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The Productions of Time
1st Penguin 1970 edition paperback, vg++ In stock shipped from our UK warehouse
159 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1966
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163 people want to read
About the author
John Brunner
572 books480 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 - 15 of 15 reviews
August 8, 2025
Der bekannte Schauspieler Murray kommt aus einer Alkoholentzugskur und ist ziemlich am Ende. Trotzdem kriegt er eine Rolle in einem neuen Theaterstück, bei einem aufsehenerregenden Regisseur. Die Truppe trifft sich in einem abgelegenen Haus, um das Stück zu entwickeln. Murray stellt fest, dass jemand versucht, ihn wieder zum Alkoholkonsum zu bringen. Die anderen Künstler sind ebenfalls "beschädigt". Einer ist heroinsüchtig, der andere steht auf kleine Jungs usw. Und dann findet Murray zufällig eine seltsame Drahtvorrichtung in seinem Bett.
Vielschreiber Brunner hielt hier seine oft überschäumende Phantasie im Zaum. Er hat einen recht stringenten SF-Thriller geschrieben, der eine ganze Weile recht glaubwürdig wirkt und für mich ganz gut funktioniert hat. Ausserdem ist er recht flüssig zu lesen. Man ist gespannt, was hinter der ganzen Sache stehen mag.
Tja, leider fand ich die Auflösung und den ganzen Schluss dann alles andere als überzeugend (was mich aber ehrlich gesagt nicht wirklich überrascht hat) . Trotzdem war es für mich einer der besseren der vielen Romane, die Brunner geschrieben hat.
Ach ja: der deutsche Titel ist halb gelogen
Vielschreiber Brunner hielt hier seine oft überschäumende Phantasie im Zaum. Er hat einen recht stringenten SF-Thriller geschrieben, der eine ganze Weile recht glaubwürdig wirkt und für mich ganz gut funktioniert hat. Ausserdem ist er recht flüssig zu lesen. Man ist gespannt, was hinter der ganzen Sache stehen mag.
Tja, leider fand ich die Auflösung und den ganzen Schluss dann alles andere als überzeugend (was mich aber ehrlich gesagt nicht wirklich überrascht hat) . Trotzdem war es für mich einer der besseren der vielen Romane, die Brunner geschrieben hat.
Ach ja: der deutsche Titel ist halb gelogen
Read
May 24, 2015I have no idea why the summary for this book is in French, but it certainly tells us how well-regarded and important this book is in John Brunner's oeuvre: not very.
I picked this 1977 Daw paperback at a booksale where someone had clearly decided to get rid of all of their Brunner. I grabbed the whole collection, 25 cents a pop. And this 1966 book, years later, is the first that I am reading of that haul. And...
Look, John Brunner wrote one of the most amazing books I've read, Stand on Zanzibar, which is trenchant and beautiful and sharp and still feels timely. And that might be all I've ever read of him. So this book certainly is gonna pale by comparison. It's a quick read at under 200 pages, but it feels stuck in its time, and maybe a little too long at that.
It follows a washed-up alcoholic actor who, post-wring out, gets a chance to work with this avant-garde writer who--get this--writes all of his plays through improvisation and collaboration with the actors. So this group of has-been and never-were actors and techs goes out to a defunct country club, start improvising--and start noticing some weird things, like this wire pattern in their beds and a tape recorder with no sound hidden in the bedframe. Also, each of these people is being continually supplied with their worst vice: dirty books, heroin, alcohol, a young ingenue, etc. (Though I'll have more to say on that in a moment.)
Long story short: our alcoholic actor won't ever go back to that hell (and interesting plot point, given Brunner's own problems with alcohol), so he resists and eventually unmasks the conspiracy against them all, which is made up of time travelers going back in time to bootleg primitive experiences to sell to future degenerates. Now, he unmasks this conspiracy by accidentally setting fire to the hotel and capturing one of the time travelers, so his heroism seems almost accidental. And the book ends rather clunkily, with two almost identical retellings of the time traveler/experience bootlegger story.
Which points to one problem here: maybe in 1966, this would seem new and exciting--the sort of thing you might have to explain twice. But it's certainly not now and comes off as a little silly. (Honestly, I don't think it would've been all that revolutionary even in 1966.) On top of that, one of the actresses is a lesbian and her big vice is lesbianism, and oh yes, did we mention she's a lesbian? That whole plot point is interesting historically: that lesbianism is on the same level as heroin-addiction and alcoholism. But, oh boy, does that not age well.
Still, a subpar book from Brunner is still interesting, with its themes of control and authority/authorship. But I'd still give this a pass.
I picked this 1977 Daw paperback at a booksale where someone had clearly decided to get rid of all of their Brunner. I grabbed the whole collection, 25 cents a pop. And this 1966 book, years later, is the first that I am reading of that haul. And...
Look, John Brunner wrote one of the most amazing books I've read, Stand on Zanzibar, which is trenchant and beautiful and sharp and still feels timely. And that might be all I've ever read of him. So this book certainly is gonna pale by comparison. It's a quick read at under 200 pages, but it feels stuck in its time, and maybe a little too long at that.
It follows a washed-up alcoholic actor who, post-wring out, gets a chance to work with this avant-garde writer who--get this--writes all of his plays through improvisation and collaboration with the actors. So this group of has-been and never-were actors and techs goes out to a defunct country club, start improvising--and start noticing some weird things, like this wire pattern in their beds and a tape recorder with no sound hidden in the bedframe. Also, each of these people is being continually supplied with their worst vice: dirty books, heroin, alcohol, a young ingenue, etc. (Though I'll have more to say on that in a moment.)
Long story short: our alcoholic actor won't ever go back to that hell (and interesting plot point, given Brunner's own problems with alcohol), so he resists and eventually unmasks the conspiracy against them all, which is made up of time travelers going back in time to bootleg primitive experiences to sell to future degenerates. Now, he unmasks this conspiracy by accidentally setting fire to the hotel and capturing one of the time travelers, so his heroism seems almost accidental. And the book ends rather clunkily, with two almost identical retellings of the time traveler/experience bootlegger story.
Which points to one problem here: maybe in 1966, this would seem new and exciting--the sort of thing you might have to explain twice. But it's certainly not now and comes off as a little silly. (Honestly, I don't think it would've been all that revolutionary even in 1966.) On top of that, one of the actresses is a lesbian and her big vice is lesbianism, and oh yes, did we mention she's a lesbian? That whole plot point is interesting historically: that lesbianism is on the same level as heroin-addiction and alcoholism. But, oh boy, does that not age well.
Still, a subpar book from Brunner is still interesting, with its themes of control and authority/authorship. But I'd still give this a pass.
March 1, 2018
aggiornamento vecchio libro letto chissà quando
July 13, 2008
Creepy Sci-fi. Set outside London on a beautiful country estate, possibly bought from a wealthy private club, a playwright and director begin to guide a group of misfit actors into writing their own parts in an avante garde play. The play was produced in Argentina and Paris and was wildly successful, except some of the actors went crazy. Brunner raises your paranoia with a subtle hand - the servants don't seem to make a sound when they walk across the gravel driveway, and each actor seems to have a serious flaw that would prevent any other director from hiring them. The main character is a recovering alcoholic and this is the only job he can get, but he's just too nosey and it gets him in trouble. Brunner is a master of deep character analysis and twisted plots. Unexpected and brilliant.
March 12, 2021
Een degelijke SF roman van John Brunner. Al haal je dat er niet meteen uit, het begint als een detective of horror roman over een ex-alcoholverslaafde acteur die nergens meer aan de bak komt, een rol aangeboden krijgt in een modern theaterstuk van een geniale maar ietwat excentrieke regisseur. Het blijkt al snel dat er meer gaande is als het lijkt alsof men de protagonist op subtiele en vasthoudende manier weer aan de alcohol probeert te krijgen, ondertussen lopen de spanningen met de andere acteurs al snel hoog op.
John Brunner schrijft vlot, maar wel voorspelbaar. ik had nooit het gevoel dat ik verrast werd door het verhaal. De spanning loopt ook nooit zo hoog op dat je de neiging krijgt vooruit te bladeren. Het is wel verfrissend dat het verhaal spannend blijft zonder een overvloed aan lijken. Het enige overlijden komt eigenlijk als een soort anticlimax op een moment dat je het al niet meer verwacht. De science fiction elementen blijven bescheiden op de achtergrond. En dat maakt dat dit geen sense-of-wonder ervaring is. Niet dat waarvoor ik normaal naar een SF boek grijp in ieder geval.
Misschien was dit boek in 1967 wel een beetje gewaagd, in 2021 zit het bomvol achterhaalde ideeën en een plot dat vele keren eerder en ook later beter uitgewerkt is. De hoofdpersoon is agressief en stoer op een wijze die je nog veel in de avonturen SF-romans van de jaren 40 en 50 van de vorige eeuw tegenkomt en tegenwoordig een merkwaardig vertekend beeld van een moderne man oplevert.
Wat maakt dit boek leuk? Het is net een aflevering van een engelse crime serie. Degelijk, goed uitgevoerd en totaal niet origineel, heerlijk vermaak voor een stil avondje.
John Brunner schrijft vlot, maar wel voorspelbaar. ik had nooit het gevoel dat ik verrast werd door het verhaal. De spanning loopt ook nooit zo hoog op dat je de neiging krijgt vooruit te bladeren. Het is wel verfrissend dat het verhaal spannend blijft zonder een overvloed aan lijken. Het enige overlijden komt eigenlijk als een soort anticlimax op een moment dat je het al niet meer verwacht. De science fiction elementen blijven bescheiden op de achtergrond. En dat maakt dat dit geen sense-of-wonder ervaring is. Niet dat waarvoor ik normaal naar een SF boek grijp in ieder geval.
Misschien was dit boek in 1967 wel een beetje gewaagd, in 2021 zit het bomvol achterhaalde ideeën en een plot dat vele keren eerder en ook later beter uitgewerkt is. De hoofdpersoon is agressief en stoer op een wijze die je nog veel in de avonturen SF-romans van de jaren 40 en 50 van de vorige eeuw tegenkomt en tegenwoordig een merkwaardig vertekend beeld van een moderne man oplevert.
Wat maakt dit boek leuk? Het is net een aflevering van een engelse crime serie. Degelijk, goed uitgevoerd en totaal niet origineel, heerlijk vermaak voor een stil avondje.
August 26, 2013
review of
John Brunner's The Productions of Time
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 25, 2013
This is the 11th Brunner bk I've read & I'm lovin' it! The Sheep Look Up is the one that completely convinced me of his genius (my complete review of that is here: http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/3... ) so now I feel fairly uninhibited in my enthusiasm. The Productions of Time mostly proceeds along as a somewhat lurid tale of a purported Argentine expatriate avant-garde theater director & the trials & tribulations of his exploited cast & crew.
Given that this novel was copyrighted in 1967 & given that Argentina was in the beginning of its "Argentine Revolution" (1966-1973) wch was followed by even more military coups, arguably one of the most brutal time of dictatorships in the 20th century, & given that I've read both about the horrors of that Argentine time AND about the Argentine Avant-Garde of the 1960s (banned under the "Argentine Revolution" along w/ mini-skirts & long hair on men) (see my review of Inès Katzenstein's Listen Here Now! Argentine Art of the 1960s: Writing of the Avant-Garde here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/47... ), I was very interested in how Brunner wd handle just this basic plot element. & he handled it beautifully indeed - BUT, it was a sortof red herring!
The Argentine expatriate character is named Manuel Delgado. He's presented as using highly technical means of mind control. In 1969, a man named Jose M. Delgado published a bk called Physical Control of the Mind: Towards a Psychocivilized Society about his experiments w/ using electrical stimulation to the brain for controlling animal action - w/ an eye toward human application. As I recall, Delgado stopped charging bulls, eg, by sending a radio signal to an electrode inserted in the bull's brain. I haven't read the bk (&, unfortunately, can't find my copy right now) but any "Psychocivilized Society" founded on the use of such techniques is definitely NOT my idea of a good time! Cd Brunner have known about Delgado when he wrote The Productions of Time? It seems likely.
Making matters even stranger is that when the character's introduced it's in this sentence: ""What do you make of this man Delgado, Ralph—this Argentian that Blizzard's got hold of?". (p 10) Now, the "Ralph" is the name of the person addressed - not the Delgado in question's 1st name. However, in a post-card that I rc'vd from "Blaster" Al Ackerman in 1981, a photograph showed a person purported by Blaster to be "Ralph Delgado [..] c.a.s.f.c." (Clark Ashton Smith Fellowship Chapter). Blaster, ever full of deliberately misleading identity clues & obscure SciFi references was probably pulling some sort of esoteric joke here. SO, who the fuck was Ralph Delgado? Was he a character in a SciFi story? & was Brunner making a similar obscure reference here?
There're certainly plenty of references that a scholar of avant-garde culture such as myself are likely to 'get': ""Yes, I remember what you had to say about The Connection, Pat!["]" (p 10) - The Connection being a fairly obscure 1961 film by Shirley Clarke; ""The one he did with Garrigue gave me the most stimulating evening I've had in a theater since Godot." (p 11) - the "Godot" being. of course, Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" - admittedly considerably less obscure but still for a somewhat smaller audience than mainstream theater; "["]it's experimental, but it might be an oddball success like that movie—uh—Cassavetes' thing, Shadows (p 54); ""Come off it, Murray," Blizzard said. "We do have a sick world, and he does have his own point of view, but it's as valid as Genet's, for example. And I can't imagine you making the same comment about Genet."" (p 55); "["]And then suddenly this turns up—a Delgado play, the sort of thing people talk about in the same breath as Beckett or Ionesco["]". (p 96)
Murray, the main character actor, gets ensconced in a former Country Club / Hotel where a "Picasso reproduction was centered over the head of the bed." (p 18) Anyone who's ever stayed in a hotel knows that the likelihood of anything as not-bland as a Picasso in one's rm is pretty unlikely! The stage is set!
""Are we to take it, Mr. Delgado, that the form you wish to give the result of our—our collectively developed work is that of social criticism?"
""If you mean will it contain a plea fro reform, then the answer is no." Delgado spoke quite calmly. "I am an artist, not a doctor. My speciality is cancer and gangrene at the stage where there is no hope of cure."" - p 26
Yes, the stage is set - but NOT, ultimately, for the play we've been set-up for.
""I don't know what to make of this," he said. But I'm sure of one thing. When you said they weren't sleeping, you were half right. Those poor folk are in a hypnotic trance."" - p 121
Brunner had hypnotism in another bk, a novella called The Evil That Men Do (you can see my review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18... ).
""Triplem? That's microminiaturized multicore cable. the stuff you kept tearing off your mattress. You wouldn't have recognized it. It won't be developed until 1989."" - p 126
Ha ha! Well, I won't explain that one.. but as somebody who worked in an electrical engineering dept in 1989 this prophecy of what was then the future tickles my fancy.
&, yes, as w/ Brunner's Born Under Mars (see my review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/74... ), there's another heteroromantic ending that's bound to please suckers for such things (like myself) - if only b/c our actual life experience is so different!
John Brunner's The Productions of Time
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 25, 2013
This is the 11th Brunner bk I've read & I'm lovin' it! The Sheep Look Up is the one that completely convinced me of his genius (my complete review of that is here: http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/3... ) so now I feel fairly uninhibited in my enthusiasm. The Productions of Time mostly proceeds along as a somewhat lurid tale of a purported Argentine expatriate avant-garde theater director & the trials & tribulations of his exploited cast & crew.
Given that this novel was copyrighted in 1967 & given that Argentina was in the beginning of its "Argentine Revolution" (1966-1973) wch was followed by even more military coups, arguably one of the most brutal time of dictatorships in the 20th century, & given that I've read both about the horrors of that Argentine time AND about the Argentine Avant-Garde of the 1960s (banned under the "Argentine Revolution" along w/ mini-skirts & long hair on men) (see my review of Inès Katzenstein's Listen Here Now! Argentine Art of the 1960s: Writing of the Avant-Garde here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/47... ), I was very interested in how Brunner wd handle just this basic plot element. & he handled it beautifully indeed - BUT, it was a sortof red herring!
The Argentine expatriate character is named Manuel Delgado. He's presented as using highly technical means of mind control. In 1969, a man named Jose M. Delgado published a bk called Physical Control of the Mind: Towards a Psychocivilized Society about his experiments w/ using electrical stimulation to the brain for controlling animal action - w/ an eye toward human application. As I recall, Delgado stopped charging bulls, eg, by sending a radio signal to an electrode inserted in the bull's brain. I haven't read the bk (&, unfortunately, can't find my copy right now) but any "Psychocivilized Society" founded on the use of such techniques is definitely NOT my idea of a good time! Cd Brunner have known about Delgado when he wrote The Productions of Time? It seems likely.
Making matters even stranger is that when the character's introduced it's in this sentence: ""What do you make of this man Delgado, Ralph—this Argentian that Blizzard's got hold of?". (p 10) Now, the "Ralph" is the name of the person addressed - not the Delgado in question's 1st name. However, in a post-card that I rc'vd from "Blaster" Al Ackerman in 1981, a photograph showed a person purported by Blaster to be "Ralph Delgado [..] c.a.s.f.c." (Clark Ashton Smith Fellowship Chapter). Blaster, ever full of deliberately misleading identity clues & obscure SciFi references was probably pulling some sort of esoteric joke here. SO, who the fuck was Ralph Delgado? Was he a character in a SciFi story? & was Brunner making a similar obscure reference here?
There're certainly plenty of references that a scholar of avant-garde culture such as myself are likely to 'get': ""Yes, I remember what you had to say about The Connection, Pat!["]" (p 10) - The Connection being a fairly obscure 1961 film by Shirley Clarke; ""The one he did with Garrigue gave me the most stimulating evening I've had in a theater since Godot." (p 11) - the "Godot" being. of course, Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" - admittedly considerably less obscure but still for a somewhat smaller audience than mainstream theater; "["]it's experimental, but it might be an oddball success like that movie—uh—Cassavetes' thing, Shadows (p 54); ""Come off it, Murray," Blizzard said. "We do have a sick world, and he does have his own point of view, but it's as valid as Genet's, for example. And I can't imagine you making the same comment about Genet."" (p 55); "["]And then suddenly this turns up—a Delgado play, the sort of thing people talk about in the same breath as Beckett or Ionesco["]". (p 96)
Murray, the main character actor, gets ensconced in a former Country Club / Hotel where a "Picasso reproduction was centered over the head of the bed." (p 18) Anyone who's ever stayed in a hotel knows that the likelihood of anything as not-bland as a Picasso in one's rm is pretty unlikely! The stage is set!
""Are we to take it, Mr. Delgado, that the form you wish to give the result of our—our collectively developed work is that of social criticism?"
""If you mean will it contain a plea fro reform, then the answer is no." Delgado spoke quite calmly. "I am an artist, not a doctor. My speciality is cancer and gangrene at the stage where there is no hope of cure."" - p 26
Yes, the stage is set - but NOT, ultimately, for the play we've been set-up for.
""I don't know what to make of this," he said. But I'm sure of one thing. When you said they weren't sleeping, you were half right. Those poor folk are in a hypnotic trance."" - p 121
Brunner had hypnotism in another bk, a novella called The Evil That Men Do (you can see my review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18... ).
""Triplem? That's microminiaturized multicore cable. the stuff you kept tearing off your mattress. You wouldn't have recognized it. It won't be developed until 1989."" - p 126
Ha ha! Well, I won't explain that one.. but as somebody who worked in an electrical engineering dept in 1989 this prophecy of what was then the future tickles my fancy.
&, yes, as w/ Brunner's Born Under Mars (see my review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/74... ), there's another heteroromantic ending that's bound to please suckers for such things (like myself) - if only b/c our actual life experience is so different!
June 5, 2023
Not sure why this book isn’t very highly regarded… I loved it! It’s more a short mystery novel than a sci-fi story, so maybe that’s why Brunner fans expecting sci-fi didn’t warm to it. Set in the nineteen sixties, it’s very much of its time. The cast of characters are actors and actresses making a theatre production, so that also makes the book more unique and interesting to read. At least it did for me, as I can’t recall ever reading another mystery novel set in the theatrical world. There is a sci-fi element to the mystery but I wouldn’t call this a sci-fi novel per se. In terms of the story, the dialogue and the writing style I would definitely recommend it for anyone wanting to read something a bit different. Five stars.
May 9, 2025
This is a somewhat remarkable story about addiction being used against you for reasons that possibly didn't make sense in 1956, but are factually correct since the invention of reality television. We have to stop exploiting people's weaknesses for entertainment purposes. But according to this book, that's just what making a play actually is.
It's a fascinating story, which could have been a play but the wire budget would have been too much. So instead, it's a really good play. With a Carrie chaser.
It's a fascinating story, which could have been a play but the wire budget would have been too much. So instead, it's a really good play. With a Carrie chaser.
September 11, 2018
A bit different for Brunner but not one of his best. For most of the length it reads more like a physiological thriller with a bit of a twist at the end. I highly recommend The sheep look up, Stand on Zanzibar and Jagged orbit by Brunner, this one not so much.
July 29, 2024
This lesser known Brunner novel centers around a group of misfit theater people drawn together by a mysterious foreign genius to plan a play in a luxurious country estate. The genre elements do not appear until the end, the first 2/3 are more like a contemporary television soap opera than SF.
May 20, 2019
Quick and kinda creepy read. A bunch of troubled thespians gathered at an old countryside resort to make a new play, but things are not what they seem.
August 30, 2012
I occasionally like to revisit books I've read before, and recently picked up a title from my shelf by an author that seems to have almost disappeared from the collective memory of science fiction - John Brunner.
When I was in my teens and early twenties, Brunner was everywhere in the SF bookshops. He was a prolific author, and frankly some of his books were poor rushed jobs. But his best were excellent, and deserve to be remembered.
His most famous title is probably Stand on Zanzibar - not one of my favourites, but interesting in its use of news clippings etc to give the book a different feel. It's an over-population book and I was never thrilled by disaster novels. For me, one of his best was The Shockwave Rider. This used Alvin Toffler's extremely popular (and very inaccurate) stab at futurology Future Shock as a model. That part in itself wasn't very interesting, but Brunner gave us images like the computer virus before such things existed and made use of the fascinating if flawed concept of the Delphi principle (the idea that a group of people with no particular knowledge in a subject will improve their response to questions about it if there immediate answers are fed back to the group, which then re-thinks) as a mechanism for government - a really clever idea.
** SPOILER IN NEXT PARAGRAPH **
The book I re-read was a much smaller scale work, both physically and in it reach. Called The Productions of Time it features a collection of has-been actors brought together to put on an experimental play. What they don't know is that this is scheme to drive them further and further into their weaknesses to record the experience for an audience from the future. It's not bad as a novel, if not superbly written, but I think it's a great example of the sort of thing that those who criticize SF as a genre don't get. There is some technology (often painfully old-fashioned in its vision of the future: reels of tape? Perlease!) - but this is entirely a book about people.
Admittedly not all great SF is about people. I was amused to hear the excellent Angela Saini struggling to defend Asimov's Foundation trilogy on that rather smug A Good Read programme on Radio 4. The format of the show requires three people to read each others choices of books, and the arty types were definitely looking down their nose at Asimov's dire characterisation. It's true, he couldn't write convincing characters, especially women - but Asimov is great for his ideas, not his characters. The Productions of Time is the absolute opposite - it really is all about the characters and for me is good example of why you shouldn't pigeonhole SF as all blasters and space opera. I'm not ashamed to say I love the original Star Wars trilogy of movies... but sometimes I want something different, and Brunner could put it in SF with the best of them.
When I was in my teens and early twenties, Brunner was everywhere in the SF bookshops. He was a prolific author, and frankly some of his books were poor rushed jobs. But his best were excellent, and deserve to be remembered.
His most famous title is probably Stand on Zanzibar - not one of my favourites, but interesting in its use of news clippings etc to give the book a different feel. It's an over-population book and I was never thrilled by disaster novels. For me, one of his best was The Shockwave Rider. This used Alvin Toffler's extremely popular (and very inaccurate) stab at futurology Future Shock as a model. That part in itself wasn't very interesting, but Brunner gave us images like the computer virus before such things existed and made use of the fascinating if flawed concept of the Delphi principle (the idea that a group of people with no particular knowledge in a subject will improve their response to questions about it if there immediate answers are fed back to the group, which then re-thinks) as a mechanism for government - a really clever idea.
** SPOILER IN NEXT PARAGRAPH **
The book I re-read was a much smaller scale work, both physically and in it reach. Called The Productions of Time it features a collection of has-been actors brought together to put on an experimental play. What they don't know is that this is scheme to drive them further and further into their weaknesses to record the experience for an audience from the future. It's not bad as a novel, if not superbly written, but I think it's a great example of the sort of thing that those who criticize SF as a genre don't get. There is some technology (often painfully old-fashioned in its vision of the future: reels of tape? Perlease!) - but this is entirely a book about people.
Admittedly not all great SF is about people. I was amused to hear the excellent Angela Saini struggling to defend Asimov's Foundation trilogy on that rather smug A Good Read programme on Radio 4. The format of the show requires three people to read each others choices of books, and the arty types were definitely looking down their nose at Asimov's dire characterisation. It's true, he couldn't write convincing characters, especially women - but Asimov is great for his ideas, not his characters. The Productions of Time is the absolute opposite - it really is all about the characters and for me is good example of why you shouldn't pigeonhole SF as all blasters and space opera. I'm not ashamed to say I love the original Star Wars trilogy of movies... but sometimes I want something different, and Brunner could put it in SF with the best of them.
March 12, 2011
Grade C+
Read
May 5, 2019Th8s is a serbocroat edition from Beograd; Dela vremena
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