Hearty kernels of concept sheathed in occasional chaff
(3.5/5)
I believe I’m on my thirty-fourth Brunner book.
I’ve only kept 70% of those titles, so while I’m an avid reader of Brunner’s
work, it doesn’t always resonate with me. Reading
Out of My Mind, thankfully, doesn’t
contain any of the chaff; nor does it, however, show any great ambition or
artistry that Brunner later exhibited along the lines of Stand on Zanzibar
(1968) or The Sheep Look Up (1972). The best stories in this collection,
comparatively, soar far above such dreck as “No Other Gods But Me” (1966). At
the same time, they have an aura of whim exuded by the author—many of them
aren’t serious in nature, yet are cleverly based on the kernel of an idea that
Brunner ran with. This doesn’t always translate well as it feels just like
that: this is my seed of my idea (which may be good or bad, depending on the
reader) and this is the roughly textured chaff that surrounds it (sometimes
good, sometimes bad, too).
“Orpheus’s
Brother” (1965) dips into Brunner’s knowledge of mythology, a
subject of which rarely hits me as enlightening, thereby rending it, for me,
the weakest of all the stories. In contrast, “Round Trip” (1959), one of Brunner’s early
stories, may be simple at first glance but has a few depths of thought: one of
science, one of humanity, one of alternative worlds, one of whim, and another
of romance. In between these two sides of the spectrum, Brunner pens some
stories that either evoke nods, smiles, or the raise of one or both eyebrows.
------------
“Fair Warning” (1964,
shortstory) – 3/5
Amid a fleet of naval
ships in the middle of the tropical ocean, one island sits beneath the sun, but
upon its surface, men are toiling over a structure, and within that structure
is a device. Vliesser and Rogan have been charged with setting up the device
prior to its test detonation. As they check parts and are about to toast to the
first man-made carbon-nitrogen cycle fusion of the bomb, they are suddenly
paralyzed as they witness an odd shifting in the air where something
materializes. 8 pages
“The Nail in the
Middle of the Hand” (1965, shortstory) – 3.5/5
Decius Asculus isn’t
just an expert in his trade, but he’s widely known as the Expert,
who’s admired by peers and loathed by his subjects. As he proudly prepares his
nails in the courtyard, he thinks lecherous thoughts and displays his Herculean
physique. His three subjects for the day shoulder their crosses to take to the
hill where Decius takes to the stage to perform: nailing hands and feet to the
cross. The first two fidget and scream, yet the last fellow looks placidly on
Decius’s face. 8 pages
“Orpheus’s Brother”
(1965, shortstory) – 2.5/5
In a moment of
hysteria, hormones, or hell on earth, the superstar named Rock Careless was
mobbed and torn apart by his fans. Rock’s brother knows one more person was
involved in the murder—Rock’s own manger—who Laurie has come to confront. Mr.
Wise, as he’s known, welcomes him but keeps him at an arm’s-length while he
logically states the situation of the so-called murder, and the situation that
Rock Careless was actually in. Laurie is unimpressed by the talk and wants some
action. 10 pages
“Prerogative” (1960,
shortstory) – 4/5
Dr. Welby was found
dead in his room after a brief scream. His charred limbs indicate either
electrocution or a lightning strike, both of which seeming highly
improbable—borderline impossible. As his scientific team gives testimony in
court regarding Dr. Welby’s unusual and unnatural death, they hit upon the
nature of his investigations, a line of inquiry that fans the flames of the
spectators’ anger. All he was trying to do was to create reproductive life in
primordial earth-like conditions. 13 pages
“Such Stuff” (1962,
shortstory) – 3.5/5
Everyone dreams, but
the benefits of dreaming and the drawbacks
of its lack were always murky, so Harry and Daventry began a study to observe
the effect on people who are able to sleep yet forbidden from dreaming. All the
test subjects, save one, voluntarily quit before two weeks, each citing anger,
stress, and borderline insanity; that one man, however, has gone through it for
six months: Mr. Starling, “the malleable thing that filled the hole available
to it, the thing without will of its own which made the best of what there was”
(61)—an aberration. 18 pages
“The Totally Rich”
(1963, novelette) – 3/5
Derek Cooper is just a
man who has ideas, conversations, ambition, and a libido. He’s also a man with
a fantastic original idea: “to deduce the individual from the traces he makes”
(82). His kernel of an idea comes to fruition when a magnificently wealthy
woman hires him to develop the machine for her own benefit, but she’s one step
ahead of him: she also wants the machine to reproduce the same person it had
deduced. With her life rich yet empty, Derek holds the power over her with a
simple affirmation. 28 pages
“See What I Mean” (1964,
shortstory) – 3.5/5
Four delegates had
arrived to the Foreign Ministers’ Conference on the Resolution of Outstanding
International Differences and Disarmament: the US
allied with the UK , and Russia allied with China
“The Fourth Power”
(1960, novelette) – 3.5/5
A curious but
worthless and inapplicable effect from an experiment with silver wire has
garnered the interest of a renowned Sythesist whose occupation revolved around combining
seemingly unrelated areas of science. Smith synthesizes this scientific trial
with a neurological one in which he himself is the experiment. Already an
autodidactic polymath, Smith sees this experiment as a way to tap the
multitudinous synopses of the human brain. The observers, however, weren’t
expecting the seeming simultaneous activities at a such a rate of learning,
which is only becoming more ludicrous. 29 pages
“The Last Lonely
Man” (1964, shortstory) – 4/5
In this day and age,
everyone has a Contact. Most have a few Contacts, such a friends, a spouse, or
a sibling, but almost no one goes without a Contact—that’d instill a sense of
mortality in the person, a surety that death is inevitable. A contact, however,
is insurance that the imprint of your persona will live on through someone else
when transferred. Hale takes pity on a man who had just lost his only Contact,
so he also takes him aboard as a Contact, only later to receive news that the
man is a budding burden. 18 pages
“Single-Minded” (1963,
shortstory) – 3.5/5
In the remote
mountains of the moon, Don Bywater crashlands his ship and holds little hope
for rescue until a Soviet moon-walker comes into view aiming for his ship. His
rescuer is an enthusiastic Russian woman bent on conversation and showing him
around the vehicle that any American bureaucrat would love to get their hands
on. Back at the Soviet base, Don understands that the scores of people there
have been infected with a resonating virus that enables telepathy, expect for
the “cured” woman. Don reflects that he has so much to steal. 21 pages
“A Better Mousetrap”
(1963, shortstory) – 3.5/5
Colossal chunks of
precious metals and rare gems—the chunks called busters—seem to appear
instantaneously in the galaxy. The human crews who find the treasure troves
don’t ask questions like, “Where did it come from?” or “What are they for?”;
rather, they just rake in the money. Professor Aylward has been thinking about
those questions, however. He strings together the dates and ships that find the
busters with the same of the disappeared ships and reaches the conclusion that
the busters are nothing more than bait. 20 pages
“Eye of the
Beholder” (1957, shortstory) – 4/5
With two arms and two
legs, Painter thinks himself an average being whose profession is also his
name. As a hermit, he paints landscapes of a desolate planet. Nearby, a
spaceship crashes and out come a few humans, who happen to also be bipedal.
Wanting to help out, Painter begins to walk their way. Meanwhile, the humans
discover a trove of painting in a shack and are amazed by the sheer depth that
the paintings bring out of the otherwise boring planet. Painter sees their
appreciation and approaches with pride. 15 pages
“Round Trip” (1959,
shortstory) – 4.5/5
Darak bez Hamath pens
a letter to his loving wife explaining his circumstances: He commands a large
scientific fleet sent to study the center of all things—the source-point of the
Big Bang. When the fleet arrives, they discover a huge reflective orb that
oddly has no gravity. As they ponder upon the fate of the universe—ending in a
Big Freeze or a Big Crunch—they also consider the object’s usefulness, its
makers, and its origin in time. All this gets more complex when they enter
under a “Welcome” sign. 11 pages
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