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John Brunner’s 1968 Catch a Falling Star is a substantial rewrite of his 1959 The 100^th Millennium, which in turn is an expanded version of the 1958 novella Earth Is But a Star.

One hundred thousand years from now, a community of humans lives in what past eras would call utopia. Each person has their own living house that provides them with life’s necessities and each is free to pursue whatever pastime amuses them. Creohan, for example, is an astronomer, devoting his life to studying the stars.

As a consequence of a hundred thousand years of history, novelty is rare. Whatever a person might consider doing has been done a thousand times before. But … thanks to historical data provided to him by a Historicker friend, Creohan succeeds connecting dots no other person has connected:

A rogue star is headed directly for the Solar System. Earth and everything on it are doomed.

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