First published in 1965, 182 p. In Out of This World Choice (Out of This World 2 & Out of This World 5) edited by Amabel Williams-Ellis and Mably Owen, Blackie, 1972, 369 p in total.

Another set of exercises, as in Out of This World 2, in thoroughly old-fashioned Science Fiction. More problems to be solved or misunderstandings to be overcome. Entertaining enough just the same.

Four in One by Damon Knight. Members of an exploratory expedition to another planet stumble into an alien life-form which absorbs them, leaving only their nervous systems intact. They can still communicate with each other and direct the organism though.

Bottomless Pit by Philip E High. The planet Shrule has been nicknamed the Bottomless Pit since no-one, of whatever species, returns from there. An expedition to exploit its resources finds out exactly why. This is one of the few old style SF stories where humans are bested by their antagonists.

The Hour of Letdown by E B White starts with a man walking into a bar. It’s not a joke though. The machine he carries is a multi-function computer of sorts, which can drink – and cheat at chess.

Colonial by John Christopher. The indigenous animals used to direct Venus’s arbitrary justice system have been replaced by the judgement of the leader of the human colonialists, Max Larkin. An exposé on Earth of the Venusians’ supposed exploitation leads to an investigation by reporters which could threaten the colonials’ extraction business. Larkin’s solution depends on his knowledge of the locals.

Badman by John Brunner. Today is the day that The Badman, upholder of law and order, punisher of all transgressors, and universal object of fear, is making one of his irregular visits to the town. In concert with his pals Niles Boden has concocted a plan to kill him. Niles is the one who draws the short straw and has to attempt the deed. What happens thereafter is different from what he expects.

Pushover Planet by Con Pedersen. A human expedition to another planet is befriended by one of its inhabitants. When they don environment suits it is another matter, though.

The Fiction Machines by Vadim Okhotnikov. A man who thinks his memoirs would make riveting reading finds it’s not so easy to write when you’re faced with a blank page. He invents ever bigger and more elaborate machines to help him with the task but the technology is too good at what it does.

Winthrop Was Stubborn by William Tenn. Four time-travellers to the twenty-fifth century are dismayed when the fifth – Winthrop – says he will not come back with them at the appointed time. Each is sent to the person in this future they could most likely persuade to help change Winthrop’s mind but the social set-up is such that none of them can do anything about it. The situation is resolved in a natural, organic, way.

Pedant’s corner:- In the preface; “Mr James Vance” (Jack Vance.) Otherwise; “his weight was only a little more than twenty kilograms on this planet” (strictly, weight is measured in Newtons, which, on Earth, equates directly to kilograms, the unit of mass. On another planet the relationship would not be so equivalent,) “axones and denerites” (axons and dendrites,) “old wives tales” (old wives’ tales?) “the penalties for indiscriminating killing” (indiscriminate,) “smiled faintly slightly” (either, faintly, or, slightly. Not both,) “oblivious of” (oblivious to.)

The Original Trilogy and Other Stories, edited by Mike Ashley. British Library, 2020, 287 p. Reviewed for Interzone 290-291, Summer 2021.

This British Library reprint, subtitled “The Original Trilogy and Other Stories” contains five novellas first published in 1961 and 1962. The “time” trilogy was collected as Times without Number shortly after then. Its three stories are set around the four-hundredth anniversary of the victory of the Duke of Parma’s Armada over the English fleet when a (Catholic) Spanish Empire – centred on the British Isles – of which our protagonist Don Miguel Navarro, a licentiate of the powerful Society of Time, is a citizen, is at its peak. These are, then, tales of Altered History, with place names such as Jorque and Londres
Curiously we are told Spain itself has been reconquered by “virile” Islam but nothing more is made of this. The Empire’s main rival is instead a Confederacy of Northern European states. The Society of Time controls the time travel machines of the Empire (“Borromeo showed us how we might rotate the dimensions of substances so that the worlds became flat and we could voyage back into time,”) and has rigorous rules to prevent interference with History. A similar organisation in the Confederacy acts likewise. The Islamic powers we must assume to have no time travel capability. All three stories centre round the inevitable (otherwise no story) floutings of these interference protocols. Miguel, a rather correctly behaved individual, is also shocked by other infractions the Society’s members condone, such as pandering.

In the first novella, Spoil of Yesterday, Miguel immediately recognises a work of Art as an illegal import from the past and arrests its owner. The breach is resolved by a trip to the past to replace it immediately after its removal, but the reader does not take this time trip with Miguel, is only told of it. In the second, The Word not Written, Miguel finds that prominent members of the Society actively explore ruptures in time when an argument between them is attempted to be settled by allowing female warriors from a time which would not have occurred bar interference to come to their present, with disastrous results. Again, only a trip back to the past, again unseen, restores the status quo ante. Only Miguel and his confessor retain memories of the infringement. In The Fullness of Time, in retrospect a cunning title, we do finally accompany Miguel to the past. The Empire’s exploitation of the mineral resources of its lands in the New World is protected by the (carefully worded, so as to avoid any possible contravention) Treaty of Prague between it and the Confederacy. Evidence has been found of the Confederacy using its time travel capability to mine in the past where it had no right to. While (in a nod to what actually happened in the reader’s world) recognising that without the Empire the natives of the New World might have been ground between the interests of competing European nations, Miguel’s companion, a Mohawk, resents the Empire’s intrusions on the natives’ ancient lands, despite his tribe becoming a leading light in Empire circles. It is his interference in the past which drives the story and ultimately ensures there will be no more Don Miguel tales.

This is all still very readable, though Brunner’s writing occasionally lapses into cliché, the characterisation is sometimes rudimentary, and there is a rather awkward portrayal of sexual roles and attitudes.

The other two novellas are stand-alones which arguably do not belong with the trilogy though editor Mike Ashley’s introduction says Brunner was at his best at novella length.

In Father of Lies a small area of England is on no maps and technology breaks down when it is entered. Miles Croton is part of a group investigating the phenomenon and penetrates the anomaly on foot after his car will no longer work. He almost straight away sees a dragon from whom he soon has to rescue a naked woman tied to a stake and finds he has entered a world based on mythology (mainly but not exclusively Arthurian.) While this might seem like a fantasy scenario Brunner supplies a rational explanation for them.

The Analysts by contrast is a tale of unusual architecture. Joel Sackstone can visualise from a drawing how a building will be experienced by its inhabitants and as such has been crucial to his firm’s success. A new project baffles him by its design – on which the clients are irrevocably set – seeming to lead people in a direction that isn’t there. In amongst all this oddness Brunner managed to include some asides on sexual and racial politics.

The following did not appear in the published review:- contains the phraseology of the time eg coloured for black.

Pedant’s corner:- “two capital L’s” (strictly speaking the plural is ‘two capitals L’, but that is not how people say it,) focussed (focused,) “if there was anything more undignified than a Licentiate could do” (if there was anything more undignified that a Licentiate could do,) “once for all” (once and for all,) “landing astraddle of the branch” (landing astraddle the branch,) staunch (stanch,) “that all was not well” (that not all was well,) a full stop where there ought to have been a comma, “ten year ago” (years.)

A meme as started by Judith and now collated by Katrina.

Since these are SF paperbacks mostly published several decades ago they are on the shelves housed in my garage. The photos are zooms in on the ones of the whole bookcases and so are a bit fuzzy.

On view are books by the excellent Michael Bishop, several by my friend Eric Brown, three by Algis Budrys, five (or seven since one is an omnibus of a trilogy) by C J Cherryh, but most of the books shown here were written by John Brunner. I remember fondly Stand on Zanzibar, The Dramaturges of Yan, Telepathist and The Squares of the City, in which the characters are in effect avatars of chess pieces whose moves were taken from a real game.

Brunner’s The Shockwave Rider (in which he more or less predicted computer viruses but due to the storage medium of computers at the time he called them tapeworms,) The Sheep Look Up and The Jagged Orbit are shelved in another bookcase in the garage for arcane reasons.

His Timescoop is on my hardback shelves.

(This week’s edition for Judith’s meme at Reader in the Wilderness.)

These are all small-sized SF paperbacks. By small I mean the size all paperbacks used to be back in the day – before publishers realised they could charge a higher price for larger editions and they aspired to the status of hardbacks.

In our old house all my paperback SF was shelved in one room – on shelving specially built for the purpose. When we moved to Son of the Rock Acres there was no space for them in the house. Hence these are stored in the garage; to accomodate them they are double parked on each shelf, which is why they seem to start at Ballard and jump from Bester to Bishop, and Dick to Garnett.

Lots of goodies here: Eric Brown, John Brunner, Michael G Coney, Philip K Dick, Mary Gentle, Colin Greenland. If you look closely you’ll even see some Harlan Ellison peeping through at the back on the bottom shelf.

Macmillan, 1981, 187 p.

I read this because it was recommended (and loaned) to me by Guardian reviewer Eric Brown as containing a very good non-SF story written by 1960s and 70s British SF stalwart John Brunner. It does and it is. There is also a story by once (and now again) SF author – and reviewer for the Guardian – M John Harrison.
Letting the Birds Go Free by Philip Oakes is narrated by the son of a farmer whose eggs are being stolen. They both confront the culprit but then offer him employment. He is, though, a deserter from the Army unwilling to be sent back to Northern Ireland.
Another first person narration, Things by V S Pritchett, is the tale of the sudden descent after years away of a wayward sister(-in-law) on a newly retired couple’s home.
Old Tom¹ by Celia Dale relates the experiences and reminiscences of a down-and-out war veteran intercut with the administrations of a retired woman to an ageing cat.
In Flora’s Lame Duck by Harold Acton, Flora has taken under her wing a young Italian disfigured by polio. He becomes besotted with her but she is only waiting for the terminally ill wife of the man she loves to die before returning to the US to marry him.
Terence Wheeler’s Safe Wintering² is narrated by an ex-sailor and describes the sequential (and contrasting) relationships another man in the town has with two women.
The Indian Girl³ by Giles Gordon is the tale of the narrator’s possibly hallucinatory experience while travelling from New Delhi to Amritsar by train.
A Mouthful of Gold⁴ John Brunner is another of those ‘as told to’ tales – this time in a London club for writers – concerning a particularly fine wine and the failure of a US flier shot down over Italy and hidden by the region’s inhabitants from the Germans to understand the nature of its secret ingredient.
Home Ownership⁵ by Murray Bail tells the story of a Brisbane house, growing old along with the man who lives there.
In Chemistry by Graham Swift a ten year-old child muses on the relationship between his widowed mother, his grandfather, his mother’s new lover and himself.
Egnaro by M John Harrison is the story of a bookseller/pornographer who is tantalised by the possibility of a mysterious land, Egnaro, found nowhere on the maps except by hint or exegesis, and the translation of this obsession to the narrator.
Birthday!⁶ by Fay Weldon concerns the marriage of two people, Molly and Mark, who had both been born on the same day and met on their twenty-eighth birthday. Words beginning with “m” dominate the text as does Molly’s belief in astrology. Another birthday, their fortieth, when Mark’s workmates descend on the family with a birthday video, bookends the story.
In Christmas with a Stranger by Leslie Thomas, a young man from the Welsh valleys uses the bit of money he has come into to visit London. On the train there he invents for himself a persona as a film director. In the city he meets a woman fashion designer, down from the north. They spend Christmas Day navigating a deserted London.

Pedant’s corner:- In the Editor’s Note; “full of strange, twists and turns” (unless strange here is a noun, that comma is unnecessary.) ¹“if he don’t move” (this is the only verb in the piece not in standard English; doesn’t,) plimsoles (x 2, plimsolls.) ²the whole story is told in seaman’s language so contains instances of ungrammatical or other usages. Otherwise; laying (lying,) “farther gone that he had thought” (than,) a lay-in (lie-in.) ³mannaged (managed.) ⁴“there were only a couple of” (there was only a couple.) ⁵ “You-who!” (is normally Yoohoo!) ⁶silicone-chip (silicon,) sprung (sprang.)

Orbit, 2012, 561p. Reviewed for Interzone 242, Sep-Oct 2012.

Note: this is not how the review appeared in Interzone. The post below is 650 words or so long. Due to a mix-up over Interzone’s move to a new page size their reviews editor had to cut 150 of these.

The Solar System has long been colonised; from asteroids inside the orbit of Mercury out to the mining of the Oort cloud. Earth is garlanded with space elevators and its billions of mainly impoverished inhabitants are resentful of the easier life they imagine spacers enjoy. The planet has succumbed to global warming – there is a nice vignette of an inundated New York as a kind of stalagmitic Venice (though I would have thought storms would have ravaged the skyscrapers quite quickly.) Terraformed asteroids – either hollowed out and spun up “innies” or tented over “outies” – provide habitats for the growth of food (much of which helps to supply Earth,) the preservation of animals now extinct on the home planet, or as spaceships for fast inter-system travel. Politically the structure is Balkanised with habitats jealously guarding their own interests and playing each against other. Humanity too is splintering as a proto-speciation of humans with different statures has developed as a result of the different living environments that abound. Medical advances mean limbs can be regrown, life span has increased, gender become more plastic. Quantum computer AIs known as qubes control many processes, some are utilised as wrist aids or even via head implants. 2312 has no lack, then, of Science-fictional ideas with which to tickle the sense of wonder. The characters’ longevity is almost incidental, though, as apart from not seeming to worry about their children they do not behave very differently from at present. Despite being well over one hundred they act as if they’re in their twenties or younger. This may be how long life spans affect us, of course.

The narrative follows four viewpoint characters; Swan Er Hong, a gynandromorph who lives on Mercury and whose grandmother’s death leads off the story; police Inspector Jean Genette, a so-called small; Fitz Wahram, an androgyn, and Kiran, a young earthman who rescues Swan from possible kidnapping on one of her visits to Earth. The – plot such as it is – hinges on whether or not the qubes are developing consciousness and designs of their own; even manifesting themselves as androids, possibly as terrorists. It is a feature of the narrative that we see the characters caught up in events, variously imperilled, but never quite at the centre of things; which is like life. This is not the usual mode in SF but none the less welcome for it.

Since his Mars trilogy Robinson has rarely borne his research lightly. Here the “story” chapters are variously separated by descriptions of eight (sub)planetary bodies/habitats, fifteen lists, eighteen extracts from an apparent history written well after the events of the novel and three “quantum walks.” It is a style which largely circumvents the crudities of information dumping by parading them as a strength. It is not an entirely new approach to the problem. Robinson credits John Dos Passos in his acknowledgements and, within SF, John Brunner employed a similar technique in Stand on Zanzibar.

In pursuit of this the novel ranges all over the solar system from Terminator, a city constantly on the move over the surface of Mercury, out to Io, back and forth to Earth, taking in Venus, Saturn’s cloud tops, Titan, Pluto and various interplanetary terraria, surfing the gravity wave on Saturn’s F ring along the way. The main fault with all this is that it can seem the narrative has been designed to show off the research. At one point Swan says, “All right. I will. But I’m going to take the long way there.” But she is, in our terms, old, and she has time.

Without these interpolations between the chapters, though, the book would have been much less impressive.

In 2312 plot and characterisation are not Robinson’s primary concern. It is the solar system – to which, as one of the interludes reminds us, humanity is bound by the vastness of interstellar space – that is his hero.