Drifting through a party celebrating 400 years since the Spanish Armada's successful invasion of Britain, Don Miguel Navarro – Licentiate of the Society of Time – is shaken by the host's possession of a flawless mask from an ancient Aztec festival. 'Imported' from the past, the discovery signals a breach in the Society's policing of time-travel and imminent danger to reality itself. Today, a relic out of time; tomorrow, the rewriting of the course of history? In three ground-breaking novellas, John Brunner weaves an ingenious tale of diverging timelines and a battle for dominance over the fourth dimension. The Society of Time stories were abridged when first collected. Here, the trilogy is reprinted in full along with two mesmerising standalone novellas: The Analysts and Father of Lies.
John 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"..
The Society of Time stories are three linked pieces* set in another 1988 where, four centuries after the success of the Spanish Armada, technology as a whole is at a lower level than in our world, never mind social equality, but time travel has been a reality for decades. And as soon as the first story makes clear that, in defiance of the strict rules regulating use of that knowledge, someone has been mucking around with the past, it's obvious exactly where – or maybe say when, though really you want a word somewhere between and outside them both – the final tale will end. Which isn't necessarily a problem, so long as the route there fits together in a satisfying fashion, which this very much does. The Spanish Armada used to be a fairly popular point of divergence for alternative histories – see also Pavane and The Alteration – but has fallen out of favour in recent years, which itself sets me wondering what's changed in our own timeline, though not half so much as the fact that in the months between buying and reading this, I could have sworn it was written by John Crowley rather than John Brunner. Not that I mind – they're all good Johns – but it certainly doesn't feel that much like the Brunner I've read before, resembling neither the Traveller in Black's loving pastiche of early fantasy nor the hyperactive dos Passos of his great near future novels. What it does have, though, is the same intellect behind it which, if not quite operating at the same blazing intensity as in Stand On Zanzibar, is still slightly scary when you catch it unveiled for a moment. The notion of what toys in a given society might be world-changing if considered from another angle, like the wheel in pre-Colombian Central and South America, has become almost a commonplace in the sixty years since these stories were first published, but it still sparks here, and the simple feat of pulling off a crime story which feels fair when both time travel and an alternate world's changed rules are in play is no small feat. But for me the most impressive scene was the Society's New Year's Mass, whose awful qualities (in both the old and new sense) reminded me of Palimpsest, one of my favourite Charles Stross stories - and I know he's a fan. Of course, when both stories have so much temporal jiggery-pokery, who's to say which way the influence really runs?
Two extra stories, not directly related but originally published in the same magazine around the same time, fill out the book. Father Of Lies sees a group of cryptozoologists, fresh off two unspectacular investigations of lake monsters, finding far too much evidence of something a lot bigger and stranger. But from its premise, through the way it's told, to the characters (chiefly an assortment of manly scientists distinguished by their varying ratios of manliness to science), it feels like a story lots of other writers around the same time could have written. Lots of other good writers, to be fair, but even so. That's followed by The Analysts, which feels much more Brunner, its protagonist with a peculiar gift and its building of uncertain but definite purpose not a million miles from the stuff of The Shockwave Rider or The Jagged Orbit. The downside being that it also shares with the latter a determination to engage with racial tension in society which, while well-meant and undoubtedly sincere, can't help but read as incredibly awkward a few decades down the line. Those intervening decades also meaning that the reader will probably work out the solution to the puzzle a lot quicker than the lead manages. It's still not without interest, but it's definitely not what you'd give someone as a first introduction to Brunner. And speaking of introductions, this is the first thing I've read in the British Library's Science Fiction Classics imprint, which isn't as eye-catching either in its selections or its trade dress as their weird tales, let alone their beautiful crime classics range.
*At exactly 50 pages each, they seem almost to be taunting my cut-off for short stories versus novellas.
This new volume in the British Library’s Science Fiction Classics series contains three stories. The title story is the longest and rests somewhere between novella and short novel in length. The other two would probably be best described as novelette length. Each story deals with the idea of time in some way, but they are very different from each other, showing Brunner as an imaginative and thoughtful writer who, like many of the SF greats, often used his stories to reflect on issues within his own society. My limited reading of science fiction meant I hadn’t come across him before, but the introduction by Mike Ashley tells me that he was a well-regarded British writer of the second half of the twentieth century, though his major successes all came early in his career, mostly in the 1960s, the period from which all three stories in this collection date.
The Society of Time – itself a trilogy of sorts, but with an overarching storyline that binds the three parts together, this tells of an alternative history where the Spanish Armada won and Britain became a colony of the Spanish Empire. The story is set in 1988, coming up for the 400th anniversary of that victory, and Brunner does a good job of showing the ascendancy of an essentially Spanish aristocracy ruling over a still recognisably British population. A method of time travel had been discovered almost a century earlier, but is strictly controlled by the Society of Time to avoid the kind of paradox that could arise by people from the present interfering with and changing their own history. Don Miguel, new licentiate of the society and our hero for the story, is attending a social function when he spots an artefact that he recognises as Aztec and as being so new looking that he fears it has been transported into the present from the past. Is there some kind of smuggling going on? This would imply corruption within the Society. As Don Miguel finds himself caught up in the investigation, he learns much about the fluidity of time and the possibility that time travel is causing fluctuations in human history.
In the second part, a quarrel leads to an irruption into the present of a race of warrior women from a possible past, while the third part widens the idea of the Society out to show that there is another grouping of nations known as the Confederacy who are the adversaries of the Empire and have their own time travelling society. As the two forces go back in time to compete for ascendancy, the present and future are put at risk. It’s very well done, although I admit that sometimes the complex paradoxes left my poor muddled brain reeling – this is my normal reaction to time paradoxes though! Although I felt the ending was a bit too neat and obvious, it is an interesting look at how our present is very much determined by our past – we are a product of our history whether it’s a history to be proud or ashamed of.
Father of Lies – a group of young people have found a strange place where no one seems to enter or leave and where modern technology doesn’t work. They set up a base just outside the area and investigate. As Miles (our hero) enters the area on foot (since cars don’t work) and carrying an axe (since guns don’t work), he first spots a dragon flying overhead. Then he sees a young woman in peril… While there are aspects of the fairy tale about this one and lots of references to Arthurian legends, there is a real darkness at the heart of it. It’s very imaginative and Brunner does an excellent job of giving a full picture of the strangeness of this place in a short space. Again, my one criticism would be that the ending feels a little too pat and convenient.
The Analysts – I found the first half of this very strange and intriguing, and again felt that the ending didn’t quite match up to the quality of the bulk of the story. A society called the Foundation for the Study of Social Trends wants a building built to their exact specifications but the architect to whom they take their plans thinks it’s all wrong. He calls in Joel Sackstone, an expert visualiser who can imagine from plans how a building will work for its purpose. When Joel considers the plans for this building, he begins to see that it is not flawed as the architect thinks – rather it is designed to achieve a very specific purpose. He makes a mock-up from the plans and… well, I’ll leave you to find out for yourself what happens then. In this one, Brunner is using an imaginative story to look at racism within his own time – just beginning to be recognised as an issue in Britain at that time. As might be expected, some of the language and attitudes are out-dated now and feel somewhat offensive to our current sensibilities, but his anti-racism intent is quite clear, so I gave him a pass on that.
I thoroughly enjoyed all three of the stories. They show a lot of originality in dealing with what has long been an overcrowded sub-genre of time travelling stories, and he moves well between the somewhat harder edge of science fiction and the softer fantasy elements. In the first, longer story, he has room for some good character development in Don Miguel, and all of the stories are very well written. A good introduction for newcomers like me, while existing fans will be pleased that this is the first time The Society of Time has been collected in its original, unabridged form.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, the British Library.
This book contains 5 long short stories, or perhaps novellas (depends on your definition), looking at time travel. the first three stories are excellent. set in a world, circa the 1980s, in which the Spanish Armada defeated the english and subsumed England into the Spanish Empire, ca. 1588. The three stories chronicle the adventures of Don Miguel Navarro, a member of the Society of Time, and his labors to maintain the time stream. These stories fall more into the philosophical and less in to the action and adventure realm, despite being published in the early 1960s. Brunner's writing is excellent in my opinion, deftly creating an atmosphere where the tension builds, and developing very realistic characters. The description level is adequate and not gumming up the story line.
"Father of Lies" reminds me more of something that would've made a decent Challengers of the Unknown comic. And "The Analysts" seemed forced and somewhat tedious.
The Society of Time consists of five novellas/long short stories, three of them about the Society itself and the other two touching on issues of time travel.
In the Society stories, it’s 1988 but the Spanish succeeded with their Armada with Britain being the central power of the Empire, Spain itself having been lost to Muslim invasions. In many ways, their society is technological and socially backward; slavery is still an institution, women’s suffrage a long way off and there has clearly been no industrial or computer revolutions. (Not sure that’s very fair to renaissance Spain, I’m sure there would have been progress.) The one extra technology they have is the power of time travel, which is heavily regulated by a Jesuit order, The Society of Time.
Don Miguel is a member of the Society and serves as a detective, discovering increasingly large discrepancies in the Society and the use of time travel in general. The first story is simple enough, he goes to a party (in Jorque/York) where he discovers an item that is clearly out of time. He has to figure out where it came from, who’s responsible and how to get it back without causing too many ripples. The second story involves a secret gladiator school that goes awry after a bet, causing huge damage and Miguel has to work out how to undo the chaos. The third involves time-terrorists and reveals the very thin barrier between slight bending of time and outright time war.
What was clever about the progression of the stories, was how each one had an increasingly thorny and paradoxy problem, training the reader to try and think as the Society thinks and come up with solutions themselves. I also really liked how the Society of time is a religious order as well as ‘time cops’. Not only did it lend an interesting flavour to proceedings, but it was fun to see the natural time order as ordained by God and time-meddling to be sin.
In terms of time-travel itself, the books really set up how loose the foundations of reality are when time travel is possible, no matter how regulated. There’s also the interesting notion that any reality with time travel will eventually become one where there was never any time travel, as reality will keep being changed and shifted until the means to do so never exist. I found that very interesting.
Of the other two novellas, I preferred ‘Father of Lies’, in which a group of university friends try to map out a blank area on a map where technology doesn’t work and the myths of King Arthur are real. It was creepy and exciting although the solution to the problem was a little too easy. ‘The Analyst’ involves travel to the future through the medium of architecture and I found that one a little cluttered.
I’m reading time travel books for a month and this was the first. It was good to start with a more SF book focussed on the issues of time travel itself and I very much enjoyed it.
Quite different from all of the other Brunner books I’ve read mainly due to time being the focal point of the stories. I thought the Society of Time is one of the best Brunner stories I’ve read yet. The concept and its delivery were gripping and although confusing at times, Brunner resolved the confusion of causal loops and time travel brilliantly. I found myself in awe of the mind that was able to twist and turn through time in the Society did. The Analysts and the Father of Lies were both interesting concepts as well. I preferred The Analysts for the insight in human behavior that threads through so much of his work. The Father of Lies was wholly unique. When beginning this story I found myself wondering where the fantasy writing would shift to sci-fi. While I did enjoy the story, the resolution is probably the biggest stretch in what I’ve read of Brunner. I enjoyed Brunner’s throughly I had read before this one and I’m excited to continue exploring (and tracking) more of his work.
There are five shortish stories in this collection, each about 50 pages long. The first three are linked together, and are brilliant (5/5). The final two are stand-alone: I felt story 4 was the weakest of the bunch (max 3/5), and story 5 was so-so. Overall, I've given the book 5 stars due to the strength of the opening trilogy.
I liked 4 of the 5 stories very much. The exception is “Father of Lies”, which I thought took a ridiculous turn at the end. The others are excellent, entertaining early 1960s sf. There’s also a good introduction by editor Ashley, placing the stories in the context of Brunner’s career.
Really enjoyed these stories. Several are 'true' science fiction. In fact, it's made me realise that a number of 'science fiction' books I've read are really 'fantasy' novels. Recommend.