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Am falschen Ende der Zeit (1971)

von John Brunner

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In the face of an alien threat, Russia and a xenophobic US must work together to save humanity in "one of the better science fiction novels of the year" (Library Journal). In a near future where a paranoid America has sealed itself off from the rest of the world by a vast and complicated defense system, a young Russian scientist infiltrates all defenses to tell an almost unbelievable and truly terrifying story. At the outer reaches of the solar system, near Pluto, has been detected a superior form of intelligent life, far smarter than man and in possession of technology that makes it immune to attack from human weaponry and strong enough to easily destroy planet Earth. Can humans set aside their differences and mutual fears to work together and defeat a common enemy? For each generation, there is a writer meant to bend the rules of what we know. Hugo Award winner (Best Novel, Stand on Zanzibar) and British science fiction master John Brunner remains one of the most influential and respected authors of all time, and now many of his classic works are being reintroduced. For readers familiar with his vision, it is a chance to reexamine his thoughtful worlds and words, while for new readers, Brunner's work proves itself the very definition of timeless. … (mehr)
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review of
John Brunner's The Wrong End of Time
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 25, 2013

Having just recently read & reviewed Brunner's The Sheep Look Up (you can read my entire review here: http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/344636-a-review-of-john-brunner-s-ecological... ), wch is an astonishing 'masterpiece', reviewing his more 'minor' novels might seem like a let-down - but, no, gotta luv 'em all! Each one I read is inspired.

As w/ The Sheep Look Up, in The Wrong End of Time (published the yr before The Sheep .. in 1971) Brunner uses the USA as the archetype of the paranoid nation. & there're other similarities (w/o either bk being ultimately too derivative of each other): one being that the exploitation of consumers by capitalism is highlighted: "Everything about this silent limousine of Turpin's was ultra-modern, including its schedule of obsolescence. Approximately six months old, it was already as close to the scrapyard as to the factory." (p 19)

Pre-planned obsolescence, in itself, is a very important topic to me. I remember 1st encountering the subject in the early '70s, probably right around the time this bk came out. My impression at the time was that people were discussing this in disgust at the practices of the manufacturers. I even had some optimism that such pre-planned obsolescence wd be publicly shamed so much that it wd be phased out, somewhat nipped in the bud.

NOW, 42 yrs later, pre-planned obsolescence is much, MUCH more common than it was then - & it seems to me that computers have ushered in the era more than anything else. How many people buy a computer expecting it to be a still useful hand-me-down to their progeny? &, yet, is it SO ridiculous? I still use Adobe PageMill 2.0 for creating websites. Yes, the websites are 'primitive' - but they're good enuf for me, they carry the info I want them to & they're not that primitive - they have text & images & links.

According to Wikipedia: "Seneca Inc. developed the original PageMill and SiteMill products. During open beta testing, Adobe acquired the company and rebranded the product with their own logo.[citation needed] Adobe released PageMill 1.0 in late 1995. It was considered revolutionary at the time, as it was the first HTML editor that was considered user friendly, cited as the "PageMaker of the WWW". This first version, however, was also criticized for lacking items such as a spell-checker and support for creating HTML tables. Adobe acquired Seneca in 1996. / Adobe PageMill 2.0, which was introduced in early 1997, corrected these issues" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_PageMill ] In other words, a perfectly good program can still be used 16 yrs later IF you can get it to work on Operating Systems available to you. I use a Mac w/ a pre-intel processor that still supports a simulation of OS 9 - obsolete by most standards - but using it is an uphill battle, or, as I prefer, close to being a salmon swimming upstream to spawn when the stream's been dammed.

& lest the reader think that Brunner was just another complaining Pinko (is that a variation on Red?) funded by the KGB, there's more than enuf criticism of the USSR to please someone like myself who distrusts ANY of the mega-blocs:

"["]Why else would they have called on you to cushion my arrival?"

"Turpin didn't answer, but pressed his lips together in a thin line. Sheklov could gloss that expression easily enough. Because you'd been told I was good, to bolster your own confidence; or because I'm to be eliminated and you're to replace me; or because you're expendable yourself, and meant to bring about our joint downfall; or because I'm suspect and you've been assigned to investigate me . . ." - p 20

That being between 2 Soviet secret agents in the USA - bringing in a slightly different paranoia than that of the isolationist US defense network in the novel.

& then there's "Prexy" ("for extra insurance I'll have you photographed with Prexy" - p 20), the president whose 1st appearance for me was in the later The Sheep .. about wch I've written: "As for the president of the USA, "Prexy", he's as good a foreshadowing of President George W. Bush as you can get. & how does such a president get into power? Well, if we conveniently ignore the likelihood of fixed elections & the like: "DOE: [..] For example, there's an ingrained distrust in our society of highly intelligent, highly trained, highly competent persons. One need only look at the last presidential election for proof of that. The public obviously wanted a figurehead who'd look good and make comforting noises—" (p 267)" This novel's version of Prexy isn't quite the same, not quite so fleshed-out as a figurehead - maybe more like Reagan than Dubya.

I've praised Philip K. Dick before b/c his novels usually reach a climax that most writers wish they cd dream up halfway into the bk & then go on to ending on something even better. Brunner's similar in the sense that he can pack very informative research & sensitive politics into a well-plotted thrilling SF 'classic' - making the whole so rich in ideas that it's astounding how well he pulls it off. Here's about as close as he ever seems to get to generic SF:

""They're far ahead of us," Sheklov said when Turpin's grey face had started back towards its normal colour. "We're afraid of them. So far we haven't managed to communicate anything to them, although we've been trying for more than three years. Somehow or other we must establish rapport, because if we can't convince them we're fit to get along with they're not only able but apparently willing to set us back a thousand years. In the way I suggested—by turning an American city into energy."" - p 24

But Brunner turns even that on its head eventually (but I won't spoil it for you).

Prexy's holding forth at a party about Canada, wch has disassociated itself somewhat from the USA: "And for you and your compatriots [Canadians], Don, the same thing holds. One's aware that there have been differences, one's aware that relations between our countries are not as happy as they have been right now, but bonds of honest trade still forge links between our lands, and where business binds, friendship follows, sooner or later—"" (p 51)

Does hostility between Canada & the USA seem far-fetched? I just finished listening to a 5 record set published by Radio Canada International's "Transcription" series. It's a "Massey Lecture" from 1983 by Canadian economist Eric Kierans. In these lectures, "Kierans argues that the Williamsburg agreement was designed to restore a fading United States to a position of dominance in the western world. America, he says, is using the nuclear threat as a lever to pry recalcitrant allies into line. If the allies comply, the result will be the creation of a western superbloc that mirrors the Soviet bloc. This would do little to increase global security, but much to undermine democracy and national sovereignty." [from the liner notes to LP E-1307] Brunner, as always, anticipates this brilliantly.

The Williamsburg Economic Summit at wch the agreement was confirmed was "[t]he 9th G7 Summit [&] was held at Williamsburg, Virginia, United States during the 28th to 30 May 1983. The venue for the summit meetings was Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia.

"The Group of Seven (G7) was an unofficial forum which brought together the heads of the richest industrialized countries: France, West Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States,Canada (since 1976) and the President of the European Commission (starting officially in 1981).

[..]

"The Williamsburg Economic Summit was the only international meeting chaired by President Reagan. In retrospect it appears to have been the key turning point for not only ending the Cold War, but for inducing a period of economic prosperity based on free market policies." [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9th_G7_summit ]

Do you always trust Wikipedia? I don't. For one thing I've been banned from there just about any time I've ever posted about any subject that I'm actually expert on. 'No doubt' there's a 'good' bureaucratic reason for doing so (NOT). The point is that any encyclopedia is going to have a subtext supporting a particular POV that's kept hidden in the interest of a pretense at 'objectivity'. I take the last sentence of the above quote as a case-in-point: "In retrospect it appears to have been the key turning point for not only ending the Cold War, but for inducing a period of economic prosperity based on free market policies." In retrospect to who?! In retrospect it was one of the beginnings to when the Reagan-Bush hegemony started forcing a one-world government down the throats of the peoples of the world, the "New World Order" (let's not forget that Adolf Hitler wrote another bk than "Mein Kampf" called "My New Order").

Kierans warns about the destruction of the Nation-State thru its being subsumed by what he calls "Globalism". While I totally disagree w/ his positive emphasis on the nation-state, I totally agree w/ his criticism of what's now known as Globalization. Back to the Wikipedia entry: who exactly becomes prosperous under "free market policies"?! The Mexican laborers forced to work at less-than-subsistence wages? The kidnapped Russian girls forced into sex slavery in Bosnia under the human traffickers put there as members of the International Police Task Force? How deep will we have to look before we find sex slavery in Iraq & Afghanistan imposed by 'democratic' forces? How much profit is Halliburton making off of destabilized political situations? Halliburton has a business section called the "Energy Services Group". The main business in The Wrong End of Time is called "Energetics General". Brunner is as prescient as always.

Brunner sees thru what's now called by some "corporate welfare" - the bailing out of debt of greedy & squandering corporations thru 'free-trade' & tax-payer monies:

"By then, the ten biggest corporations in the country were being sustained on tax-payers' money—aircraft, chemicals, computers, transportation services, virtually all the key industries were being regularly transfused with government funds. Naturally, because any other form of federal investment was castigated as "creeping socialism," it had to be via the Defense Department that the money passed. A generation of ingenious public-relations work had convinced the public that this aspect of government activity was sacrosanct, never to be questioned by a loyal citizen."!! - p 71

This is still sadly true to this day. If you're interested, I comade a movie w/ Cell Media satirizing the mass media's anti-protester PR work in connection w/ the G20 in 2009 in Pittsburgh. It's called "TV 'News' Commits Suicide" & can be witnessed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU-_aL7kKBI .

Like his fellow SF novelist Keith Laumer (see my review of Laumer's Nine by Laumer here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6346319-nine-by-laumer ) Brunner criticizes TV:

"He sat up in bed, sipping coffee that she had also brought, and used the remote-control to turn down the TV. She had switched it on, without asking him, as she went out. He'd already noticed that these extraordinary people didn't seem to feel that a room was habitable unless either bland music or a TV image were included in the décor." - p 60

Yep, "Freedom isn't Free": "But far be it from ME to lose confidence in the wisdom of those who have laid down the precepts by which we live, the experts whose love of freedom has defined the degree to which we, the laymen, and our families, must sacrifice liberty to preserve it." (p 130) &, unfortunately, many of the people whose 'job' it is to keep 'freedom free', are doing exactly the opposite, unwittingly or otherwise. ( )
  tENTATIVELY | Apr 3, 2022 |
This is a fascinating story of what society in the U.S. becomes at some point in the future, and it isn't a pretty picture.

The amazing (and a bit frightening) thing is that this was written 40+ years ago, and many aspects of the society described in the book either have or are well on their way to coming to fruition. ( )
  grandpahobo | Mar 22, 2015 |
Typical extrapolation of Cold War era tensions and claustrophobia into the near future. There's mention of aliens found "near Pluto", but all the action is in a coastal area of the USA, between Earthlings. Not much science, some use of psychic abilities. Very reminiscent of the style and subject of many Philip K. Dick works. Interesting to read almost 40 years on, comparing the author's thoughts on societal trends with how things have actually developed. He got some things right, many wrong. ( )
1 abstimmen klh | Dec 30, 2010 |
The wrong end of time is another of John Brunner's attempts to use science fiction to reflect on the society of the day. In this book, as in others, he follows the social trends of the time to their logical conclusions. He portrays the future America as a fortress state, loudly proclaiming its superiority to the rest of the world while paranoidly sealing its borders to it. In the book, a Soviet agent attempts to infiltrate the true powerbrokers in America (government contractors rather than the government) to start a dialogue on how to deal with newly contacted ailens.

The aliens in this book are a MacGuffin. They exist only to give the story impetus. The real plot hinges around an exploration of this future society and the impact it will have on individuals and on the larger scale.

Brunner hits some interesting points in this book and regular readers will experience that 'how did he forsee that so accurately' feeling more than once, but it is not one of his stronger works. Many aspects of it are replicated in his better known books and reading it felt a little bit like reading a practice run for his much stronger novel 'The Sheep Look Up'. ( )
2 abstimmen Sassm | Nov 15, 2007 |
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» Andere Autoren hinzufügen (2 möglich)

AutorennameRolleArt des AutorsWerk?Status
Brunner, JohnHauptautoralle Ausgabenbestätigt
Foss,ChrisUmschlagillustrationCo-Autoreinige Ausgabenbestätigt
Heinecke, JanUmschlagillustrationCo-Autoreinige Ausgabenbestätigt
Pukallus, HorstÜbersetzerCo-Autoreinige Ausgabenbestätigt
Sternbach, RickUmschlagillustrationCo-Autoreinige Ausgabenbestätigt
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In the face of an alien threat, Russia and a xenophobic US must work together to save humanity in "one of the better science fiction novels of the year" (Library Journal). In a near future where a paranoid America has sealed itself off from the rest of the world by a vast and complicated defense system, a young Russian scientist infiltrates all defenses to tell an almost unbelievable and truly terrifying story. At the outer reaches of the solar system, near Pluto, has been detected a superior form of intelligent life, far smarter than man and in possession of technology that makes it immune to attack from human weaponry and strong enough to easily destroy planet Earth. Can humans set aside their differences and mutual fears to work together and defeat a common enemy? For each generation, there is a writer meant to bend the rules of what we know. Hugo Award winner (Best Novel, Stand on Zanzibar) and British science fiction master John Brunner remains one of the most influential and respected authors of all time, and now many of his classic works are being reintroduced. For readers familiar with his vision, it is a chance to reexamine his thoughtful worlds and words, while for new readers, Brunner's work proves itself the very definition of timeless. 

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