About Book Tastings:
In a book tasting, we read only the opening 25 pages of a book. We’ll tell how the book begins and then say whether those pages inspired us to continue reading the book. A book tasting is not a book review; it doesn’t evaluate the entire book. (For more about Book Tastings, click here)
The World Swappers is science fiction book by John Brunner (1934-1995) who was a British author of science fiction novels and stories.
The first 25 pages are chapters 1 through 3 plus two pages of chapter 4.
Chapter 1 begins with a man, Counce, alone on a boat in the middle of the Pacific awaiting the landing of a starship on the ocean. The starship lands at high speed, comes to a stop less than a half mile away, then disappears using “blanking frequencies.” The deck of Counce’s boat becomes hot and Counce jumps overboard. The starship blows up his boat using a “sonic” weapon.
Counce swims underwater to where the starship was. When he surfaces, he sees two men. One man has a gun; the other man is Bassett. Counce is ordered aboard the starship. Bassett asks Counce what he wants, not who he is. Counce boldly claims that he knows what Bassett wants, which is to rule the galaxy.
Chapter 2 starts with an infodump. It’s the 26th century and human populations exist on Earth plus 31 more planets. Nearly all the colony planets hate Earth. Computers predict Earth will go through a severe crisis in around fifty years. Earthlings who become dissatisfied during this crisis will have no place to escape to because there are no uninhabited, livable worlds within explored space.
Counce and Bassett, who are apparently both men in positions of power, think Earth needs to improve relationships with the colonial planets so that they’ll accept new immigrants from Earth. But they disagree where to start. Counce demands to be allowed to deal with the planet Ymir for Bassett or to be let go to swim to a nearby sub. Bassett orders his starship to jump a couple of miles. Bassett threatens Counce, and his goons unsuccessfully attempt to take Counce prisoner. Counce disappears.
Chapter 3 is set on the planet Regis, the farthest outpost of humanity. At the north pole of Regis, there’s an excavation site where a crew are digging for evidence of a supspected, although not yet encountered, non-human, space-traveling species they call the Others. An empty food container which was not human-made is found. Almost all the crew leave Regis via “transfax” with their proof aliens had been on Regis. They apparently work with Counce. Recent recruit Anty Dreean is ordered to stay behind with another crew member to search for what else the Others left behind. Anty is fascinated when he digs up a broken cathode-ray tube made by aliens.
In the first two pages of chapter 4, back on Earth, Counce arrives via “transfax” on a crowded sub borrowed from Dateline Fisheries near where the starship landed. Counce meets up with two of his probably important allies.
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I’m not sure where the plot of The World Swappers will eventually go, but the first 25 pages were interesting enough to make me want to read more.
The book features science fictional unreal technology such as the transfax (a teleporter), blanking frequencies (a cloaking field), a sonic weapon (which destroys by finding critical resonance), the Metchnikov drive (a FTL propulsion system), and speculative vibrations in space which spread like wakes from FTL ships.
Unfortunately, I didn’t find either Counce or Bassett to be particularly relatable characters. They are supposedly powerful men, but the author Brunner doesn’t provide any background of who they are, not even their first names. It makes their conflict feel less real. Counce seems set up to be the protagonist and Bassett the antagonist.
Anty Dreean, the young recruit at the polar dig on Regis, is a potentially a more relatable character. He might become important later regarding contact with the alien Others.
The first 25 pages didn’t seem overly dated. That’s good comsidering this was book was published in 1959. Although several details reflected its age: Counce’s small boat was powered by a (nuclear) reactor and it leaked radiation when the boat was blown up and that radioactivity wasn’t depicted as worrisome or harmful; the technological artifact found on Regis was a cathode-ray tube (which is considered old technology now); and Counce and Bassett were depicted as casually smoking cigarettes and cigarillos.
I believe there are story ideas worth exploring in this science fiction book.
Book Tasting post by Amy Peterson
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