review of
John Brunner's The Day of the Star Cities
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 19, 2014

This is another one of those plot-driven bks that I have very little to say about that wdn't amt to spoiling it. The time appears to be the near future (as of 1965 when the bk was published). There're a few futuristic touches like "panic sprays", perhaps placed like sprinklers, capable of subduing the riotous. There's been a disaster wch the reader already knows about if they've read the blurb on the back cover but wch is still being hinted at on p 9:

"The pock-mark gaps in the neat mesh of human symbols—the devastated areas, the fallout zones, into which the lines of highways and railroads led like footsteps over precipices—had to be included on the printed map; it wouldn't be beyond self-deception to pretend that Omaha, for instance, still existed. (Though, of course, you didn't have to state aloud that the city had gone.) But the heavy black border isolating the tongue-shaped area in the center of North America, the other similar border around a kidney-shaped zone in Western Brazil, and the patches of silver foil like distorted pentagrams which symbolized the alien cities—those Waldron had added by hand the day after he'd grown tired of the popular fiction that governments in Washington and Ottawa still held sway over the whole of their former territories."

Then there's foreshadowing like this: ""Got one unusual thing about him. Mirror image layout. Heart on the wrong side, large lobe of the liver on the wrong side, all the way down the line.["]" (p 12) Then there's the repurposed language, a believable slang of the circumstances:

""Who was this man? Had you seen him before?"

""Not to my knowledge. Of course, he was a weirdo, so—"

""What makes you so sure?"

""Jesus! I'll lay a bet that people in the restaurant who'd never before been within a mile of one pegged him as soon as they saw him. And I've seen plenty."" - p 15

It must be strange to be an author & to write a bk that has a calculated trajectory & to then have the decision made, possibly w/o the author's input, to have that trajectory disrupted by having certain things revealed on the back cover of the bk. In this case, Brunner waited until p 21 to reveal what the readers already knew:

"He remembered the beginning with fearful vividness. With casual simultaneity, all fissionable material on the planet had been exploded with an efficiency varying from eight to eighteen percent conversion. Every missile and bomber base, every bomb in flight, every nuclear power station and every refinery where the stocks exceeded a couple of kilograms had mushroomed into fire. It was a day and a half before the survivors knew it wasn't war."

My interest always perks when I run across an unfamiliar word & Brunner usually provides at least one: "anti-missile bases had created comparable havoc around the major conurbations further south" (p 42) conurbation: "a large area consisting of cities or towns that have grown so that there is very little room between them" ( http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conurbation ) I reckon the more familiar word for me wd be "megalopolis".

What dates this bk, published a mere 49 yrs ago, is this: "A young woman looking like a fashion model in spite of the circumstances, who turns out to have a Bachelor of Science degree and a responsible post in the Scientific Service—remarkable!" (p 44) Wd anybody even bother to mention a Bachelor's degree anymore? In this era of being practically required to spend a fortune to get a PHD to buy yr way into the upper middle class?

& then there's this: "a successful free trader in the near-anarchy" (p 80) I'd hope that if Brunner had written this story in an era he didn't actually live to see, say the early 2000s, he wdn't've equated "free trade" (was that term in use anywhere then in the sense we now know it?) as something that's nurtured by "near-anarchy" given the anarchist preference for fair trade.

& then there's even more 'datedness': "From the main entrance of the building a tall colored man in white coveralls with an embroidered name on the chest had emerged." (p 87) These days, for the people trying not to be racist, African American (yes the story takes place in the USA) or Person of Color seem to be preferred. "Colored" probably seems quaintly suspicious to most. That's what my parents, born in the 1920s, wd've sd. It seems to me that in the 1960s & 1970s, when I was 'growing up' (did I ever? YEP), Black was the preferred term: witness Black is Beautiful & Black Liberation - that sort of thing. Now, everybody's got color & pure blackness is an exaggeration while pure whiteness is nonexistent (in skin color, ie) & not everybody who's 'African American' necessarily has such intimate ties to Africa. I don't think of myself as a European American, I say I'm from BalTimOre (where I was born). So all these terms strike me as clumsy. These days, if skin-color 'must' be referenced at all (dubious), I just prefer "darker" & "lighter".

& then we're back to a disappointing misuse of "anarchy" again: ""But isn't it courting disaster to trespass on Grady's anarchy["]" (p 102) "Grady's anarchy", in both the misrepresentation of this character & in its 'actual' story-condition is actually government, feudal of sorts & tyranical, but still government - a far cry from "anarchy". Then again, it's appropriate for this character to use the word in this way so it's not really "disappointing" after all.

A very recurring theme in bks of Brunner's in the 1960s & maybe early 1970s is hypnosis. I remember it being in The Productions of Time (you can read my review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18374935-the-productions-of-time ) & The Evil That Men Do (you can see my review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18106412-the-evil-that-men-do-the-purloined-p... ) amongst others:

""No, wait!" Waldron leaned forward. "There's something you said this morning, yourself. 'Except ye become as little children'—remember? Now there's a trick you can pull with hypnosis, isn't there, called regression? You get sort of sent back to an earlier time and behave and think like a child." - p 138

I've actually witnessed such a regression. I was at an acquaintance's apartment. She was a nurse, her boyfriend was a hypnotist. As a party thing he regressed her to a childhood birthday. It turned out that it was a birthday when she was punished. She spoke w/ the voice of a child. If she was acting, she's the best actress I've ever witnessed. Her boyfriend seemed rather nasty so I have to wonder if he deliberately chose a date to make her suffer. Long story short.

Brunner always manages to spin a good yarn AND to remember to add those ephemeral details that set the tone w/o being necessarily immediately plot-driven:

"There would be snow later, probably; the leaden overcast was threatening and the wind had a keen edge to it. But Fred Johnson paid little attention to the state of the weather, like all the others standing patiently with him on the bleak hillside. His main reaction to the possibility of snow was a vague regret that he would not see how glorious the heavenly city appeared when there was a mantle of white on the earth around it." - p 152

Probably the most interesting aspect of this Brunner for me was the way the characters are driven by an assumption that I find no grounds for whatsoever in the story: "The aliens regard us as rats" - & actions proceed from this assumption. I think that other conclusions that're just as logical if not more so can be derived - such as that the "Star Cities" are there for human use in precisely the way the humans eventually use them. I wonder if Brunner imagined that as a possibility & left it out of the story for the reader to figure out on their/our own? If he did, that wd be an exceptional bit of reverse psychology on his part! ( )