review of
John Brunner's The Productions of Time
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 25, 2013

This is the 11th Brunner bk I've read & I'm lovin' it! The Sheep Look Up is the one that completely convinced me of his genius (my complete review of that is here: http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/344636-a-review-of-john-brunner-s-ecological... ) so now I feel fairly uninhibited in my enthusiasm. The Productions of Time mostly proceeds along as a somewhat lurid tale of a purported Argentine expatriate avant-garde theater director & the trials & tribulations of his exploited cast & crew.

Given that this novel was copyrighted in 1967 & given that Argentina was in the beginning of its "Argentine Revolution" (1966-1973) wch was followed by even more military coups, arguably one of the most brutal time of dictatorships in the 20th century, & given that I've read both about the horrors of that Argentine time AND about the Argentine Avant-Garde of the 1960s (banned under the "Argentine Revolution" along w/ mini-skirts & long hair on men) (see my review of Inès Katzenstein's Listen Here Now! Argentine Art of the 1960s: Writing of the Avant-Garde here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/478375.Listen_Here_Now_ ), I was very interested in how Brunner wd handle just this basic plot element. & he handled it beautifully indeed - BUT, it was a sortof red herring!

The Argentine expatriate character is named Manuel Delgado. He's presented as using highly technical means of mind control. In 1969, a man named Jose M. Delgado published a bk called Physical Control of the Mind: Towards a Psychocivilized Society about his experiments w/ using electrical stimulation to the brain for controlling animal action - w/ an eye toward human application. As I recall, Delgado stopped charging bulls, eg, by sending a radio signal to an electrode inserted in the bull's brain. I haven't read the bk (&, unfortunately, can't find my copy right now) but any "Psychocivilized Society" founded on the use of such techniques is definitely NOT my idea of a good time! Cd Brunner have known about Delgado when he wrote The Productions of Time? It seems likely.

Making matters even stranger is that when the character's introduced it's in this sentence: ""What do you make of this man Delgado, Ralph—this Argentian that Blizzard's got hold of?". (p 10) Now, the "Ralph" is the name of the person addressed - not the Delgado in question's 1st name. However, in a post-card that I rc'vd from "Blaster" Al Ackerman in 1981, a photograph showed a person purported by Blaster to be "Ralph Delgado [..] c.a.s.f.c." (Clark Ashton Smith Fellowship Chapter). Blaster, ever full of deliberately misleading identity clues & obscure SciFi references was probably pulling some sort of esoteric joke here. SO, who the fuck was Ralph Delgado? Was he a character in a SciFi story? & was Brunner making a similar obscure reference here?

There're certainly plenty of references that a scholar of avant-garde culture such as myself are likely to 'get': ""Yes, I remember what you had to say about The Connection, Pat!["]" (p 10) - The Connection being a fairly obscure 1961 film by Shirley Clarke; ""The one he did with Garrigue gave me the most stimulating evening I've had in a theater since Godot." (p 11) - the "Godot" being. of course, Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" - admittedly considerably less obscure but still for a somewhat smaller audience than mainstream theater; "["]it's experimental, but it might be an oddball success like that movie—uh—Cassavetes' thing, Shadows (p 54); ""Come off it, Murray," Blizzard said. "We do have a sick world, and he does have his own point of view, but it's as valid as Genet's, for example. And I can't imagine you making the same comment about Genet."" (p 55); "["]And then suddenly this turns up—a Delgado play, the sort of thing people talk about in the same breath as Beckett or Ionesco["]". (p 96)

Murray, the main character actor, gets ensconced in a former Country Club / Hotel where a "Picasso reproduction was centered over the head of the bed." (p 18) Anyone who's ever stayed in a hotel knows that the likelihood of anything as not-bland as a Picasso in one's rm is pretty unlikely! The stage is set!

""Are we to take it, Mr. Delgado, that the form you wish to give the result of our—our collectively developed work is that of social criticism?"

""If you mean will it contain a plea fro reform, then the answer is no." Delgado spoke quite calmly. "I am an artist, not a doctor. My speciality is cancer and gangrene at the stage where there is no hope of cure."" - p 26

Yes, the stage is set - but NOT, ultimately, for the play we've been set-up for.

""I don't know what to make of this," he said. But I'm sure of one thing. When you said they weren't sleeping, you were half right. Those poor folk are in a hypnotic trance."" - p 121

Brunner had hypnotism in another bk, a novella called The Evil That Men Do (you can see my review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18106412-the-evil-that-men-do-the-purloined-p... ).

""Triplem? That's microminiaturized multicore cable. the stuff you kept tearing off your mattress. You wouldn't have recognized it. It won't be developed until 1989."" - p 126

Ha ha! Well, I won't explain that one.. but as somebody who worked in an electrical engineering dept in 1989 this prophecy of what was then the future tickles my fancy.

&, yes, as w/ Brunner's Born Under Mars (see my review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7444536-born-under-mars ), there's another heteroromantic ending that's bound to please suckers for such things (like myself) - if only b/c our actual life experience is so different! ( )

A brilliant but martinet-like director has secluded the cast of a new film in an unused mansion for weeks of intense, bizarre rehearsals. A declining actor (who narrates the story) discovers the horrible truth (a favorite Brunner theme) about the director and the explanation for the many odd things he has observed. One of his early gems. ( )