review of
John Brunner's The Space-Time Juggler / The Astronauts Must Not Land
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - September 6, 2013

Brunner was probably 28 when this Ace Double came out. Although he was already widely published by then, it still seems possible that The Space-Time Juggler might've been written much earlier & awaited publication partially b/c it's a novella & partially b/c it's Sword-&-Sorcery - a genre I wdn't've expected Brunner to write in. I still don't know Brunner's work much, even tho I've now read 15 works by him. Maybe he's written other Sword-&-Sorcery stuff but it doesn't seem likely to me. It seems like something he was trying his hand at. I've never liked Sword-&-Sorcery much, except when Samuel Delany explored it w/ an eye for economic detail. Still, I enjoyed this - Brunner can 'do no wrong' in my bk by now..

Here's the blurb from the inside front p:

"DUEL IN THE ARENA OF THE STARS

"Andalvar of the planet Argus, king of an interstellar empire, was dead and fear ruled in his absence. The dread of a power struggle between the treacherous Andra, the "Black Witch," and the beautiful Princess Sharla showered panic upon the people and threatened to crumble the starry realm to dust.

"But their powers were restricted to the present, and before either could sit on the throne, they would have to come to grips with the man from the future who held the destiny of the universe in his hand.

"His name: Kelab the Conjurer—THE SPACE-TIME JUGGLER."

Whew! "Andalvar"? "Andra"? "Princess Sharla"? "Kelab the Conjurer"? It's so HOKEY!! & it begins w/ borderline purple prose:

"It was a wild night. The wind shouted in the bending trees like a giant's child, shrieking its glee at the black, cloud-racing sky, and the rain poured and spattered on the earth, churning even the tough, thin Argus grass from its place, dancing like a cloud of devils across the hard bare roads, whipping the faces of travelers like a myriad of icy needles, soaking and re-soaking the imperial banners over the castle of the kings till they were too heavy to stand out from the staffs at the bidding of the wind, too heavy to reveal that they hung upside-down to signify the passing of a king." - p 5

What do I mean by HOKEY? I can't quite place it. There's something about the names that just seem too typical, so simpleton.

"The third passenger grunted expressively. He said, "This is the ride of the furies, Ser Landor, and no mistake!"

"Landor laughed shortly, without taking his eyes from the storm or shifting hands or body an infinitesimal fraction. He said, "You have the makings of a poet, Ordovic."

""A Poet? Not I," Ordovic retorted, his eyes straying from the windows to the pale, set face of Sharla across the seat beside him.

"I'm nothing but a common fighting man, more at home with a spear than a pen and happier with a sword than either."

"He dropped his hand to the hilt of his own blade, and the steel rang very softly in it scabbard, and at the noise his dark eyes filled with something that belied his self-deprecation.

"He added, putting his hand to the clasp at his neck, "You're cold, my lady. Will you take my cloak?" - p 6

&, yet, the preceding scene takes place in a helicopter. I wonder if Brunner wrote this partially to see if he cd pull off such a combination. He might've also just wanted to get in this kind of detail:

"Dolichek was a boy of perhaps fifteen, with a thin peaked face and a body more bone than flesh and little of that. he brushed back his straggling blond hair, matted with dirt, and essayed a bow to Andra, who smiled slowly and took another fruit.

"She said, "Dolichek, Prince Penda—King Penda, now—brought his hound into the dining hall again today, against his father's command." She took a tiny malicious delight in saying it.

"Dlichek sighed so slightly that one had to look hard to notice it, and said, "Very well, my lady. That was three strokes last time."

""This time four, then," said Andra casually. "Slave, four lashes!" - p 12

& it's not just helicopters that're atypical:

"Beyond it, the air was thick, twice-breathed; it was laden with the stench of sweat, stale liquor and smoking drugs. At one table a party of thin, shifty-eyed spacemen sat around five empty bottles of tsinamo, playing the endless game called shen fu, and their soft-spoken bids and the click of chips were the only noises in the muggy-hot room.

"There was a long bar on the left, littered with empty drink cartons and stained with spilled liquor, and behind it a fat man with thinning sandy hair sat, his back to the room, playing a color-sonata on a Mimosan chromograph." - p 14

Of course, that's just a variation of sailors on shore leave type of thing so it's not THAT surprising but, still, I like the mix of seemingly incompatible cultures. &, once again, HYPNOTISM appears, as it has in so many other Brunner bks I've read: ""You're a soldier, Senchan—not a ninny! Kteunophimi, take that soldier and make him forget what he has seen, believing it to be Ordovic's work." / The aged hypnotist nodded and led the soldier into a far corner. After a while the latter departed like a walking doll". (p 59) All in all, this was fine, hardly one of Brunner's greatest, probably the 'worst' I've read by him yet, but still good. the fight between the 2 'sorcerers' gave Brunner an opportunity to have some 'jump-cutting', to put it in filmic terms, w/ free rein.

On the other side, The Astronauts Must Not Land was much more the Brunner I'd expect. While this is a sortof invading-monsters-from-outer-or-hyper-space story Brunner manages to twist & turn it in enuf lovely ways to more-or-less completely bypass the clichés. I don't want to spoil the plot but it is at least safe to give away that astronauts go the long haul to Alpha Centauri & back again only to return to Earth in different bodies than they went out in - something they're unaware of until it's called to their attn.

Brunner has faxes. Faxes had been invented, in a prototypical way, 120 yrs before this novel was published, but didn't appear in the telephonic way we know them now until the yr after this novel. So, I reckon, Brunner deserves at least a little credit for prescience here. Then there's something that's close enuf to a cell-phone camcorder for me: "I had been staring at it in total disbelief for a good half-minute before I thought of recording it. I managed to break Carmen's grip on my wrist; she had just frozen, gazing upward with her mouth a little open and her eyes as wide as they would go. I got the recorder out of my pocket, turned the master switch from voice to vision recording, and began to scan." (p 25) ""But it would be worth it for you to send them to your agency?" Receiving my nod, she went on, "Then please send the pictures, why don't you?" / I hesitated, "It will be very expensive on your phone bill if I do it from here," I said finally. "Shall I go find a pay phone where I can use my credit-card?"" (pp 28-29)

There're also some bits of wishful thinking. A newspaperman who isn't controlled by the government: "["]He said he'd been approached by the high brass and asked to put out a denial of any connection between the monsters and the ship—" / "Did he consent?" / "Hank? He threw them out of his office, saying he wasn't a government soft-soaper, he was an honest reporter["]". (p 43) & then there's the military speaking an internationalist's language: "Suvorov made the tires cry out as he braked. He looked out of the window and shouted in Esperanto; the sentires saluted and waved us through." (p 46)

But there're also some realistic touches: the main character, David, tries to reassure his friend Carmen after they both learn that their astronaut relatives have been transformed into 6 legged critters. Carmen replies: ""David, you don't own me" - in other words, the scene turns into a more personal argument instead of something more directly relevant to David's intentions. & then, later, there's emotional friction between male & female scientists:

""Get rid of this god-damned woman! Get her off this project before I breal her arrogant neck! She's so stuffed with preconceptions she'll do anything she can to wreck other people's work! How the hell do you expect us to get any valid information out of Drummond when she's deliberately out to bias his mind? I can't stand it a moment longer—I'm getting the hell out!"

"He jumped to his feet so quickly that his chair overturned and crashed on the floor behind him, stormed towards the door, ignoring the attempts of Kamensky and others to catch his attention, and went out cursing in a horrible subdued monotone." - p 79

"I'd had to take the ice after the dry meal, and it had started an ache in one of my molars" - p 85

""Has she tried to get up to Starventure?"

""Yes. But Kamensky vetoed the application, thank God. He wasn't going to tell her why, but she insisted, and finally he lost his temper and spat it out. he said she was a potential hysteric and he wasn't going to answer for it if she was allowed aboard a spaceship. It was because Kamensky then proceeded to pass me as fit that she took this violent dislike to me."

"I nodded, but didn't answer. I was suddenly preoccupied by the terrifying vision of all the petty personal feuds and irritations which stood between us and a chance of tackling our problem on a personal footing." - p 88 ( )

Note: The Astronauts Must Not Land was revised and published 10 years later as More Things In Heaven. I have a review under that title.

The Space-Time Juggler is a short piece -- 84 pages. It comes from a time when if you wanted to write medieval fantasy you had to write it as science fiction in the far future on some other planet. Brunner crams a lot of plot -- too much perhaps -- into those 84 pages, and certainly keeps you guessing as to what's really going on. Of the two, it seems to have aged slightly less than its flip-side companion, perhaps because silly adventure in medieval settings is less affected by the future coming to pass. ( )