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The Whole Man
Gerald Howson didn't look powerful. His body was deformed at birth, leaving him with a face so ugly people didn't want to look at him, and crippled legs that would never let him be as other men. But his mind was one in a billion - gifted with the ability to send and receive thoughts more powerfully than any other person on the face of the globe.At first Howson thought his peculiar ability was odd, and then he thought he might be able to get a little extra money by snooping on people. But when his ability finally was discovered by others, he became so powerful that he could use his gift to heal the minds of those who suffered from terrible emotional or psychological trauma...or he could withdraw into a phatasmagoric wonderland of psychic imagining, never to emerge into the real world of human experience again. Whichever decision he made, his life and the lives of countless others would ever be the same again.The Whole Man is one of the most brilliantly original and colorfully told adventures of inner space ever written. Hugo Award winner John Brunner makes utterly real a fantastic concept that most writers can't even write about.
188 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
14 people are currently reading
850 people want to read
About the author
John Brunner
572 books479 followersJohn Brunner was born in Preston Crowmarsh, near Wallingford in Oxfordshire, and went to school at St Andrew's Prep School, Pangbourne, then to Cheltenham College. He wrote his first novel, Galactic Storm, at 17, and published it under the pen-name Gill Hunt, but he did not start writing full-time until 1958. He served as an officer in the Royal Air Force from 1953 to 1955, and married Marjorie Rosamond Sauer on 12 July 1958
At the beginning of his writing career Brunner wrote conventional space opera pulp science fiction. Brunner later began to experiment with the novel form. His 1968 novel "Stand on Zanzibar" exploits the fragmented organizational style John Dos Passos invented for his USA trilogy, but updates it in terms of the theory of media popularised by Marshall McLuhan.
"The Jagged Orbit" (1969) is set in a United States dominated by weapons proliferation and interracial violence, and has 100 numbered chapters varying in length from a single syllable to several pages in length. "The Sheep Look Up" (1972) depicts ecological catastrophe in America. Brunner is credited with coining the term "worm" and predicting the emergence of computer viruses in his 1975 novel "The Shockwave Rider", in which he used the term to describe software which reproduces itself across a computer network. Together with "Stand on Zanzibar", these novels have been called the "Club of Rome Quartet", named after the Club of Rome whose 1972 report The Limits to Growth warned of the dire effects of overpopulation.
Brunner's pen names include K. H. Brunner, Gill Hunt, John Loxmith, Trevor Staines, Ellis Quick, Henry Crosstrees Jr., and Keith Woodcott.
In addition to his fiction, Brunner wrote poetry and many unpaid articles in a variety of publications, particularly fanzines, but also 13 letters to the New Scientist and an article about the educational relevance of science fiction in Physics Education. Brunner was an active member of the organisation Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and wrote the words to "The H-Bomb's Thunder", which was sung on the Aldermaston Marches.
Brunner had an uneasy relationship with British new wave writers, who often considered him too American in his settings and themes. He attempted to shift to a more mainstream readership in the early 1980s, without success. Before his death, most of his books had fallen out of print. Brunner accused publishers of a conspiracy against him, although he was difficult to deal with (his wife had handled his publishing relations before she died).[2]
Brunner's health began to decline in the 1980s and worsened with the death of his wife in 1986. He remarried, to Li Yi Tan, on 27 September 1991. He died of a heart attack in Glasgow on 25 August 1995, while attending the World Science Fiction Convention there
aka
K H Brunner, Henry Crosstrees Jr, Gill Hunt (with Dennis Hughes and E C Tubb), John Loxmith, Trevor Staines, Keith Woodcott
Winner of the ESFS Awards in 1980 as "Best Author" and 1n 1984 as "Novelist"..
At the beginning of his writing career Brunner wrote conventional space opera pulp science fiction. Brunner later began to experiment with the novel form. His 1968 novel "Stand on Zanzibar" exploits the fragmented organizational style John Dos Passos invented for his USA trilogy, but updates it in terms of the theory of media popularised by Marshall McLuhan.
"The Jagged Orbit" (1969) is set in a United States dominated by weapons proliferation and interracial violence, and has 100 numbered chapters varying in length from a single syllable to several pages in length. "The Sheep Look Up" (1972) depicts ecological catastrophe in America. Brunner is credited with coining the term "worm" and predicting the emergence of computer viruses in his 1975 novel "The Shockwave Rider", in which he used the term to describe software which reproduces itself across a computer network. Together with "Stand on Zanzibar", these novels have been called the "Club of Rome Quartet", named after the Club of Rome whose 1972 report The Limits to Growth warned of the dire effects of overpopulation.
Brunner's pen names include K. H. Brunner, Gill Hunt, John Loxmith, Trevor Staines, Ellis Quick, Henry Crosstrees Jr., and Keith Woodcott.
In addition to his fiction, Brunner wrote poetry and many unpaid articles in a variety of publications, particularly fanzines, but also 13 letters to the New Scientist and an article about the educational relevance of science fiction in Physics Education. Brunner was an active member of the organisation Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and wrote the words to "The H-Bomb's Thunder", which was sung on the Aldermaston Marches.
Brunner had an uneasy relationship with British new wave writers, who often considered him too American in his settings and themes. He attempted to shift to a more mainstream readership in the early 1980s, without success. Before his death, most of his books had fallen out of print. Brunner accused publishers of a conspiracy against him, although he was difficult to deal with (his wife had handled his publishing relations before she died).[2]
Brunner's health began to decline in the 1980s and worsened with the death of his wife in 1986. He remarried, to Li Yi Tan, on 27 September 1991. He died of a heart attack in Glasgow on 25 August 1995, while attending the World Science Fiction Convention there
aka
K H Brunner, Henry Crosstrees Jr, Gill Hunt (with Dennis Hughes and E C Tubb), John Loxmith, Trevor Staines, Keith Woodcott
Winner of the ESFS Awards in 1980 as "Best Author" and 1n 1984 as "Novelist"..
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
September 14, 2016
There were a lot of interesting things going on in this world besides having telepaths, but very little of it is SF. There isn't much tech at all & most of that is what would have been found in the 1970s.
- The UN has response teams that go all over the world battling terrorism & it happens in 'Our Town, USA'.
- Unwed mothers are still looked down upon & use pregnancy as a trap for men.
- The poverty, inequity, & grim, daily grind of this typical US city.
- Ulan Bator (Mongolia) is now the headquarters of the UN Telepath force.
- The only telephone is in the basement of a tenement.
Telepaths were done to death in many old SF books. It's usually a fine, clean power, but Brunner brings in some really interesting twists, especially by looking at what might happen when a telepath who can project & receive is mentally ill. The illness might just be an imbalance brought on by stress & a desire to escape.
The book starts with a little saying:
Spiritus intus alit, totamaque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet.
Vergil: Aeneid, VI, 726-7
On Google Translate (Bing doesn't even have Latin!) that translates to:
A spirit within nourishes, is diffused throughout the whole (entirety)
The great mind of the whole mass and mingles itself with a body.
Thanks to Kate!
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
I can tell you that 'que' is a suffix or ending that means 'and'. Also the 'mystery word' should really be 'totamque', 'totam' meaning 'the whole' or 'the entirety'. ... He is saying that the mind is more powerful than matter.
I normally wouldn't bother with the above, but this book is divided into 3 parts, the 3 short stories it was originally published as. It is about a physically crippled, but very strong telepath who is born into poverty & finds out about his power at the very end of the first section titled "Molem" which translates as 'whole mass'.
The second section is titled "Agitat" (mingles or infuses) which is about him coming to terms with his power & a community of others like him.
The third section is titled "Mens" (mind) & he starts using his power & becoming a success, but he's still not a whole man. He's been mentally crippled by the years as a physical cripple. He needs to find himself, not just his place in the world, but a reason for enjoying life. He does in an interesting way.
Very enjoyable book by an overlooked author. I recommend it.
- The UN has response teams that go all over the world battling terrorism & it happens in 'Our Town, USA'.
- Unwed mothers are still looked down upon & use pregnancy as a trap for men.
- The poverty, inequity, & grim, daily grind of this typical US city.
- Ulan Bator (Mongolia) is now the headquarters of the UN Telepath force.
- The only telephone is in the basement of a tenement.
Telepaths were done to death in many old SF books. It's usually a fine, clean power, but Brunner brings in some really interesting twists, especially by looking at what might happen when a telepath who can project & receive is mentally ill. The illness might just be an imbalance brought on by stress & a desire to escape.
The book starts with a little saying:
Spiritus intus alit, totamaque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet.
Vergil: Aeneid, VI, 726-7
On Google Translate (Bing doesn't even have Latin!) that translates to:
A spirit within nourishes, is diffused throughout the whole (entirety)
The great mind of the whole mass and mingles itself with a body.
Thanks to Kate!
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
I can tell you that 'que' is a suffix or ending that means 'and'. Also the 'mystery word' should really be 'totamque', 'totam' meaning 'the whole' or 'the entirety'. ... He is saying that the mind is more powerful than matter.
I normally wouldn't bother with the above, but this book is divided into 3 parts, the 3 short stories it was originally published as. It is about a physically crippled, but very strong telepath who is born into poverty & finds out about his power at the very end of the first section titled "Molem" which translates as 'whole mass'.
The second section is titled "Agitat" (mingles or infuses) which is about him coming to terms with his power & a community of others like him.
The third section is titled "Mens" (mind) & he starts using his power & becoming a success, but he's still not a whole man. He's been mentally crippled by the years as a physical cripple. He needs to find himself, not just his place in the world, but a reason for enjoying life. He does in an interesting way.
Very enjoyable book by an overlooked author. I recommend it.
October 7, 2015
Another oldie from my engineering undergraduate period (1980-85). This was the time I was really getting hooked on SF, but still was not fully able to capture all the unspoken nuances of the genre. The Public Library at Thrissur had a fantastic collection of old books - SF, mystery, almost all of Wodehouse and Agatha Christie, books on mathematics by Martin Gardner: all old, musty, almost-falling-apart books. The library itself is located in the Town Hall, a colonial building with cavernous rooms.
It was the perfect place for reading SF and fantasy. This book, in my mind, carries with a certain of the mystic quality I associated with the place. I can't look at the cover without the musty smell of old books assailing my nostrils.
I do not remember the story in detail, other than the fact that the protagonist was able to enter people's minds. The fantasy world inside the brain fascinated me (now it is a hackneyed Hollywood trope). I still remember a battle scene between a tiger and a dragon, conducted wholly within the mind.
I need to read this book again to appreciate the story fully.
It was the perfect place for reading SF and fantasy. This book, in my mind, carries with a certain of the mystic quality I associated with the place. I can't look at the cover without the musty smell of old books assailing my nostrils.
I do not remember the story in detail, other than the fact that the protagonist was able to enter people's minds. The fantasy world inside the brain fascinated me (now it is a hackneyed Hollywood trope). I still remember a battle scene between a tiger and a dragon, conducted wholly within the mind.
I need to read this book again to appreciate the story fully.
November 2, 2020
Three and a half stars.
A good science fiction novel to add to the podium of great telepathy novels, along with "The Demolished Man" and "Dying inside".
A good science fiction novel to add to the podium of great telepathy novels, along with "The Demolished Man" and "Dying inside".
October 8, 2022
The British science-fiction author John Brunner is best known for writing quite a few stories that were basically cyberpunk avant la lettre. I can definitely see the inspiration here in his "Telepathist" published in 1965. The plot takes place in a future where the UN employs a corps of psychics as problem-solvers that are the only thing holding the corrupt and war-ridden world together. The storyline follows a deformed young man named Gerry Howson who is discovered to be the most powerful telepath ever recorded and goes on to undergo training in the UN's corps of psychics.
The psychic power research and the premise of disabled prodigies with immense psychic powers I can already imagine might have been an inspiration for certain parts in Katsuhiro Otomo's "Akira". The early chapters are also set in futuristic slums (where our hero grows up) that have a perfect neon-lit crime-ridden future noir atmosphere. Brunner nails that mood perfectly a couple decades before those images would be represented on film in quite that form. There is even among the characters a criminal who is referred to by the nickname "Snake", just like Kurt Russell's anti-hero in "Escape from New York"!
The plot later goes some odd places, with a good deal of it revolving around psychic duels taking place inside elaborate fantasy worlds constructed by the feuding telepaths. Not quite what I expected, but it gives a peek into how Brunner could have become a quite able author of swords-and-sandals heroic fantasy. The overall concept and universe I quite dig, with Brunner having put a surprising amount of thought into creating a "UN as world government" future that doesn't fall into the typical utopian or dystopian clichés. The plot on the other hand has a bunch of memorable and vivid scenes but is extremely episodic with not much of a central conflict going through, nor several conflicts that start out disparate but end up converging later on like William Gibson would become a master of in his Sprawl Trilogy. There is also a quite large cast of characters but their motivations and personalities remain very thinly drawn out, to the point that most of them I can remember only their names.
I very often think science-fiction novels tend to be too long as they draw out the plot for longer than there is substance to, or spend too much time on infodumping and exposition of things that readers could probably figure out on their own. "Telepathist" I actually think is too short, because the author tries to do too much in too little page space. Had the book been 50 or even 100 pages longer I wager the issues I complained about above could have been worked out.
The psychic power research and the premise of disabled prodigies with immense psychic powers I can already imagine might have been an inspiration for certain parts in Katsuhiro Otomo's "Akira". The early chapters are also set in futuristic slums (where our hero grows up) that have a perfect neon-lit crime-ridden future noir atmosphere. Brunner nails that mood perfectly a couple decades before those images would be represented on film in quite that form. There is even among the characters a criminal who is referred to by the nickname "Snake", just like Kurt Russell's anti-hero in "Escape from New York"!
The plot later goes some odd places, with a good deal of it revolving around psychic duels taking place inside elaborate fantasy worlds constructed by the feuding telepaths. Not quite what I expected, but it gives a peek into how Brunner could have become a quite able author of swords-and-sandals heroic fantasy. The overall concept and universe I quite dig, with Brunner having put a surprising amount of thought into creating a "UN as world government" future that doesn't fall into the typical utopian or dystopian clichés. The plot on the other hand has a bunch of memorable and vivid scenes but is extremely episodic with not much of a central conflict going through, nor several conflicts that start out disparate but end up converging later on like William Gibson would become a master of in his Sprawl Trilogy. There is also a quite large cast of characters but their motivations and personalities remain very thinly drawn out, to the point that most of them I can remember only their names.
I very often think science-fiction novels tend to be too long as they draw out the plot for longer than there is substance to, or spend too much time on infodumping and exposition of things that readers could probably figure out on their own. "Telepathist" I actually think is too short, because the author tries to do too much in too little page space. Had the book been 50 or even 100 pages longer I wager the issues I complained about above could have been worked out.
August 19, 2019
#shortreview for Instagram:
I finished reading the Telepathist this morning. It was a sad and rather brutal novel, about a man whose physical deformities enable him to develop powerful mental capabilities (telepathy, in this case). There's some dystopian-esque spy stuff going on in the background but the story is heavily character centric, with an unflinching examination of the ways in which society simultaneously exploits and abandons disabled individuals. Some of the language would likely be considered a trifle insensitive in modern standards but even disregarding the time period, Brunner has some wonderful and nuanced character portraits of people beaten down by poverty and circumstance, and the inherent danger of hope. Poor Gerald!
I finished reading the Telepathist this morning. It was a sad and rather brutal novel, about a man whose physical deformities enable him to develop powerful mental capabilities (telepathy, in this case). There's some dystopian-esque spy stuff going on in the background but the story is heavily character centric, with an unflinching examination of the ways in which society simultaneously exploits and abandons disabled individuals. Some of the language would likely be considered a trifle insensitive in modern standards but even disregarding the time period, Brunner has some wonderful and nuanced character portraits of people beaten down by poverty and circumstance, and the inherent danger of hope. Poor Gerald!
February 11, 2024
John Brunner got very offended when anyone called The Whole Man (AKA in Brunner’s England as The Telepathist) a fix-up novel, and yet everything I see written about starts with calling it that. If you don’t know that phrase it is when Science Fiction authors would collect short stories they wrote one at a time into novels later. The most famous novel that started this way is probably Foundation by ol’grabby Asimov. I think one of the best examples is City by Clifford Simak. And wait stop yourself before you say what about Dune? Yes, Dune was published in chunks, but Herbert didn’t intend for that. He wrote as one novel, I think in his mind the first three books were one greater Dune.
In the late ’50s, John Bunner wrote a whole novel (I know terrible pun) and published it in three parts because no one wanted the entire novel. The first appearance of the Molem was in 1958. The same year Philip K. Dick released Time Out of Joint and NASA became a thing. A long time ago, telepathy stories were pretty common in the genre. Now it wasn’t called Molem "City of the Tiger" in Science Fantasy, December 1958, the second part was called "The Whole Man," and the third “Curative Telepath" in a different magazine Fantastic Universe, exactly a year later December 1959.
According to statements at the time, Brunner seemed to imply the completed novel is different. Joe DeBolt in his introduction to the Happening Worlds of John Brunner (an academic study of Brunner published in the 70s “In the novel only about 4,000 words of the original 20,000 words of “City of the Tiger” were retained, and out of the 25,000 world “The Whole Man” just some 17,000 survive relatively unchanged. Brunner added an additional 45,000 words most of which were wholly original.”
No wonder the Fixup talk annoyed him. If you want to read the issue where City of the Tiger was first published and compare…
https://archive.org/details/Science_F...
The issue also has stories from Robert Silverberg and E.C. Tubb. Interesting.
Comparing the opening pages they are nothing alike with totally different set-ups. In a way, I feel like these stories are like an early draft that just happened to get published. I can see why Brunner considered them totally different works. The Whole Man is the story of Gerald Howson, who was born deformed physically but gifted with intense psychic powers. Before we get into the details of the novel it appears the gee-whiz motivation for this novel was two things. Brunner appeared to want to explore the notion of telepathy being used to cure mental illness and the idea of this powerful telepath living an internal life that resembled sword and sorcery fantasies.
While not as powerful as one of Brunner's masterpieces like Stand on Zanzibar or Shockwave Rider this novel edges close at times to the power of those novels. It has moments of great invention but the story doesn't have the kind of power of those classics. As Brunnet (get like a Dickhead) completionist, I had to read but the reason now is simple. This novel was nominated for a Hugo the same year the notorious second-worst Hugo Fritz Lieber's The Wanderer won the award despite being a shitshow. I recently The Planet Buyer by Cordwainer Smith and thought it a worthy winner of Liber's novel. Children of Dune is more worthy as well. So I started to wonder if I was Hugo voter at the time which would I pick. So I pulled The Whole Man off the shelf.
At this point, we need to judge the Brunner novel by itself.
"The "Crisis" had gestating as long as the child. It culminated a week or two ahead of him."
The first act of the novel is set in a dystopia that might be Britain, but the nature of the political situation is like a light switch across a dark room. Something you are blindly reaching for. I love this aspect of the opening act of the novel. Eventually, it appears that the characters are in some British colony that operates like South Africa of the time. In the second act, we get the name Ulan Bator, a fictional capital to the made-up county. Economies and the environment are in crisis and shortly after our main character is born the authorities knock down the door looking for a child who they know will have great powers. Brunner puts details off-camera and it is a fascinating choice. We get the sense there is a telepathy arms race. We get a sense of many things but little is confirmed. Gerald Pond the biological father died before the son was born deformed but telepathically strong just like dad. and that is why the soldiers knock on the door and take the boy. This was a pretty well-written scene when the cops came to get them. The moment Sarah Howson realizes they are here to take her son.
One aspect of the story is that Gerald Howson is disabled but has adventures in his mind and it can be confusing. When he describes being in a movie theater, is he really there? Or is he lying in bed remote projecting himself? He can make others believe he is there, and that makes him the kind of spy that Christopher Nolan would envision in Inception. He can enter the delusions of the mentally ill and cure them, but he can also find their secrets.
The novel hints at "The Crisis" but what we know of it might be colored by Gerald's own fantasies or projections. Consider this scene when Gerald is thinking about the movies he sees when he projects from his hospital bed to the theaters. "So now the movie theaters were full when there was a picture like this one playing - and there were lots like this one, and Howson had seen several. Absurd, spectacular, violent melodramatic, they always centered on terrorism or war prevention in some colorful corner of the world, and their heroes were the mysterious, half-understood agents of the UN who read minds- the honorable spies, the telepathists."
Some part of Gerald saw himself this way but instead, as a hero but what does he really do with the power at first? he influences a gangster named The Snake. As he grows stronger mentally the city falls apart around him. He knows aircraft are flying over and things are happening beyond the walls. I got the impression from a quick look at the short story that more details of the crisis were on screen in the story before.
In the second and third act, his powers grow and he learns to do better things with it. As his powers grow the thin walls of reality come down. This all makes for an unreliable narrator as stretches of the novel take place in these fantasies. This might seem revolutionary Sci-fi wise but keep in mind Brunner is playing with concepts Philip K. Dick used only a few years before in Eye in the Sky. Gerald has the experience of being Ho Sen a Chinese general in the perception of a mentally ill telepath in China in the third act. That transition comes out of nowhere and the dramatic shift pays off, but it almost lost me. This part of the book almost became Wuxia fantasy, and it is clear Brunner thought it was neat to drop in a sword-wielding fantasy during this story. Gerald first manipulated the fantasies now he uses them to heal.
"His only hope was to try and maintain the fiction that his guise was merely the effect of the creation of a schizoid secondary personality in the general run of the fantasy. He spat in the dust, rubbed his hands together, and twenty over to the dragon to draw its sword from its belly."
Yeah, swords, dragons, imperial ancient Chinese armies. Strangely, these things show up here, but that is the idea. Telepathy doesn't just read your thoughts but also your dreams and fantasies. For those who can't escape their fantasies, Howson becomes a healer by becoming part of the delusions.
This is good science fiction, but it is not top their Brunner. That said it is a thousand times better than the novel that beat it for the Hugo. I might put Cordwainer Smith's Planet Buyer ahead of it but I am sorry to say the big franchise sequel Children of Done might be the best in the category.
More importantly, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch the masterpiece by Philip K. Dick was released that year and not even nominated. I just re-read that (my fourth time) with the benefit of hindsight It was the best Science Fiction book but Phil was way ahead of the game at the time.
The Whole Man is a flawed work but it was quite good for the time. The biggest flaw is it doesn't reach the genius of the same author's other work.
In the late ’50s, John Bunner wrote a whole novel (I know terrible pun) and published it in three parts because no one wanted the entire novel. The first appearance of the Molem was in 1958. The same year Philip K. Dick released Time Out of Joint and NASA became a thing. A long time ago, telepathy stories were pretty common in the genre. Now it wasn’t called Molem "City of the Tiger" in Science Fantasy, December 1958, the second part was called "The Whole Man," and the third “Curative Telepath" in a different magazine Fantastic Universe, exactly a year later December 1959.
According to statements at the time, Brunner seemed to imply the completed novel is different. Joe DeBolt in his introduction to the Happening Worlds of John Brunner (an academic study of Brunner published in the 70s “In the novel only about 4,000 words of the original 20,000 words of “City of the Tiger” were retained, and out of the 25,000 world “The Whole Man” just some 17,000 survive relatively unchanged. Brunner added an additional 45,000 words most of which were wholly original.”
No wonder the Fixup talk annoyed him. If you want to read the issue where City of the Tiger was first published and compare…
https://archive.org/details/Science_F...
The issue also has stories from Robert Silverberg and E.C. Tubb. Interesting.
Comparing the opening pages they are nothing alike with totally different set-ups. In a way, I feel like these stories are like an early draft that just happened to get published. I can see why Brunner considered them totally different works. The Whole Man is the story of Gerald Howson, who was born deformed physically but gifted with intense psychic powers. Before we get into the details of the novel it appears the gee-whiz motivation for this novel was two things. Brunner appeared to want to explore the notion of telepathy being used to cure mental illness and the idea of this powerful telepath living an internal life that resembled sword and sorcery fantasies.
While not as powerful as one of Brunner's masterpieces like Stand on Zanzibar or Shockwave Rider this novel edges close at times to the power of those novels. It has moments of great invention but the story doesn't have the kind of power of those classics. As Brunnet (get like a Dickhead) completionist, I had to read but the reason now is simple. This novel was nominated for a Hugo the same year the notorious second-worst Hugo Fritz Lieber's The Wanderer won the award despite being a shitshow. I recently The Planet Buyer by Cordwainer Smith and thought it a worthy winner of Liber's novel. Children of Dune is more worthy as well. So I started to wonder if I was Hugo voter at the time which would I pick. So I pulled The Whole Man off the shelf.
At this point, we need to judge the Brunner novel by itself.
"The "Crisis" had gestating as long as the child. It culminated a week or two ahead of him."
The first act of the novel is set in a dystopia that might be Britain, but the nature of the political situation is like a light switch across a dark room. Something you are blindly reaching for. I love this aspect of the opening act of the novel. Eventually, it appears that the characters are in some British colony that operates like South Africa of the time. In the second act, we get the name Ulan Bator, a fictional capital to the made-up county. Economies and the environment are in crisis and shortly after our main character is born the authorities knock down the door looking for a child who they know will have great powers. Brunner puts details off-camera and it is a fascinating choice. We get the sense there is a telepathy arms race. We get a sense of many things but little is confirmed. Gerald Pond the biological father died before the son was born deformed but telepathically strong just like dad. and that is why the soldiers knock on the door and take the boy. This was a pretty well-written scene when the cops came to get them. The moment Sarah Howson realizes they are here to take her son.
One aspect of the story is that Gerald Howson is disabled but has adventures in his mind and it can be confusing. When he describes being in a movie theater, is he really there? Or is he lying in bed remote projecting himself? He can make others believe he is there, and that makes him the kind of spy that Christopher Nolan would envision in Inception. He can enter the delusions of the mentally ill and cure them, but he can also find their secrets.
The novel hints at "The Crisis" but what we know of it might be colored by Gerald's own fantasies or projections. Consider this scene when Gerald is thinking about the movies he sees when he projects from his hospital bed to the theaters. "So now the movie theaters were full when there was a picture like this one playing - and there were lots like this one, and Howson had seen several. Absurd, spectacular, violent melodramatic, they always centered on terrorism or war prevention in some colorful corner of the world, and their heroes were the mysterious, half-understood agents of the UN who read minds- the honorable spies, the telepathists."
Some part of Gerald saw himself this way but instead, as a hero but what does he really do with the power at first? he influences a gangster named The Snake. As he grows stronger mentally the city falls apart around him. He knows aircraft are flying over and things are happening beyond the walls. I got the impression from a quick look at the short story that more details of the crisis were on screen in the story before.
In the second and third act, his powers grow and he learns to do better things with it. As his powers grow the thin walls of reality come down. This all makes for an unreliable narrator as stretches of the novel take place in these fantasies. This might seem revolutionary Sci-fi wise but keep in mind Brunner is playing with concepts Philip K. Dick used only a few years before in Eye in the Sky. Gerald has the experience of being Ho Sen a Chinese general in the perception of a mentally ill telepath in China in the third act. That transition comes out of nowhere and the dramatic shift pays off, but it almost lost me. This part of the book almost became Wuxia fantasy, and it is clear Brunner thought it was neat to drop in a sword-wielding fantasy during this story. Gerald first manipulated the fantasies now he uses them to heal.
"His only hope was to try and maintain the fiction that his guise was merely the effect of the creation of a schizoid secondary personality in the general run of the fantasy. He spat in the dust, rubbed his hands together, and twenty over to the dragon to draw its sword from its belly."
Yeah, swords, dragons, imperial ancient Chinese armies. Strangely, these things show up here, but that is the idea. Telepathy doesn't just read your thoughts but also your dreams and fantasies. For those who can't escape their fantasies, Howson becomes a healer by becoming part of the delusions.
This is good science fiction, but it is not top their Brunner. That said it is a thousand times better than the novel that beat it for the Hugo. I might put Cordwainer Smith's Planet Buyer ahead of it but I am sorry to say the big franchise sequel Children of Done might be the best in the category.
More importantly, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch the masterpiece by Philip K. Dick was released that year and not even nominated. I just re-read that (my fourth time) with the benefit of hindsight It was the best Science Fiction book but Phil was way ahead of the game at the time.
The Whole Man is a flawed work but it was quite good for the time. The biggest flaw is it doesn't reach the genius of the same author's other work.
January 3, 2018
Storyline: 2/5
Characters: 3/5
Writing Style: 4/5
World: 3/5
Brunner starts this off with focus. The writing is vivid and tight, conveying an aura as much as a story. The picture of the world is closely guarded; grudging glimpses are permitted only sporadically and under close supervision. A grey fog of angst, deprivation, uncertainty pervades the telling - is the story. This was supposed to be a character-driven work, and there were some valid attempts to peer deeply into personal ambitions and fears of glory. The gloom, however, was just too omnipresent, and the character study plateaued before we'd gotten anywhere truly revealing. The latter quarter seemed to loosen up, and we were given less guarded looks at the world and its inhabitants, but this seemed incidental - perhaps a result of it being a fix-up novel. It reminded me of some of the somber-toned science fiction works of the 1950s
Characters: 3/5
Writing Style: 4/5
World: 3/5
Brunner starts this off with focus. The writing is vivid and tight, conveying an aura as much as a story. The picture of the world is closely guarded; grudging glimpses are permitted only sporadically and under close supervision. A grey fog of angst, deprivation, uncertainty pervades the telling - is the story. This was supposed to be a character-driven work, and there were some valid attempts to peer deeply into personal ambitions and fears of glory. The gloom, however, was just too omnipresent, and the character study plateaued before we'd gotten anywhere truly revealing. The latter quarter seemed to loosen up, and we were given less guarded looks at the world and its inhabitants, but this seemed incidental - perhaps a result of it being a fix-up novel. It reminded me of some of the somber-toned science fiction works of the 1950s
March 30, 2015
Akin to Sturgeon's More Than Human with its telepathic themes, and brimming with the seeds of Brunner's future masterpiece Zanzibar, The Whole Man promises much, but too straggly to deliver.
November 23, 2024
Hints of Brunner's world-building talent, but the story is a bit of a muddle.
March 14, 2016
At some places, this is too heavy and too introspective. Other sections are intense and gripping. The main issue with the novel is its inconsistency - I do remember it being a fix-up novel of sorts, which may account for some of the scattered quality.
Brunner's tossing Freud all around is a little too obnoxious for me. But I did enjoy the very telepath-and-society sort of relationship that is constantly explored throughout this novel.
I have a little reservation about this being four-stars because I all along had a nagging suspicion that Brunner's main inspiration for the concepts in this novel was simply autism.
For people who like heady, psychological novels, and also novels which dabble in sociology.
Brunner's tossing Freud all around is a little too obnoxious for me. But I did enjoy the very telepath-and-society sort of relationship that is constantly explored throughout this novel.
I have a little reservation about this being four-stars because I all along had a nagging suspicion that Brunner's main inspiration for the concepts in this novel was simply autism.
For people who like heady, psychological novels, and also novels which dabble in sociology.
March 13, 2020
7/10 en 2007.
Le pongo las cuatro estrellas para recompensar de las tres leídas suyas esta es la que más me gustó con diferencia (por encima de su más famosa Todos sobre Zanzíbar.
He de reconocer que las novelas sobre personajes con facultades psi me suelen resultar atractivas y así le pasó a esta novela de 1960 (por la época a los autores de CF -y al gobierno americano- les encantaba la posibilidad de desarrollar facultades paranormales. Por eso del espionaje, la guerra fría y tal y tal)
Le pongo las cuatro estrellas para recompensar de las tres leídas suyas esta es la que más me gustó con diferencia (por encima de su más famosa Todos sobre Zanzíbar.
He de reconocer que las novelas sobre personajes con facultades psi me suelen resultar atractivas y así le pasó a esta novela de 1960 (por la época a los autores de CF -y al gobierno americano- les encantaba la posibilidad de desarrollar facultades paranormales. Por eso del espionaje, la guerra fría y tal y tal)
February 22, 2013
review of
John Brunner's The Whole Man
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 22, 2012
John Brunner is growing on me.. like that mildew on the dragon in Choong's fantasy.. not like a disease but like a thorough level of detail.. This is the 3rd bk I've read by him. In the beginning there was The World Swappers ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23... ), wch I thought was pretty good but I wasn't exactly overwhelmed or anything; then there was Times Without Number ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63... ), wch I thought was considerably better. But, NOW, w/ The Whole Man, I feel like Brunner's really getting somewhere.
The whole structure of the bk, the nature of the plot, allows for the seamless interpolation of subplots that're dramatically different from the main plot but still germane to it. That's clever enuf in itself to be very pleasing to me. The main character, Gerald Howson is a projective telepathist, a telepath who can project into other people's minds who're non-telepathic. One of the things that such telepaths can do is so involve other people in their fantasies that they become catatonic. Hence the aforementioned interpolated subplots.
"Because he was who he was, he once had asked for - and they had given him - a private aircraft to travel anywhere in the world, thinking to escape the dismayed stares and the whispering of ordinary people. But because he was what he was, even the faint shock which the pilot betrayed on meeting him hurt, and hurt badly. He bore with it for a little; then he cut short the trip and never asked for the plane again." (p 87)
I feel ya. There're many subcultures in the world that fancy themselves 'open-minded' but only a very few true individualists. Most people are, point-blank, a drag.
""What has to be done is this," Howson said in a voice as shrill and hard as a scream. "Somebody has to follow him into fantasy. Somebody has to risk his own sanity to work out the rules by which his universe operates - to sort out from ten real personalities and God knows how many schizoid secondaries the ego of the telepathist; to make the fantasy so uninhabitable that from sheer disgust he withdraws the links between himself and the others and reverts to normal perception."" (p 102)
Alright, I just witnessed the movie Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer while I was in the midst of reading this Brunner. I like the idea of letting that influence the writing of this review so I'm going to go for it. I'd call Spitzer & Ralph Nader & myself "psychopathfinders" - people who use psychopathic amts of energy for productive purposes rather than the destructive ones that society tries to force us into thru stereotype imposition & such-like - channeling one's anger against the injustices that make one angry in the 1st place.
What brought Spitzer's career as a social reformer down was being caught fucking some whores. I don't care that much about where he sticks his dick, as long as it's consensual, but I do care that by spending thousands of dollars an hr on these high-priced moronic hookers that he was reinforcing the utterly ridiculous & totally greedy sense of self-worth that these normals have & thereby reinforcing the worst aspects of the society that he's hypothetically combatting. The completely unintrospective greed of these 'escorts' & their pimps & madams is part & parcel of the same greed as that of their Johns: the bankers, the politicians, the generally overpd people who're willing to rip anybody & everybody off w/o any scruples whatsoever. Who else cd AFFORD to pay $2,000 an hr for sex but someone who rips off other people for a million a day? & I seriously doubt that the sex is even as good as having sex w/ someone like me. SO,
"What has to be done is this," cONVENIENCE said in a voice deemed dissonant by the musically thoughtless. "Somebody has to drive a conceptual wedge into the fantasy world that mass media uses to keep the normals who won't rock the capitalist boat rich & all the geniuses poor. Somebody has to risk their own sanity to work out the rules by which that shitty universe operates - to sort out from ten real personalities and God knows how many schizoid secondaries the egos of the sheep; to reveal that the nature of the fantasy is far more uninhabitable than what they'd really be capable of if they'd develop their own potential instead of being slaves - to the point that from sheer disgust they withdraw the links between tehmselves and the others and revert to actual perception instead of mediated imbecilic conformity."
& Brunner goes there, somewhat, when he writes things like:
"First off, he'd missed this kind of people. Which was hardly to be wondered at. One of the first benefits of an improved standard of living, as he had already been superficially aware, is to postpone the age at which a person's opinions congeal for life. Someone forced by poverty to avoid spending on enlarging his horizons the energy and time needed simply for staying alive adapted the attitudes, ready-made, of his environment. This was why students formed the backbone of so many revolutionary movements, for instance." (p 150)
To wch I wd amend: Let's not forget the Arrested Development, the people who never even reach an introspective phase of life, the ones who accept all aspects of greed w/o ever once examining any concepts of the better social good. & let's not forget the Psychopathfinders, the ones who struggle against being forced by poverty or other oppressive circumstances, against all odds, as it were.
Brunner has an aspiring writer imagine: "What I'd like is a technique which would enable a pre-Columbian Amerind to understand a twentieth-century Chinese." (p 153) Indeed. & it's a virile demonstration of Brunner's development as a writer that HE can imagine & hope for such a thing.
& Brunner has an aspiring artist imagine a multi/inter-media form that wd've still been somewhat futuristic in 1964 when this novel was written insofar as what it's somewhat evocative of is psychedelic light shows. Of course, even such things had predecessors in, eg, the Vortex sound & light experiments conducted by Jordan Belson & Henry Jacobs beginning in 1957 at the Morrison Planetarium in California. & what Brunner has his character imagine is both naively underinformed about such things &.. perhaps.. a little beyond it:
"(Once, long before, he had seen a tattered print of Disney's Fantasia; he had enjoyed it, and had wished there had been more attempts to combine sound and vision in a similar way. Now he was finding out what the combination would be like on the highest level.)
[That's the naive & underinformed part, at least on the part of the character Howson if not on the writer's - "Fantasia" is crap, IMO. & is from 1940 - there were already MANY precursors to it of far greater originality & conceptual importance: Viking Eggeling's "Diagonale-Symphonie" (1924), Hans Richter's "Rhythmus 21", Walter Ruttman's "Lichtspiel Opus 1" (1920 or 1922), many films of Mary Ellen Bute's, etc, etc.. The interested reader is advised to check out The Visual Music Village ( http://visualmusic.ning.com/ ) or even my own modest "Brain Waves Goodbye" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g9Q-0... ).]
"Like a swimmer struggling in a torrential river, Howson sought wildly for solidity in this roaring stream of memory. Images presented themselves: a voice/velvet/a kitten's claws scratching/purple/ripe fruit - a ship's siren/fog/steel/yellowish-gray/cold/insecurity/sense of loss and emptiness - a common chord of C major struck on a piano/childhood/wood/black and white overlaid with bright gold/hate/something burning/tightness about the forehead/shame/stiffness in the wrists/liquidity/roundness..." (p 173)
& this is where his imagination becomes a bit more multi-sensorial:
"Rudi Allef's mind was almost as far from the ordinary as was Howson's own, but in a different direction. Somehow, Rudi's sense data cross-referenced interchangeably. Howson had experience of minds with limited audio-vision - those of people to whom musical sounds called up associated colors or pictures - but compared to what went on in Rudi's mind that was puerile." (p 173)
""My 'wet fireworks,' as my beloved wife will insist on calling them," he murmured. "Watch - this is my latest."
"He connected the cord to a socket beneath one of the larger tanks. A faint light came on; after a pause, it brightened, and a stream of opalescent bubbles began to work their way through the tank in a switchback formation. Shafts of green, yellow and blue shifted through the tank in an irregular series of of graceful loops; then a square form in bright red loomed up from a point till it almost filled the side of the tank nearest to the watchers. It vanished, and the graceful swerving curves continued." (p 179)
Lava Lamps, Dream Machines, Strobe Lights, Plasma Globes, Rain Forest Fountains, & Jacob's Ladders anyone?
In my review of Brunner's 1959 The World Swappers I reference his brief auto-biography in wch was written:
""I don't regard myself in any sense a quote creative writer unquote." &, then, in the next paragraph: ""Out of sympathy with: [..] the beat generation." Ha ha! Judging by this writing style: "a voice/velvet/a kitten's claws scratching/purple/ripe fruit - a ship's siren/fog/steel/yellowish-gray/cold/insecurity/sense of loss and emptiness", I'd say he's come around a bit. & while I criticized that I didn't really find the writing in that one very good, I'd say that it's much improved w/ this one.
""Hmmm!" Howson rubbed his chin. "But the difficulty one always runs up against in every attempt to integrate music and visual impressions is that the machinery is expensive, complicated and generally inadequate. What one needs is an instrument as simple and versatile as the piano, which combines the resources of a color-organ with those of an unlimited film library." (p 176)
Here we have shades of Scriabin, Varèse, &, yes, even myself. Scriabin conceived of the color-organ, & created some of my favorite piano music; Varèse postponed composing some pieces until the technology caught up w/ his imagination; & I've been experimenting w/ live sound combined w/ live projection for almost 40 yrs (witness my "Multiple Projections 1978 to 2009": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6smYCj... ) to an underwhelming lack of interest & acclaim.
This review might seem to have some spoilers but I've basically side-stepped the main plot to get at a few details that appeal to the (M)Usic geek in me:
"They had spent the week experimenting, improving and training; now the tank's speed of response was phenomenal, and Jay had improvised new, simpler controls to make the device as versatile and essentially as straightforward as a theremin. And Clara..." (p 182)
Clara being the telepathic go-between between Rudi (the composer) & the equipment (the instrument). Clara Rockmore, anyone?
John Brunner's The Whole Man
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 22, 2012
John Brunner is growing on me.. like that mildew on the dragon in Choong's fantasy.. not like a disease but like a thorough level of detail.. This is the 3rd bk I've read by him. In the beginning there was The World Swappers ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23... ), wch I thought was pretty good but I wasn't exactly overwhelmed or anything; then there was Times Without Number ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63... ), wch I thought was considerably better. But, NOW, w/ The Whole Man, I feel like Brunner's really getting somewhere.
The whole structure of the bk, the nature of the plot, allows for the seamless interpolation of subplots that're dramatically different from the main plot but still germane to it. That's clever enuf in itself to be very pleasing to me. The main character, Gerald Howson is a projective telepathist, a telepath who can project into other people's minds who're non-telepathic. One of the things that such telepaths can do is so involve other people in their fantasies that they become catatonic. Hence the aforementioned interpolated subplots.
"Because he was who he was, he once had asked for - and they had given him - a private aircraft to travel anywhere in the world, thinking to escape the dismayed stares and the whispering of ordinary people. But because he was what he was, even the faint shock which the pilot betrayed on meeting him hurt, and hurt badly. He bore with it for a little; then he cut short the trip and never asked for the plane again." (p 87)
I feel ya. There're many subcultures in the world that fancy themselves 'open-minded' but only a very few true individualists. Most people are, point-blank, a drag.
""What has to be done is this," Howson said in a voice as shrill and hard as a scream. "Somebody has to follow him into fantasy. Somebody has to risk his own sanity to work out the rules by which his universe operates - to sort out from ten real personalities and God knows how many schizoid secondaries the ego of the telepathist; to make the fantasy so uninhabitable that from sheer disgust he withdraws the links between himself and the others and reverts to normal perception."" (p 102)
Alright, I just witnessed the movie Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer while I was in the midst of reading this Brunner. I like the idea of letting that influence the writing of this review so I'm going to go for it. I'd call Spitzer & Ralph Nader & myself "psychopathfinders" - people who use psychopathic amts of energy for productive purposes rather than the destructive ones that society tries to force us into thru stereotype imposition & such-like - channeling one's anger against the injustices that make one angry in the 1st place.
What brought Spitzer's career as a social reformer down was being caught fucking some whores. I don't care that much about where he sticks his dick, as long as it's consensual, but I do care that by spending thousands of dollars an hr on these high-priced moronic hookers that he was reinforcing the utterly ridiculous & totally greedy sense of self-worth that these normals have & thereby reinforcing the worst aspects of the society that he's hypothetically combatting. The completely unintrospective greed of these 'escorts' & their pimps & madams is part & parcel of the same greed as that of their Johns: the bankers, the politicians, the generally overpd people who're willing to rip anybody & everybody off w/o any scruples whatsoever. Who else cd AFFORD to pay $2,000 an hr for sex but someone who rips off other people for a million a day? & I seriously doubt that the sex is even as good as having sex w/ someone like me. SO,
"What has to be done is this," cONVENIENCE said in a voice deemed dissonant by the musically thoughtless. "Somebody has to drive a conceptual wedge into the fantasy world that mass media uses to keep the normals who won't rock the capitalist boat rich & all the geniuses poor. Somebody has to risk their own sanity to work out the rules by which that shitty universe operates - to sort out from ten real personalities and God knows how many schizoid secondaries the egos of the sheep; to reveal that the nature of the fantasy is far more uninhabitable than what they'd really be capable of if they'd develop their own potential instead of being slaves - to the point that from sheer disgust they withdraw the links between tehmselves and the others and revert to actual perception instead of mediated imbecilic conformity."
& Brunner goes there, somewhat, when he writes things like:
"First off, he'd missed this kind of people. Which was hardly to be wondered at. One of the first benefits of an improved standard of living, as he had already been superficially aware, is to postpone the age at which a person's opinions congeal for life. Someone forced by poverty to avoid spending on enlarging his horizons the energy and time needed simply for staying alive adapted the attitudes, ready-made, of his environment. This was why students formed the backbone of so many revolutionary movements, for instance." (p 150)
To wch I wd amend: Let's not forget the Arrested Development, the people who never even reach an introspective phase of life, the ones who accept all aspects of greed w/o ever once examining any concepts of the better social good. & let's not forget the Psychopathfinders, the ones who struggle against being forced by poverty or other oppressive circumstances, against all odds, as it were.
Brunner has an aspiring writer imagine: "What I'd like is a technique which would enable a pre-Columbian Amerind to understand a twentieth-century Chinese." (p 153) Indeed. & it's a virile demonstration of Brunner's development as a writer that HE can imagine & hope for such a thing.
& Brunner has an aspiring artist imagine a multi/inter-media form that wd've still been somewhat futuristic in 1964 when this novel was written insofar as what it's somewhat evocative of is psychedelic light shows. Of course, even such things had predecessors in, eg, the Vortex sound & light experiments conducted by Jordan Belson & Henry Jacobs beginning in 1957 at the Morrison Planetarium in California. & what Brunner has his character imagine is both naively underinformed about such things &.. perhaps.. a little beyond it:
"(Once, long before, he had seen a tattered print of Disney's Fantasia; he had enjoyed it, and had wished there had been more attempts to combine sound and vision in a similar way. Now he was finding out what the combination would be like on the highest level.)
[That's the naive & underinformed part, at least on the part of the character Howson if not on the writer's - "Fantasia" is crap, IMO. & is from 1940 - there were already MANY precursors to it of far greater originality & conceptual importance: Viking Eggeling's "Diagonale-Symphonie" (1924), Hans Richter's "Rhythmus 21", Walter Ruttman's "Lichtspiel Opus 1" (1920 or 1922), many films of Mary Ellen Bute's, etc, etc.. The interested reader is advised to check out The Visual Music Village ( http://visualmusic.ning.com/ ) or even my own modest "Brain Waves Goodbye" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g9Q-0... ).]
"Like a swimmer struggling in a torrential river, Howson sought wildly for solidity in this roaring stream of memory. Images presented themselves: a voice/velvet/a kitten's claws scratching/purple/ripe fruit - a ship's siren/fog/steel/yellowish-gray/cold/insecurity/sense of loss and emptiness - a common chord of C major struck on a piano/childhood/wood/black and white overlaid with bright gold/hate/something burning/tightness about the forehead/shame/stiffness in the wrists/liquidity/roundness..." (p 173)
& this is where his imagination becomes a bit more multi-sensorial:
"Rudi Allef's mind was almost as far from the ordinary as was Howson's own, but in a different direction. Somehow, Rudi's sense data cross-referenced interchangeably. Howson had experience of minds with limited audio-vision - those of people to whom musical sounds called up associated colors or pictures - but compared to what went on in Rudi's mind that was puerile." (p 173)
""My 'wet fireworks,' as my beloved wife will insist on calling them," he murmured. "Watch - this is my latest."
"He connected the cord to a socket beneath one of the larger tanks. A faint light came on; after a pause, it brightened, and a stream of opalescent bubbles began to work their way through the tank in a switchback formation. Shafts of green, yellow and blue shifted through the tank in an irregular series of of graceful loops; then a square form in bright red loomed up from a point till it almost filled the side of the tank nearest to the watchers. It vanished, and the graceful swerving curves continued." (p 179)
Lava Lamps, Dream Machines, Strobe Lights, Plasma Globes, Rain Forest Fountains, & Jacob's Ladders anyone?
In my review of Brunner's 1959 The World Swappers I reference his brief auto-biography in wch was written:
""I don't regard myself in any sense a quote creative writer unquote." &, then, in the next paragraph: ""Out of sympathy with: [..] the beat generation." Ha ha! Judging by this writing style: "a voice/velvet/a kitten's claws scratching/purple/ripe fruit - a ship's siren/fog/steel/yellowish-gray/cold/insecurity/sense of loss and emptiness", I'd say he's come around a bit. & while I criticized that I didn't really find the writing in that one very good, I'd say that it's much improved w/ this one.
""Hmmm!" Howson rubbed his chin. "But the difficulty one always runs up against in every attempt to integrate music and visual impressions is that the machinery is expensive, complicated and generally inadequate. What one needs is an instrument as simple and versatile as the piano, which combines the resources of a color-organ with those of an unlimited film library." (p 176)
Here we have shades of Scriabin, Varèse, &, yes, even myself. Scriabin conceived of the color-organ, & created some of my favorite piano music; Varèse postponed composing some pieces until the technology caught up w/ his imagination; & I've been experimenting w/ live sound combined w/ live projection for almost 40 yrs (witness my "Multiple Projections 1978 to 2009": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6smYCj... ) to an underwhelming lack of interest & acclaim.
This review might seem to have some spoilers but I've basically side-stepped the main plot to get at a few details that appeal to the (M)Usic geek in me:
"They had spent the week experimenting, improving and training; now the tank's speed of response was phenomenal, and Jay had improvised new, simpler controls to make the device as versatile and essentially as straightforward as a theremin. And Clara..." (p 182)
Clara being the telepathic go-between between Rudi (the composer) & the equipment (the instrument). Clara Rockmore, anyone?
August 10, 2022
A sad, crippled man becomes one of the world's most powerful telepaths, but struggles with the limits of his body.
Telepathy isn't a topic that interests me terribly, but it's not a deterrent either. The best idea in this is a concept called catapathic groups, where a telepath will build an elaborate fantasy world and pull other people into it. If not broken up by another, stronger telepath, these people will all eventually die from dehydration and starvation.
This was the best of the three Brunners I've read thus far. Neither bluntly simplistic or overly florid, Brunner's prose has the right amount of lyrical fluidity to not be underwhelming or overbearing. But like many of the pumped-out books of its time, it could do with a little more time spent on characters and their relationships. This is one of three books that Brunner published in '64, a small amount compared to a disgusting seven in '63 and another seven in '65. I'd be happy to write seven books in my entire life.
Another thing I've enjoyed about Brunner is that he populates his worlds with people of all different races and cultural backgrounds, and he doesn't make a huge deal about it. Unusual in the decades where everyone usually got defaulted to white. Not to mention the inclusion of a lead with severe physical limitations.
3.5, rounded up.
Telepathy isn't a topic that interests me terribly, but it's not a deterrent either. The best idea in this is a concept called catapathic groups, where a telepath will build an elaborate fantasy world and pull other people into it. If not broken up by another, stronger telepath, these people will all eventually die from dehydration and starvation.
This was the best of the three Brunners I've read thus far. Neither bluntly simplistic or overly florid, Brunner's prose has the right amount of lyrical fluidity to not be underwhelming or overbearing. But like many of the pumped-out books of its time, it could do with a little more time spent on characters and their relationships. This is one of three books that Brunner published in '64, a small amount compared to a disgusting seven in '63 and another seven in '65. I'd be happy to write seven books in my entire life.
Another thing I've enjoyed about Brunner is that he populates his worlds with people of all different races and cultural backgrounds, and he doesn't make a huge deal about it. Unusual in the decades where everyone usually got defaulted to white. Not to mention the inclusion of a lead with severe physical limitations.
3.5, rounded up.
October 29, 2022
Read this in 1964.
Just finished second reading. Interesting experience to compare my 2022 experience to my 1964 experience. A fourth grader misses a lot of nuance simply do to lack of experience.
What experience am I missing now that could enrich my current experiences and reading?
Just finished second reading. Interesting experience to compare my 2022 experience to my 1964 experience. A fourth grader misses a lot of nuance simply do to lack of experience.
What experience am I missing now that could enrich my current experiences and reading?
November 13, 2024
As is often the case with John Brunner, a mixed bag of brilliance and bizarre nonsense.
April 1, 2019
Brunner has always been one of those British authors who has been a bit Marmite for me.
There have been highbrow and detailed dystopian futures (Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up), predictive futures (the internet, computer viruses in 'The Shockwave Rider') and considerable other work of space opera and poorly received works like 'Children of the Tunder'.
'The Telepathist' came before the magnum opus of 'Zanzibar' and 'Sheep' and feels like an author trying to make his way with something new.
The protagonist (Gerry) is deeply physically flawed from the outset. Disadvantaged by this disability and his background in the unspecified crisis of a decayed Britain, he muddles his way through the world before a new crisis in early adulthood awakens his latent telepathic abilities.
Always destined to be an outsider, he nonetheless carves a worthy niche in his new world, before returning to his home town and a re-connection with those who made him.
Brunner's portrayal of Gerry is, I think of its' time - almost pitying, but there's no real malice in it and there's no real feeling that Brunner is properly inside Gerry's head. This is a shame as Gerry's meant to know what's inside other people's heads, so it would be good to know!
One of the interesting things about reading this from more than 50 years in the future, is that Brunner has managed to keep technology almost completely absent from his depictions of ordinary life. With the exception of a few phone calls, nothing technological really intrudes into the workings of the characters - this in itself is quite an achievement.
I would like to have enjoyed this a bit more, but the characters don't have depth and it all ends just too pat for me. Nonetheless, it doesn't feel tropey, probably because there weren't that many Psi characters around at that time, and it's good to see Brunner exploring these ideas, feeling his way without 50 years of convention to shape it - in fact, he was shaping some of the conventions when this was written and, if nothing else, the book is worth reading for that alone.
There have been highbrow and detailed dystopian futures (Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up), predictive futures (the internet, computer viruses in 'The Shockwave Rider') and considerable other work of space opera and poorly received works like 'Children of the Tunder'.
'The Telepathist' came before the magnum opus of 'Zanzibar' and 'Sheep' and feels like an author trying to make his way with something new.
The protagonist (Gerry) is deeply physically flawed from the outset. Disadvantaged by this disability and his background in the unspecified crisis of a decayed Britain, he muddles his way through the world before a new crisis in early adulthood awakens his latent telepathic abilities.
Always destined to be an outsider, he nonetheless carves a worthy niche in his new world, before returning to his home town and a re-connection with those who made him.
Brunner's portrayal of Gerry is, I think of its' time - almost pitying, but there's no real malice in it and there's no real feeling that Brunner is properly inside Gerry's head. This is a shame as Gerry's meant to know what's inside other people's heads, so it would be good to know!
One of the interesting things about reading this from more than 50 years in the future, is that Brunner has managed to keep technology almost completely absent from his depictions of ordinary life. With the exception of a few phone calls, nothing technological really intrudes into the workings of the characters - this in itself is quite an achievement.
I would like to have enjoyed this a bit more, but the characters don't have depth and it all ends just too pat for me. Nonetheless, it doesn't feel tropey, probably because there weren't that many Psi characters around at that time, and it's good to see Brunner exploring these ideas, feeling his way without 50 years of convention to shape it - in fact, he was shaping some of the conventions when this was written and, if nothing else, the book is worth reading for that alone.
August 5, 2016
Mondi onirici
Gerald è un bambino con deformità fisiche presenti sin dalla nascita che condizionano la sua adolescenza, nelle relazioni con gli altri e nel concetto di autostima. Quasi per gioco, intorno ai 17 anni, scopre di avere capacità telepatiche, e subito cerca di sfruttarle per ottenere quel rispetto che, per colpa del suo aspetto, gli è sempre stato negato ma ha sempre desiderato. Con l'aiuto di altri telepati, cercherà di crescere per diventare non solo il miglior tra loro, ma anche e soprattutto l'uomo che ha sempre (semplicemente) voluto essere.
Un testo scorrevole e dinamico nella sua semplicità, che nasconde molte idee accattivanti e che per fortuna Brunner non ha paura di lasciar rotolare sul tavolo, sintomo di una mente creativa (l'autore fa anche una breve 'svolta' verso territori fantasy). Una su tutte, il gruppo di catapatici, ossia telepati creatori di mondi onirici in cui trascinare le fantasie e i sogni di altri esseri umani fino allo stato di catalessi. E a Gerald — che non è certo il classico eroe — spetterà il compito di penetrare questi mondi, mascherando la propria presenza nel tentativo di salvare vite umane - un po' come "Inception" di Nolan farà 45 anni dopo questo romanzo. Ma non solo, perché ad un certo punto Gerald, volutamente, si allontanerà da tutto ciò, alla ricerca di quella dimensione umana tenuta lontana dalle sue deformità prima, e dalle sue straordinarie capacità telepatiche dopo.
Una buona lettura.
Gerald è un bambino con deformità fisiche presenti sin dalla nascita che condizionano la sua adolescenza, nelle relazioni con gli altri e nel concetto di autostima. Quasi per gioco, intorno ai 17 anni, scopre di avere capacità telepatiche, e subito cerca di sfruttarle per ottenere quel rispetto che, per colpa del suo aspetto, gli è sempre stato negato ma ha sempre desiderato. Con l'aiuto di altri telepati, cercherà di crescere per diventare non solo il miglior tra loro, ma anche e soprattutto l'uomo che ha sempre (semplicemente) voluto essere.
Un testo scorrevole e dinamico nella sua semplicità, che nasconde molte idee accattivanti e che per fortuna Brunner non ha paura di lasciar rotolare sul tavolo, sintomo di una mente creativa (l'autore fa anche una breve 'svolta' verso territori fantasy). Una su tutte, il gruppo di catapatici, ossia telepati creatori di mondi onirici in cui trascinare le fantasie e i sogni di altri esseri umani fino allo stato di catalessi. E a Gerald — che non è certo il classico eroe — spetterà il compito di penetrare questi mondi, mascherando la propria presenza nel tentativo di salvare vite umane - un po' come "Inception" di Nolan farà 45 anni dopo questo romanzo. Ma non solo, perché ad un certo punto Gerald, volutamente, si allontanerà da tutto ciò, alla ricerca di quella dimensione umana tenuta lontana dalle sue deformità prima, e dalle sue straordinarie capacità telepatiche dopo.
Una buona lettura.
July 15, 2011
Not one of Brunner's best, partly because it hasn't aged as well as novels like The Sheep Look Up and Stand on Zanzibar.
Telepathist explores one man's life as he discovers his latent telepathic power, in a future depression after some sort of terrorist event. Hawson, disabled from birth, has one of the strongest powers found, but can he develop it for good?
Brunner's characterisation and way of looking at telepathy is more interesting than many novels, but I just wasn't taken by this as much as I have been by many of his other books.
Telepathist explores one man's life as he discovers his latent telepathic power, in a future depression after some sort of terrorist event. Hawson, disabled from birth, has one of the strongest powers found, but can he develop it for good?
Brunner's characterisation and way of looking at telepathy is more interesting than many novels, but I just wasn't taken by this as much as I have been by many of his other books.
January 30, 2017
I usually shy away from telepathy in sci-fi as, well, the notion just seems too fantastic. This book is the first I've read that offers an explanation (of sorts) of why some people are telepathic, but also looks at the social consequences of all involved (like good sci-fi is supposed to). Some of it is rather dated and the ending is rather abrupt but the book remains a refreshing take on the subject.
January 29, 2015
A solid effort from Brunner, a uniformly intelligent and engaging story of a deformed telepath. As depressing some of the material is, the book has an unusually positive (if melancholy) vibe to it. Quick, fine read.
June 17, 2016
A Good Read. My only quibble It was originally three short stories. Although it was supposedly greatly revised, it still seems like three stories strung together. But don't let that get in the way of enjoying it.
January 11, 2012
Grade B+.
September 16, 2012
Loved the book!!!
February 2, 2014
Excellent. But I think I read this as another story somewhere before.
December 4, 2016
A pulpier, more straightforward read than Stand on Zanzibar. Not bad, but not as rewarding, especially on rereading.
August 14, 2019
A book with incredible ideas born of an amazing imagination. John Brunner's mind is so big on the inside, it's like a cavernous Hall full of different displays of all different sorts from all different fields. Here he has taken on writing about telepaths, but not the ordinary ideas about telepathy, where the telepath is horrified with the thoughts of the humans around. This story takes the subject of telepathy further steps.
I wonder at the thinking processes of our pets when I read this paragraph about a deaf/mute girl that the protagonist befriended:
P.44
"At first he could make no sense of The impressions he took from her mind, because she had never developed verbal thinking; she used kinesthetic and visual data in huge intermingled blocks, like a sour porridge with stones in it. While he struggled to achieve more than the first broad halting concepts of reassurance, she sat gazing at him and weeping silently released from loneliness after intolerable years, too overcome to question the mode of their communication."
Here's how Brunner explained an organ of telepathy in the brain:
P.59
" 'Now, here's a typical average brain - like mine or Christine's. The red arrow points to a group of cells called the organ of Funck. It's so small it's very existence was overlooked until the first telepathists were discovered. In my brain for instance, it consists of about 100 cells, not much different from their neighbors. You'll note its location.'
Again he extracted a fresh item from the folder. This one was a large x-ray transparency, the whitish outline of a skull with jaw and neck vertebrae.
'You'll remember we took x-rays of your head, Gerry, after giving you a radio - opaque substance which selectively...ah..."stains" cells in the organ of Funck. Take a look at the result.
'That whitish mass at the base of the brain,' Singh said. 'It's your organ of Funck. It's the largest, by almost 20%, that I've ever seen. Potentially you have the most powerful telepathic faculty in the world, because that's the organ which resonates with impulses in other nervous systems. You are capable of coping with any amount of information that staggers the mind.' "
I wonder at the thinking processes of our pets when I read this paragraph about a deaf/mute girl that the protagonist befriended:
P.44
"At first he could make no sense of The impressions he took from her mind, because she had never developed verbal thinking; she used kinesthetic and visual data in huge intermingled blocks, like a sour porridge with stones in it. While he struggled to achieve more than the first broad halting concepts of reassurance, she sat gazing at him and weeping silently released from loneliness after intolerable years, too overcome to question the mode of their communication."
Here's how Brunner explained an organ of telepathy in the brain:
P.59
" 'Now, here's a typical average brain - like mine or Christine's. The red arrow points to a group of cells called the organ of Funck. It's so small it's very existence was overlooked until the first telepathists were discovered. In my brain for instance, it consists of about 100 cells, not much different from their neighbors. You'll note its location.'
Again he extracted a fresh item from the folder. This one was a large x-ray transparency, the whitish outline of a skull with jaw and neck vertebrae.
'You'll remember we took x-rays of your head, Gerry, after giving you a radio - opaque substance which selectively...ah..."stains" cells in the organ of Funck. Take a look at the result.
'That whitish mass at the base of the brain,' Singh said. 'It's your organ of Funck. It's the largest, by almost 20%, that I've ever seen. Potentially you have the most powerful telepathic faculty in the world, because that's the organ which resonates with impulses in other nervous systems. You are capable of coping with any amount of information that staggers the mind.' "
February 26, 2024
După ce Alfred Bester, în 1953, cu romanul “Omul demolat”, a demolat “piața” lucrărilor SF ce au ca temă telepatia, aproape tot ceea ce s-a scris după aceea a intrat la capitolul variațiuni pe același subiect, astfel încât este destul de dificil să mai găsești ceva cu adevărat inovator, indiferent cât ai sta să cotrobăi prin bibliotecă.
Așa cum de fapt mă așteptam, nici “Telepatul” lui John Brunner nu vine cu nimic nou, dar lucrul acesta a fost asumat de către scriitor, pentru că toate ideile interesante pe care le-am descoperit aici ori sunt conexe, ori pur și simplu nu au legătură cu telepatia. Unul dintre exemplele ce pot fi date ca argument este reprezentat de capitolul în care Gerald Howson, personajul central al narațiunii, încearcă să înțeleagă (împreună cu cititorul), o nouă formă de artă ce implică o îmbinare extrem de complicată a senzațiilor și a sentimentelor, un melanj uluitor de muzică, stări extreme, simțuri, culori și mirosuri exotice.
Dar dincolo de tema “oficială” a romanului, Brunner încearcă și el, asemenea unor generații întregi de scriitori, să convingă cititorul că se poate găsi o formă prin care societatea noastră umană îmbâcsită de prejudecăți are capacitatea de a ajunge la acel moment în care îi va putea considera drept egali pe toți cei care sunt diferiți, indiferent care ar fi natura acestor diferențe.
Din păcate însă, doar literatura de anticipație ne poate oferi deocamdată o astfel de lume tolerantă, în care discriminarea reprezintă doar o pagină de istorie întunecată. Eu nu sunt foarte convins că individul de rând, cel pe care nu-l deranjează cu nimic mediocritatea în care se bălăcește, va fi în stare să le acorde o șansă onestă celor străluciți sau celor ce nu pot ține pasul, atâta vreme cât nu este constrâns de diverse legi sau reguli. Dar tocmai de aceea citesc SF, măcar pentru a mă amăgi că acest lucru este posibil.
Nota acordată romanului : 8,7
http://www.bucurestifm.ro/2024/02/26/...
Așa cum de fapt mă așteptam, nici “Telepatul” lui John Brunner nu vine cu nimic nou, dar lucrul acesta a fost asumat de către scriitor, pentru că toate ideile interesante pe care le-am descoperit aici ori sunt conexe, ori pur și simplu nu au legătură cu telepatia. Unul dintre exemplele ce pot fi date ca argument este reprezentat de capitolul în care Gerald Howson, personajul central al narațiunii, încearcă să înțeleagă (împreună cu cititorul), o nouă formă de artă ce implică o îmbinare extrem de complicată a senzațiilor și a sentimentelor, un melanj uluitor de muzică, stări extreme, simțuri, culori și mirosuri exotice.
Dar dincolo de tema “oficială” a romanului, Brunner încearcă și el, asemenea unor generații întregi de scriitori, să convingă cititorul că se poate găsi o formă prin care societatea noastră umană îmbâcsită de prejudecăți are capacitatea de a ajunge la acel moment în care îi va putea considera drept egali pe toți cei care sunt diferiți, indiferent care ar fi natura acestor diferențe.
Din păcate însă, doar literatura de anticipație ne poate oferi deocamdată o astfel de lume tolerantă, în care discriminarea reprezintă doar o pagină de istorie întunecată. Eu nu sunt foarte convins că individul de rând, cel pe care nu-l deranjează cu nimic mediocritatea în care se bălăcește, va fi în stare să le acorde o șansă onestă celor străluciți sau celor ce nu pot ține pasul, atâta vreme cât nu este constrâns de diverse legi sau reguli. Dar tocmai de aceea citesc SF, măcar pentru a mă amăgi că acest lucru este posibil.
Nota acordată romanului : 8,7
http://www.bucurestifm.ro/2024/02/26/...
July 10, 2025
Gerald has had a hard life. He was born in a war zone. His mother was involved with a minor terrorist and got pregnant to force him to marry her. He laughed her off and got himself dead and Gerald was born with multiple defects; one leg shorter than the other, a hunched back, hemophilia, and destined never to be more than five feet tall. His mother had no interest in him and neither did anyone else. By the time he was 15 he was on his own. At 20 he stumbled across some useful information and decided to make himself known to a local gang lord. This alerted the police to his presence, and he had to run.
Then the whole story changes. Turns out Gerald is the most powerful telepathist ever known. He is snatched up by the World Telepathist Organization and trained to use his powers for good. Which he does, but the whole while he is secretly afraid that he may descend into madness.
The first third of this book is a story of a young man trying to overcome disadvantages and falling in with the wrong crowd. Brunner is such a good writer that I would have been satisfied if the entire book continued in this vein. But it moves suddenly into the world of telepathy and Gerald's attempts to adapt to his newfound power. Still good and very descriptive. All in all, a good book about a young man's voyage of self-discovery.
Then the whole story changes. Turns out Gerald is the most powerful telepathist ever known. He is snatched up by the World Telepathist Organization and trained to use his powers for good. Which he does, but the whole while he is secretly afraid that he may descend into madness.
The first third of this book is a story of a young man trying to overcome disadvantages and falling in with the wrong crowd. Brunner is such a good writer that I would have been satisfied if the entire book continued in this vein. But it moves suddenly into the world of telepathy and Gerald's attempts to adapt to his newfound power. Still good and very descriptive. All in all, a good book about a young man's voyage of self-discovery.
July 18, 2025
Representation yes, but probably not in this way?!
At first I was curious if the story about the physically disabled boy might be a story that centers experiences of people that are not able-bodied, decades before the conversations we have today about representation and perspectives of marginalised people.
But my feelings in this specific book are mixed.
While yes, I am impressed that a male author in the 60's even tries this perspective, I don't always feel comfortable with how Gerald Howson was described in this novel. There was quite some pity, exaggerated descriptions of inabilities and challenges and over all a subtle feeling of: yeah this story was written by a able-bodied person.
For the time? We probably have to thank John Brunner for not choosing the millionth male sci fi allrounder. For today? We should read this with sensitivity.
I like the ending, which puts the title of the book to question: when is someone "a whole human"?
And yes, inclusion, friendship, love and trust are important to all of us, however our bodies function, but all of us, always, and everywhere are whole humans. It's just the system that lacks to give all of us the same love we deserve.
I very much enjoyed the concept of a telepath who gets mentally ill. There is a lot to it.
Good book, I can recommend.
At first I was curious if the story about the physically disabled boy might be a story that centers experiences of people that are not able-bodied, decades before the conversations we have today about representation and perspectives of marginalised people.
But my feelings in this specific book are mixed.
While yes, I am impressed that a male author in the 60's even tries this perspective, I don't always feel comfortable with how Gerald Howson was described in this novel. There was quite some pity, exaggerated descriptions of inabilities and challenges and over all a subtle feeling of: yeah this story was written by a able-bodied person.
For the time? We probably have to thank John Brunner for not choosing the millionth male sci fi allrounder. For today? We should read this with sensitivity.
I like the ending, which puts the title of the book to question: when is someone "a whole human"?
And yes, inclusion, friendship, love and trust are important to all of us, however our bodies function, but all of us, always, and everywhere are whole humans. It's just the system that lacks to give all of us the same love we deserve.
I very much enjoyed the concept of a telepath who gets mentally ill. There is a lot to it.
Good book, I can recommend.
October 27, 2022
I enjoyed this old (1964) John Brunner book. His books are always intelligent, with a sociology and psychology slant. Unlike some of his others, this one is not a dystopia. It involves an unwanted malformed and disabled child, Gerry Howson, who grows up with an off-the-charts talent as a telepathist. He can project his thoughts as well as perceive the thoughts of others. He has a tough life until he is "overheard" and discovered by the World Health Organization. He resists them at first, but fortunately for him, the W.H.O. will not be denied. They have developed a training program for telepathists because they are incredibly valuable as diplomatic peacekeepers, communicators with astronauts off earth, and psychiatrists--and only about 100 of them who have been found and trained before their natural talents could destroy them and those around them, which is virtually inevitable if they aren't properly trained. As Gerry Howson is won over and begins to handle extremely challenging psychiatric cases for the W.H.O., Brunner takes us inside his mind as it goes inside the minds of others to heal them. Although his challenging physical disabilities resist cure, Gerry begins to value his own life more because of the good he can do for others.
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