review of
John Brunner's Age of Miracles
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 23, 2014

I didn't start reading anything by Brunner until February of 2013. The 1st bk of his I read being The World Swappers (my review's here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2398747.The_World_Swappers ). In the summer of the same yr I went to Frederick, MD, to go to Wonder Books. I went prepared with a list of the 9 Brunner bks I had (all of wch I'd read by then) so that I cd get every Brunner bk that they had that I didn't already have.

The result was that I got 37 more Brunner bks (counting Ace doubles as 2 bks). Unfortunately, some of these were basically the same bk with slight differences & under different titles. It was tempting to give away the duplicates or to at least not read them but my obsessive completeness led to my reading & reviewing them after all. Of these, Polymath was probably the most irritating (my review's here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5027096-polymath ). Polymath (1974) was just a slight rewrite of Castaways World (1963) wch was part of an Ace Double. Ace claimed that: "A shorter and substantially different version of this novel appeared in 1963" (p 4) but I go on to refute the "substantially different" part of that claim.

Of the 37 Brunner bks I saved Age of Miracles to be the 2nd-to-last one to be read b/c it's a rewrite of The Day of the Star Cities ( my review's here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7362454-the-day-of-the-star-cities ). This rewrite made a slightly better attempt to appear to be "substantially different" than Polymath did in relation to its predecessor but that's not saying much.

EG: Age of Miracles begins:

"Like needles thrust into a wax doll, images stabbed him.

"During the summer, there was plenty to eat. The fox avoided the place where his world was being invaded: the clanking mysteries, the smoky smells, the bellowing bipeds. Summer ended. For a while there was mud. Rain soaked his coat and sharpened the edge of the wind. By frost there was a hard place and a succession of stinking roars and flashes. The fox turned aside, slinking back into the long grass and the bushes. The grass became dry and yellow, the bushes stood out bare as an engraving against the sky." - p 7

while The Day of the Star Cities begins:

"When the figure came into the restaurant, everything stopped. Only for one moment was a man's high-pitched voice raised into the appalling silence, closing a bargain with a woman for the night. And then nothing. The remembered sound of chattering and music hung in the air like dust." - p 5

But don't be deceived, that original beginning is just postponed until p 10 in Age of Miracles. A more significant difference (that's ultimately somewhat irrelevant) is that the main policeman character is also a musician:

"Is that symptomatic? So many of us now seem to need to do small things perfectly, as though we're resigned to giving up big things . . . for good and all.

"He hoped not. He thought of his own laborious attempts to perfect Beethoven's Opus III, first without a wrong note or shaky time-value, then without a flaw of expression. He didn't want to write that off as mere compulsiveness." - p 18

Chapter IX of Age of Miracles begins:

"It was abominably hot tonight. Restless, Waldron paced his apartment. For a while he tried to settle to his piano, but he felt oppressed and could not concentrate; all the channels on the TV were spewing forth infantile rubbish, repeats and old movies from the days before the aliens, and when he tumbed through is records not one item tempted him to set it on the player." - p 91

& chapter IX of The Day of the Star Cities begins:

"Tonight it was unpleasantly hot. Restless, Waldron paced his apartment." - p 46

The reader might be misled to think that this chapter's beginning 45 pp later in Age of Miracles than it does in The Day of the Star Cities might signify a greater difference than it really does. I'll get to that later.

Age of Miracles: "He hesitated, uncharacteristically, as though the awe-inspiring vision before them had sobered him. "I keep a bit which killed a kid," he concluded. "Came slamming in through the window of his room. Cracked his skull."

""You—uh—you keep a watch on the place?" Waldron hazarded. "try and spot stuff as it comes out?"

""Oh. sure. we tried that. Or rather Grady did. Can't be done. You can't see it being tossed out, you can't photograph it, you can't pick it up on radar. . . . I guess it kind of skips the first bit of its trip."" - pp 130-131

The Day of the Star Cities: ""It's found all over the country for about fifty miles in any direction," Radcliffe grunted. "As though they throw it away at random when they have no further use for it."" - p 67

Chapter XIV of Age of Miracles:

""Where's Jespersen?"

"A Saturnine man named Clarkson, one of the Canadian observers, glanced up in faint surprise. "Haven't you heard? His plane was overdue at Calgary. They've mounted a search for it."

""What? What took him to Calgary?"

""He heard a rumor about a live artifact being offered for sale there and flew down to check on it. But he never arrived."" - p 145

& the same section in The Day of the Star Cities:

""Where's Jespersen?"

"A Saturnine man named Clarkson, next to the professor's vacant chair, raised his hand. "He asked me to sit in for him. He heard some rumor about a live relic turning up for sale in Calgary, and he's flying down there to check on the story."" - p 74

There are even some mistakes in Age of Miracles that aren't in The Day of the Star Cities: Chapter XVI:

"Hearing the paradoxical reality of the situation summed up so bluntly made the blood rush and thunder in Waldron's ears. It almost drowned out the rest of Greta's argument.

""No, but the free traders are never short of it. Grady Bennett gets—gets displaced." - p 167

Chapter XVI of The Day of the Star Cities:

"It came home with shocking violence to Waldron how paradoxical the situation really was. He scarcely heard the rest of Greta's argument for the thundering of his own blood in his ears.

""On the other hand, we don't know from what moment in future time Bennett gets—gets displaced.["]" - p 86

"Grady Bennett" shd be "Corey Bennett". Age of Miracles, p 272: "staying too log": that typo's not on the equivalent p, 143, of The Day of the Star Cities. But, then, the newer version not only changes the beginning, it changes the end (somewhat). This was just about the only truly significant difference. The language becomes more detailed & more appropriately experimental:

"Division: here, the see-through breeze; there: the be-through frieze." - p 272

"I ought to be wearing coordinates. What goes well with red?

"Mike's answer was prompt and coarse-textured. He had sneezed about it for a while and decided on a very mild electric shock, the kind you get when you touch your tongue to the terminals of a dry cell. They fitted excellently except that it wasn't completely square, and he wriggled around until he had altered the perspective he was viewing it from. Were the hundred paces up, or had they turned minus? Counting backward, he got down to about twenty-nine or possibly fifty-five, and hesitated. The brilliance was somewhat dazzling and the style of his friend was inadequate, lacking the middle rung." - p 276

That last section alone probably justifies reading Age of Miracles instead of The Day of the Star Cities. But don't be fooled, there's alotof filler here. The original has a smaller font. More importantly, the original has each chapter go right into the next w/ no new page beginning. Age of Miracles, on the other hand, has blank pp between every chapter & they add up to an additional 60pp!! ( )

An interesting take on the whole 'alien invasion' theme, with humans trying to survive on a planet which isn't really theirs anymore...but that the aliens have little interest in. ( )

I agree with xenoi that this was loosely written, or rewritten since it's a rewrite of the earlier Day of the Star Cities. However, there were two things that kept me reading once I started. First was the myriad reactions of the characters to the aliens, which I thought were realistic and interesting. The second was watching how they figured out what the aliens were doing. ( )

Governments have lost control and large portions of the planet have become dangerous after settlements are established by mysterious aliens. Not without interest, but loosely & hastily written. ( )