review of
John Brunner's From This Day Forward
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - September 10, 2014

As I'm sure I've already written elsewhere I usually avoid reading short stories, I prefer novels - &, yet, obviously, the short story form typically involves a striking idea presented tautly, leading to an impactful conclusion - & Brunner, I've now discovered, is as expert at it as J. G. Ballard & C. W. Kornbluth - high praise from me, indeed! [How was that for a sentence full of qualifiers & punctuation?]

In other words, I agree w/ the cover's quote from the San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle: "MAINTAINS A HIGH LEVEL THROUGHOUT." Yes. When I started reading it, I decided that I didn't want to quote from every story, that I just wanted to 'get a feel' for the bk & make some sort of sweeping statement in my review. Not having written the review yet [I'm in the midst of writing it at this point] I don't 'know' if that's what'll happen. I do 'know' that the most important thing about it for me is that it contains the story "Factsheet Six". I'll explain that eventually - but, 1st, the first page of the bk promotes it thusly:

"A
"FROM THIS DAY FOREWORD,"
AS IT WERE

It behooves us all to be interested in the future, because that's where we're going to spend the rest of our lives.

I wish I knew who said that! I wish I didn't know so many people who aren't listening to it!"

We start off w/ a 1955 (or earlier) story called "THE BIGGEST GAME". Brunner wd've been around 20 when it was originally published so don't feel defeatist if you're young & creative & think there's not much hope of getting acknowledged at yr age. "The first time Royston noticed one of the men in black was as he paused before entering the gym." (p 7) 'The Men in Black'! Did that image originate w/ this story? Well, ok, there's a Three Stooges short called "Men in Black" from 1934 in wch they play doctors. But that has nothing to do extraterrestrials & this Brunner story does.

"In American popular culture and UFO conspiracy theories, Men in Black (MIB) are men dressed in black suits who claim to be government agents who harass or threaten UFO witnesses to keep them quiet about what they have seen. It is sometimes implied that they may be aliens themselves. The term is also frequently used to describe mysterious men working for unknown organizations, as well as various branches of government allegedly designed to protect secrets or perform other strange activities. The term is generic, used for any unusual, threatening or strangely behaved individual whose appearance on the scene can be linked in some fashion with a UFO sighting." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_in_Black

What I'm getting at is that Brunner is up there w/ the best as a short story writer. Considering that he started so young & that this bk covers material published in magazines from 1955 to 1972 the ideas are consistently fresh & strong & established early w/o necessarily 'giving it away' too soon for the ensuing thrill ride. "THE TROUBLE I SEE" begins:

"When Joe Munday was four years old he ran screaming from behind a truck. The truck was a large and heavy one. It was parked in the steeply sloping street which was Joe's playground and the front yard of his home. Moments later the driver let his brake off, and his clutch failed. The truck rolled twenty feet backward before he could jam the brake on again and clamber white-faced to the ground to see if the kid he'd noticed on the sidewalk was okay." - p 18

Brunner, like many SF writers, seems to embrace a practical state of mind. I'm sure he always read scientific articles & news. Many SF writers work in science or other pragmatic industries. As such, his stories proceed along logical lines to not necessarily foreseen ends. The above quote sets up the reader for Munday's precognition but where will it lead?

"AN ELIXIR FOR THE EMPEROR" jumps to ancient Rome, apparently in the century prior to its decline. Brunner doesn't stay in a small range of topics or locales: "The roar of the crowd was very good to his ears, just as the warm Italian sunshine was good on his body after three years of durance in the chill of Eastern Gaul. Few things made the general Publius Cinnus Metellus smile, but now, for moments only, his hard face relaxed as he made his way to the seat of honor overlooking the circus." (p 28) "Publius Cinnus Metellus" = Publius the Curly-haired Mercenary. Maybe Brunner just meant 'The Dick'.

"Marcus Placidus clutched his belly as though he would squeeze the poison from it" (p 47) Marcus Maecius Memmius Furius Baburius Caecilianus Placidus was a Roman statesmen - whether he was a clever villain who eventually got poisoned is unknown to me. Whether Brunner was really referring to an actual historical figure or not is also unknown. ""We shall see," murmured Apodorius." (p 47) Apodorius may've been a Jewish geometer. ""Does it make you smile, Cinatus Augustus["]" (p 47) Cinatus Augustus just seems to be a male name. This seems to be Brunner's alternate history of the decline of the Roman Empire. Nice.

The saying is "Youth is wasted on the young" & Brunner's "WASTED ON THE YOUNG" takes that away w/ the notion of a "professional youth": ""Well, are you going to make me stand here where anyone passing down the corridor might see me? Are you going to have people start to wonder why an adult comes calling on Hal Page, the professional youth? You see, I know about the notice you've had, and the reason for your spectacular party tonight."" (p 49)

Yep, Brunner keeps it lively, he keeps hopping around place & time: "Some of the fiercest fighting of World War II ebbed and flowed for months on either side of the territory of the Kalangs, but there was only one occasion on which the larger sweep of world events intruded into that inaccessible and hilly region of northern Burma to which they laid claim." (p 60) "The kalangs of java were a community of skilled forest cutters and shifting cultivators . Without their expertise , it was difficult to harvest teak and for the kings to build their palaces" - http://www.answers.com/Q/Who_were_kalangs Isn't reading fun? I don't know about YOU (whoever YOU are) but I like looking things up mentioned in bks & broadening my knowledge (or whatever it is).

"PLANETFALL" is a particular favorite: a young man born on & living on a large spaceship gets a day off to be on Earth for the 1st time & meets an Earthborn girl named Lucy who wistfully wants the visitor's lifestyle. The reader gets to witness their respective perceptions through a nicely efficient narrative framework:

"At the beginning he exclaimed over everything. To see dogs on the street excited him tremendously. "The wealth!" he breathed. "The richness of the place! Why, that one must weigh half as much as a man, and two such would consume his food, his drinking water, his air supply . . . And here they run in packs around the houses!"

"Lucy said nothing, and he saw that the dogs were snuffling at garbage cans; then, how they visited the corners of walls, and how their soilings lay on the sidewalk and in the road." - p 84

"A fight began outside a bar. From the far side of the street, still hand in hand, they watched. A crowd gathered. Its members stood by, not minded to interfere. On the contrary they shouted encouragement, and only scattered when a police siren announced the imminent descent of a patrol flyer.

"Valeryk shook his head in bewilderment. "The—the waste of energy . . ." he began and got no further.

"Not without malice Lucy said, "Don't you fight among yourselves where you come from?"

""What for? How can we? The system depends—our very lives depend—on co-operative effort. This is one of the strange things about planetside dramas and stories which we pick up: this fantastic violence, this sense of surplus energy ready to boil off in new and unpredictable ways. But when it's reduced to that . . . !"" - p 85

"THE VITANULS" takes us to India for another fantastic premise: ""I think I follow you," the matron said at length. "I take it the anti-death pill is a success?"" (p 103)

& now, Gadies & Lentlemen, for the stunning centerpiece of this collection: "FACTSHEET SIX": I knew that Mike Gunderloy's phenomenal zine "FACTSHEET FIVE" was based around a John Brunner story but I'd never read it.. until NOW. WOW, does it put things in context!

The earliest issue of Gunderloy's FACTSHEET FIVE that I have is the 5th one. It's from February, 1983. It's 2 double-sided 8&1/2 X 11" sheets folded once & saddle-stitched, very modest. Mike introduces it as "the not-dead-yet zine of crosspollination & crosscurrents". It's intended "for direct mailing to the Good Folks"; its "Frequency: Irregular"; "the reason this is so late is simple: [Mike was] broke."

The FACTSHEET in Brunner's story is a one-page mailing of mysterious origin sent out to financially influential people. It contains revealing information about consumer-damaging products. Things like:

"LUPTON & WHITE LTD, Caterer's equipment. 127 employees of firms using bread-slicers, bacon-slicers and other cutting devices supplied by this company lost one or more fingers in the period under review." - p 117

The story was 1st published in 1968. According to Wikipedia, Ralph "Nader came to prominence in 1965 with the publication of his book Unsafe at Any Speed, a critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers in general, and most famously the Chevrolet Corvair." Surely, Brunner's story was inspired by Nader, a man I deeply respect. People wanting to learn more about his consumer activism are directed here: https://nader.org/ . The publisher of the FACTSHEET is beginning to have influence on major investors who're withdrawing their support from companies exposed as producing unsafe products.

Gunderloy's FACTSHEET FIVE #5 contains 37 capsule reviews of such things as IMPOSSIBLE BOOKS, an anarchist bookstore in Chicago; ID NTITY's "report on an attempt to undermine reality maintenance traps" (that's ME folks! - "id ntity" is one of my 60 or so names); SELL OUT, a list of things for sale by mail; CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, "a bilingual journal of anarcho-pacifism"; & 18 bk reviews. The general thrust just being what's out there that Mike had come across & read or otherwise encountered. At that point it was pretty slim pickin's. Still, the fledgling thrust was on a counterculture of small-scale publishing as an alternative to corporate profit-driven mass media. As w/ Brunner's FACTSHEET, there was plenty of room for a hard critical look at the downsides of capitalist society & plenty of room for proposed solutions that might just fall into 'the right hands', the people who might change things - not, as in Brunner's story, necessarily major investors, more of a grassroots mvmt.

The inevitable skeptics & cynics who might think that a mere 15 zines wd never grow into something big enough to challenge BIG MONEY wd've probably been listened to in early 1983 - but what about in 1991 when Gunderloy's FACTSHEET FIVE #44 appeared (the last, as I recall, under Gunderloy's editorship) in its glorious 8&1/2 X 11" 132pp w/ about 22 zine reviews per page adding up to thousands?! In less than a decade, the 'zine revolution', the revolution of self-publishing by people mostly under-represented in the mainstream had blossomed into something truly fantastic! The grassroots had become extraordinarily robust & opinions contrary to capitalist propaganda were very, VERY widespread - probably to an unprecedented degree.

Gunderloy's FACTSHEET FIVE helped bring Brunner's fictitious FACTSHEET to real life. This was an accomplishment that took more energy on Mike's part than most people wd ever expend on anything in their whole life. So where are we now? I wonder. The internet has, to a certain extent, replaced zines & its international communication relative, Mail Art, but the agendas of the technical networks that the internet relies on are potentially very contrary to what strike me as the general public's best interests. Anonymous's efforts on behalf of the victim(s) of police murder in Ferguson is at the forefront of what can be done with computers in the politically effective range.

Brunner's SF prescience is usually astonishing. I don't know what precedents inspired "THE EPOCH OF MRS. BEDONEBYASYOUDID" but consider the following passages:

"a so-called pomegranate bomb—filched from the stores of a company responsible for supplying key munitions to the government of South Viet-Nam—exploded on the anti-suicide nets of the Empire State Building. Just one. Although the device had been designed for optimum effect following the ground-burst of a "mother" bomb containing two dozen such "daughters," the force of its explosion was adequate to rupture the wire netting it rested on and the small steel spheres it emitted caused a substantial number of casualties." - p 173

This story was 1st published in 1971 when the Viet-Nam War was still going on but it's full of shades of modern-day terrorism. Consider this:

The "Boston Marathon bombing of 2013, [a] terrorist attack that took place a short distance from the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. A pair of homemade bombs detonated in the crowd watching the race, killing 3 people and injuring more than 260."

[..]

"It was revealed that devices used in the attacks were household pressure cookers that had been packed with an explosive substance, nails, and ball bearings—the latter two elements acting as shrapnel when the bombs detonated."

[..]

"Dzhokhar revealed to investigators that he and his brother had obtained the plans for the bombs from Inspire, an online newsletter published by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)."

- http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1924021/Boston-Marathon-bombing-of-201...

In other words, the bombs used in the Boston Marathon Bombings were similar to the "pomegranate bomb" in Brunner's story. I wonder, is al-Qaeda's Inspire closer to mainstream media or a zine? More from Brunner's story: "At nine-nine, during one of the busiest periods of the day at the 125th Street IRT station, a container began to leak a gas officially termed "DN," not recommended—to quote the army manual regarding its applicability—"where fatalities are impermissible."" (p 173) Now consider this:

"Lethal nerve gas attacks in the city of Matsumoto in 1994, and in the Tokyo subway system in 1995, led to the deaths of 19 people, as well as to a large number of injuries. These attacks caused great shock, in that they constituted an illegal use of chemical warfare agents against a defenceless public. These acts of terrorism were carried out by the members of Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese doomsday cult." - http://www.opcw.org/news/article/the-sarin-gas-attack-in-japan-and-the-related-f...

In both cases, the attacks were made by religious people. Religion will be the death of us all. I doubt that Brunner's story inspired either of these attacks, more likely the military sources of the weapons combined with religious fanaticism was the inspiration. Still, I'm reminded of my own movie entitled "Imagine Utopias!" in wch I caution creative people against diabolical morbidity lest they inspire people who wouldn't have the imagination to think of such terrors on their own.

Adding to the variety, Brunner ends on a prose poem of sorts. ( )

John Brunner is one of those authors that I should read more of; I first heard of his novel "The Sheep Look Up" during a mad rush of dystopian fiction, and after that, read several of his other novels. "Sheep" remains my favourite thus far, though this story collection is delightfully creepy. The stories address themes that recur throughout science fiction, including the elixir of life, foresight and prophecy, robots as gods, and the evolution of humankind, often in a gritty, urban, near future setting. Brunner skillfully brings each story to a haunting, disturbing or even ironic conclusion.

It may be difficult to track down this collection, but it is definitely worth reading. ( )

An anthology of unmemorable stories. It is useful for completeness, but.... ( )

Quite a few years ago I read The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke, an almost complete collection of Clarke's short stories. I grew up on Clarke and Asimov and Simak and Bradbury and the other giants of science fiction that you could get your hands on in the 60s and 70s. What caught me by surprise about the collection was just how many of the stories I vividly remembered turned out to have been written by Clarke.

This collection of John Brunner stories is much shorter – it is in no way meant to be a full collection. Heck, it was published back in 1972 so there is no way it could take on that challenge. However, it reminded me why John Brunner is one of my favorite authors, and it reminded me of some excellent stories that I had not remembered to be written by him.

By that I mean that, for some of these stories, when I started reading I began to remember the exact story and how much I enjoyed it. For example, the story "The Vitanuls." The concepts within the story (I will not tell you them because, if you haven't read the story, then it shouldn't be spoiled) are ones that I still find myself thinking about as the world still looks at issues about population. And yet I had forgotten that the story was Brunner's.

If there is any fault to the collection, it is that most of the stories still have just a little of the "clunk" one finds in the writing of the 50s and 60s. But they are still well enough written that you can get past that. And a couple still seem fresh.

You want suggestions? Well there is "The Biggest Game" about a ladies man who tries to conquer a lady that may not be one he really wants, "Wasted on the Young" which explores the penalties youth might pay for having fun, "Planetfall" which explores grass-is-always-greener concepts, and, as already suggested, "The Vitanuls."

You can probably find just a better collection of Brunner's work in recent collections. However, if you stumble across this early edition you won't go wrong by picking it up. For anyone too young to remember, this is a good example of science fiction of the time. And for those of us who do remember, it is a trip back and a reminder of why we got hooked. ( )