From archive Fri Aug 21 13:23:20 MDT 1992 Subject: The Compleat Traveller in Black--a review by David Goldfarb From: goldfarb@lightning.Berkeley.EDU (David Goldfarb) Organization: ucb Date: 3 Oct 89 11:03:24 GMT Collier Nucleus, a new division of Macmillan Publishing, has brought several books from the late lamented Bluejay Publishing back into print. One of these is _The Compleat Traveller in Black_. It is the earlier book _The Traveller in Black_ somewhat rewritten by the author, John Brunner, plus a later story, "The Things that are Gods", which was published in the short-lived _Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine_ despite being neither science fiction nor an adventure story. The back cover copy describes the book as "a classic of existential fantasy", and such it is. Briefly, the Traveller in Black lives in a world newly formed out of chaos. As such, it is a world full of powerful elementals, curious freaks, and magic of all description. The Traveller's job is to promote rationality and subdue all things to one nature. To this end he must periodically circuit the world dispensing poetic justice. Express a desire to him, and he will reply "...as you wish, so be it." and your desire is granted. But *he* chooses the nature of the granting. The nature of humanity being what it is, and the nature of the Traveller being what it is, few are the happier for the fulfillment of their wishes. _The Compleat Traveller in Black_ is an excellent book; I highly recommend it. David Goldfarb goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu (Insert standard disclaimer) "You arrogate to yourself the right to laugh at human foolishness...Then tell me this: are you yourself entirely wise?" "Alas, yes," was the answer. "I have but one nature." From rec.arts.sf.written Mon Aug 3 14:26:19 1992 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!decwrl!csus.edu!netcomsv!mork!dani From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) Subject: John Brunner: A Maze of Stars Message-ID: Date: Sun, 02 Aug 92 02:55:57 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) Lines: 31 "A Maze of Stars" isn't a novel; it's a collection of vignettes. Centuries after it seeded a region with over six hundred colonies, the self-aware colony ship is revisiting those colonies and observing what humanity has made of itself on many alien and often-hostile planets. For some colonies a two-page exposition suffices, at others we follow the doings of some of one or more of its inhabitants for a dozen pages or more. The framing matrix -- 'story' would be incorrect -- which binds these vignettes is the dilemma of the ship, which finds its programming to be constricting and possibly error-prone. But the solution to this dilemma, which is revealed at the end, has little or nothing to do with the rest of the book. Any solution could have been revealed here, and been just as useful and just as plausible. This isn't to say that the book isn't worth reading. It's a well-crafted travelogue. (It's not easy to write a three-hundred-page travelogue covering dozens of worlds without boring the reader.) And there is some meat in the unifying question of what 'humanity' means. But in the end, this book is unsatisfying. The main thing it has going for it is that it collects a large number of good but undeveloped ideas -- and good but undeveloped ideas are the most common commodity in science fiction. Not a bad book. Just not a good book. ----- Dani Zweig dani@netcom.com 'T is with our judgements as our watches, none Go alike, yet each believes his own --Alexander Pope