The Martian Sphinx

by John Brunner, Keith Woodcott (pseudonym)

By the twenty-first century the world was drowning in its own population. A solution had to be found quickly - and it was, in "gravipower." Wonderful, unending source of power - only the scientists knew that its use was reducing the Earth's distance from the sun at a dangerous rate. But if another planet's gravipower could be harnessed...

An expedition was launched to Mars, known to be uninhabited - except that a woman was wandering around its surface who claimed she had come from another galxy to warn Earth of a terrible menace, and there was a huge polyhedron of metal emanating a force very much like that of gravipower.

Someone else had discovered it! A thousand years ago, or now? Friend, or enemy?

Genres: Science Fiction, 20th Century

149 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

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"..

Reviews

[Joe Santoro · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this one a little hard to get through... I don't recall having style issues with the previous John Brunner stuff I've read, but this was a bit of a slog.

maybe there was just too much going on.. we have the whole 'world flip' vision of the future, where the US and Western Europe become the 3rd world and the then 3rd world are on top... we have a first contact.. we have an alien mystery... all sorts of stuff.

Then there's 'gravipower'... unlimited power by using a bit of the planet's mass.. doesn't make even a bit of sense, and then there was a mention that it was making the Earth go closer to the sun as it was used, which is what lead them to Mars in the first place (because who cares if Mars gets sucked into the Sun, I guess?) It functioned well enough as a technical MacGuffin to drive the story, but the amount of 'hard' science explanation on how it worked when it seemed complete nonsense was annoying.

There was also just a bit too much reverse racism.. the main character a white guy from the US (called a 'Cork' as a derogatory racial term.. which made me keep thinking he was Irish), was also the poor oppressed genius that figured everything out.

The aliens were almost really interesting, but not quite, then there was a 2nd alien race that didn't even really get resolved. I got the feeling that this was meant to be the start of a series that just failed. It's not nearly as bad as some I've read, but certainly nothing to write home about either.

[Amy H. Sturgis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I might give this 3.5 if I could, because despite some pulpish writing and not-very-subtle commentary, this story does put the shoe on the other foot, challenging those who would have been Brunner's (Woodcott's) readers to imagine a world in which their own imperialism had circled around to bite them, and they were no longer the ones dictating the world's agenda. It evolves into a frank discussion of how we must overcome our drive to dominate and oppress each other, and its commentary on race, prejudice, and tribalism/nationalism feels (I'm sorry to say) freshly relevant. If you plan to read only one science fiction novel from 1965, this isn't your best bet, and yet it remains very much worth reading.

[Jeff Koeppen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel was serialized by the podcast Star Ship Sofa. It was very well done, the narration was especially excellent. The story had its moments but I thought it was just OK overall. The ending felt somewhat unresolved, like Brunner was planning a sequel or a longer novel.

[Alton Motobu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Juvenile SF story becomes an alternative theory of physics. In the 21st century man has conquered space travel with discovery of 'gravipower' force. A team is sent to Mars to investigate possible distress signals - a woman appears to warn them of danger. Then two alien ships appear and attack each other. The earth men manage to destroy both ships and decipher the signal - it is a warning from a third alien race about the future. The woman turns out to be a vision aimed at one of the men who was an incurable romantic. Weak!