review of
John Brunner's The Repairmen of Cyclops / Enigma from Tantalus
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 26, 2014

This is another Ace Double, 2 bks back-to-back & upside-down in relation to each other so that both sides of the bk are the fronts, possibly my favorite of the Ace Doubles by Brunner that I've read so far. You can read my reviews of The Space-Time Juggler / The Astronauts Must Not Land here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2258658.The_Astronauts_Must_Not_Land_The_Spac... & of Castaway's World / The Rites of Ohe here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7215530-the-rites-of-ohe-castaways-world . Paperbacks are cheap but this bk is 49 yrs old & still in good shape. Will the same be true of e-files 49 yrs from now?

I read The Repairmen of Cyclops side 1st. Writing reviews of Brunner novels is always a challenge b/c I read them mostly for the entertainment of the plot & the things I enjoy about them the most wd be spoiled for the review reader if I were to mention them here. It's always interesting to begin to read a story & to be uncertain where it's taking you & whether the 1st character is really the main one. In this case, a retired astronaut is hunting a wolfshark on the planet Cyclops. An interesting enuf beginning on its own but even better where it goes.

& then comes Maddalena Santos. I'd encountered this character before in The Avengers of Carrig (see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6440839-the-avengers-of-carrig ) wch I only read about 7 wks ago but wch I'd almost forgotten about already. The Avengers of Carrig having been a rewrite of Secret Agent of Terra, The Repairmen of Cyclops is a sequel to the latter. Santos is in the Corps Galactia's Patrol Service wch pays its members by prolonging their lives 10 yrs for every one yr served. After solving a major problem on Carrig she had a post where nothing much happened for 20 yrs & as she enters this story she's about to take a one yr leave. The policy issue of non-interference w/ ZRPs, Zarathustra Refugee Planets, is at the forefront:

""After twenty years watching a gang of Zarathustra refugees getting nowhere, Gus, I'm pretty well convinced myself that it's a crime to leave them to make fools of themselves. I'm sorry to disappoint you within minutes of our first meeting in years, but that's the way I feel right now, and if you want to convince the delegates to this conference that non-interference is the right course, you can start by trying it on me!"" - p 18

"The problem was a recurrent one, and had been debated for a century and a half. Its roots, though, lay much further back—to be precise, some seven hundred and seventy years before, when the primary of a planet called Zarathustra went nova." - p 28

That places this novel over 700 yrs in the future from Castaway's World where the refugees were but recently arrived to the planet they crash-landed on.

I'm plunging into reading Brunner's novels much as an 'average' reader, I reckon, insofar as I don't have a plan to read the novels in chronological order or to try to read related novels back-to-back in sequence. I haven't bothered to learn about what novels are related before reading them either. As such, I'm only beginning to understand that there're several inter-related ZRP novels - this, after having just read all of them (except the original Secret Agent of Terra) - I was just beginning to look forward to another! On the other hand, Polymath having been a rewrite of Castaways World (you can read my complaining about that here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5027096-polymath ), & The Avengers just being a rewrite of Secret Agent maybe it's best that Brunner got out of the rut & left it alone. Or did he? If there's a rewrite of The Repairmen that wd really be too much!

I usually like to point out at least one of Brunner's writerly touches: "He hesitated, eyes screwed up against the glare, raising the sole of one foot to rub it on the calf of the opposite leg as he always did when concentrating on a problem." (p 21) That's the kind of detail that enriches a scene w/o needing to directly contribute to whatever the pressing plot matters are.

In Castaway's World & Polymath, the Polymath is the person who saves the day by applying his special training. Brunner explores the opposite possibility w/ Cyclops:

""I'm sorry," Langenschmidt gave a crooked smile. "So we take the rest as read. They made one of their rare mistakes on Dagon, and picked for its polymath a man who couldn't stand the strain. He clashed with one of the continental managers, who finally couldn't endure it any more and decided he could do better for himself on some other planet. He, and about four thousand followers, left Dagon and set out to—well, to homestead Cyclops, I guess.["]" - p 62

""The pattern would be similar to that in the Carrig affair, then?" Maddalena hazarded. "A small group would be in full possession of the facts, but because what they have to offer is so valuable, those who benefit from it won't investigate what they're getting—turn a blind eye, as they say."

""What?"

""Turn a blind eye. It's a phrase that's survived on Thirteen, where there are a good many eye afflictions. I believe it's pre-galactic in origin."

""Prehistoric, I'd have said," Langenschmidt muttered. "Except on the ZRP's, I've never seen a blind person. When eyesight is so valuable, it's worth taking the trouble to preserve."" - p 86

It's also worth taking the trouble that I take care to copy these quotes correctly b/c I almost jumped directly from the "is so valuable," in the 1st paragraph of the p 86 quote above to the "it's worth taking" that follows the second "is so valuable," in the 4th paragraph. Wd anyone have noticed?

Anyway, writer's digression aside, another writer's digression: I quoted the bit above about "turn a blind eye" to imagine Brunner considering the expression & thinking about how to incorporate it into a futuristic story 'realistically'. I'm reminded of George Perec's e-less novel (is there an electronic version available?) A Void in wch the letter "e" doesn't appear & in wch he, too, uses expressions that he has to recontextualize: hence, "a needle in a haystack" might become "a pin in a haystack". "Turning a blind eye" might become "turning a blind sight organ".

& there's always politics: ""On the other hand, they do seem to be typical of those who get to power, get influence, get wealth simply because they desire them so greedily. Truly civilized people don't crave power. They have—what would one call it?—empathy, perhaps, which holds them back."" (p 147) In other words, the scum rises to the top.

THEN THERE'S Enigma from Tantalus: "Voidech was right. Tantalus was the only possible name." (p 8) "Tantalus (Ancient Greek: Τάνταλος, Tántalos) was a Greek mythological figure, most famous for his eternal punishment in Tartarus. He was made to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the fruit ever eluding his grasp, and the water always receding before he could take a drink." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantalus ) That didn't really make any sense to me until I read further in Wikipedia that: "Tantalus's punishment for his act, now a proverbial term for temptation without satisfaction (the source of the English word tantalise)".

However, given that it's the "Tantalan" resident of the planet itself that seems to be doing the 'tantalizing' it doesn't seem appropriate to me that the planet itself shd be named after the person mythologically tantalized. In my review of Brunner's Bedlam Planet I note that: "The Author's Note on p 4 informs us that: "In writing this novel I have made extensive use of the Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology (the English version of Larousse Mythologie General) and am in consequence indebted to its compilers, editors and translators."" Apparently, Enigma from Tantalus is a slight precursor to that.

""You spent too much time with that horrible man Caversham," Lynette told him in a practical tone. "You let him infect you with his cynical dislike of people, and it's got you down."

""You don't do him justice," Harry countered. "Veliz liked to make him out a pathological misanthrope, but he's not. He's—" He stopped, groping in the air for the right word. "He's a question-putter," he finished lamely. "And the questions he asks don't happen to be palatable ones. They're still valid." - p 10

Long personal tangent: I was working on the graveyard shift of a copy shop. Since I was working midnight to 8AM & since my friends usually went out to drink at night pre-midnight I usually wdn't join them so that I wdn't be drunk when I went in to work. After about a yr of this I was sick of the social deprivation so I went out & had a few drinks before I got to work.

Typically, it was on this late shift that all the grifters came in looking for free or cheap copies &/or computer use. That night when I was a tad drunk, a middle-aged guy who still lived w/ his mom came in wanting me to hand-place copies for the same price as if he were doing self-serve. I explained that the cost was more if I did it & he started arguing w/ me. Eventually he threatened to complain about me to the management. I sd something to the effect of: "Fuck it! You can get me fired for all I care! I'm sick of this job!"

The next day the customer's mom called & complained about me. Then the manager, BalTimOre's most pathetically untalented 'punk' singer, called me & informed me that I was fired. I started to ask him a question wch wd've shown him that his own behavior at work was hardly any more exemplary than my own & he cut me off w/ something along the lines of: "I know how you operate! You ask questions!!" This was intended to be an insult. It seemed only fitting to get such a critique from someone whose self-opinion bordered on megalomania - w/o substance or introspection, of course.

The plot thickens when:

"Veliz's shoulders sagged forward as if a heavy burden had been placed on him. He said, "You're saying that when the starship lifted from here the other day it took with it a—a stowaway? A unit of Tantalan disguised as a human being?"

""No, and yes," Harry grunted. "Not a stowaway, which is impossible—a mass discrepancy that great would be instantly detected. A copy." - p 27

Now, the idea of a non-human camouflaging itself as human is probably a fairly standard trope these days but I wonder who wrote such a story 1st. Is this the one? Published in 1965? Dunno, but I doubt it - it's just the earliest one I can think of at the moment.

Brunner's not a 'hard science' sf writer but he still manages to get in more than a few futuristic tech touches:

""Who was that?" muttered Brand over his shoulder as the offender was hauled back out of the way.

""One moment." Standing beside him was the girl who acted as his remembrancer, four-eyed because wherever she looked two lenses mounted on her forehead looked also. From the lenses threads ran back under her sleek gold hair; from the circuits traced in conductive ink on her scalp, using her body as the antenna, signals went to computer memories all over Earth and at several points elsewhere in the Solar System.

""The name is Pigoyan," the girl murmured. "Sensiservice. That'll be the woman aboard the Fulmar—Tanya Hesit."" - p 30

Brunner did foresee humanity's increasing dependency on machines. As long as it works, most people are happy w/ it.

"There was a need. A machine saw to it.

"There was a problem. A machine solved it.

"There was a wish. A machine granted it. This was Earth, but the outworlds were all, to a greater or lesser degree, copies of the original." - p 43

I got slightly interested in topology when I was making my documentary about an old friend who died in a car crash in 2010 along w/ another old friend named Sarmad Brody: "DEPOT (wherein lies the UNDEAD of Franz Kamin)". Franz had studied topology & incorporated it into his writing. Brunner proposes a new development:

"Relly wasn't just a man playing at science; he was a highly original researcher in one of the most advanced modern disciplines, the one known formally as polytopology and nicknamed mathemadness." - pp 48-49

The term "hunchback" is used to apparently signify a psychic but it wasn't obvious to me what Brunner's etymology for it was until this:

""Don't tell me, Master Brand—let me back a hunch. I'd say that after talking to everyone else here with me, you expected me to refuse to talk with you, to slouch unmannerly in the chair if I did turn up, and to mutter dark anarchical insults about the Powers of Earth."

"In spite of himself, Brand felt a smile come to his face matching the other's. he said, "Are you a hunchback? I was under the impression you were suspected for some other more recherché talent."

""I wish I was a hunchback," Caversham said. "I've just come off Tantalus, as you know, and the nicest people I met there—the only nice people—were the hunchback["]" - p 76

Eventually, Brunner refers to the Turing test w/o specifically using its name:

"The problem was this: given a room divided by an opaque curtain, from the other side of which comes a voice; determine by asking questions, without raising the curtain, whether the other occupant of the room is a human being or a perfect mechanical copy." - p 85

Might this have inspired the story in the 1st place? In the end, this tale sets up the reader for a sequel. Was one ever written? I don't know & I'm not sure I care.

While I was reading this bk, I was also working on my backyard, prepping it further for my mad domination & my sculpture-in-progress entitled: "I Heard It Through the Grapevine". I was also listening to large amts of Flamenco music. I was working on editing one or more movies - including a masked nudist party one from my 60th birthday party. I was "stooping" w/ some friends, neighbors, & acquaintances. I was getting a recording out of the library. I was probably flirting w/ at least one or 2 female friends. SO, I HAVE A LIFE (sortof). Where does reading this stuff fit in? Sometimes I wonder (like today) - nonetheless, I've already started reading another Brunner. All in a day's work. ( )

La Legione Galattica e in pericolo! Su Cyclops, una crisi politica minaccia I'esistenza stessa di questo corpo, mentre sullo sfondo ricompare un nome quasi dimenticato: quello del pianeta Zarathustra. Un affascinante romanzo del ciclo dell'Impero Stellare.