I would say that this novel feels a lot like Foundation + A Clockwork Orange. The novel is, more or less, an action novel. However, the overarching structure is a sort of economic/sociological future that we are not really told enough about.

This was a strange novel to read – difficult as heck to start, stubborn in the middle, and somewhat rewarding at the end. I feel like though I did not love it, there is something about it that lingers in my imagination after I finished it. ( )

review of
John Brunner's Meeting at Infinity
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 27, 2013

This is the 25th bk I've read by Brunner (if I count Ace Doubles as 2 bks) & reading his work still brings me a great deal of pleasure & stimulation. As is often the case w/ SF, the notes I took for this review were minimal since what I mostly wd've written about wd've been plot elements that I often avoid referring to to avoid spoilers.

It's interesting for me to note slight differences between Brunner bks that show his trying out writerly touches. EG: Meeting at Infinity begins w/ a prologue that I found 'poetic'. Here's the very beginning:

"On the stroke of twelve o'clock noon-for-doom of this day and no other: begins destiny. Begins death. Tick away time—heartbeat, clocktick, belltoll.

"THIS WAY OUT." - p 1

Central to the plot, is a thing called the "Tacket Principle" wch allows the exploration of parallel Earths. I found Brunner's explanation of the discovery ingenious:

"The great discovery—that of his celebrated Principle, which changed the world—was the fruit of an examination of pi. It fired his mind; his mind was explosive; the explosion came near to destroying everything.

"Pi, it seemed, was invariant. However, certain deductions from curved-space mathematics indicated conditions under which it would assume values different from the familiar 3.1416. It would remain an irrational number of course. But the physical conditions for altering its value could be described. Tacket's preoccupation with analogues of number did the rest." - p 24

& Brunner, being a writer, rather than just an extrapolator of scientific possibilities, creates slang for the future environment he's describing:

""There was one in the crowd. Brown coverup, average height, automat barberclip, brown hair plain, all like anyone. But he didn't look like a dreg, didn't smell like a dreg, and when shouted out to Lyken he didn't sound like a dreg. In my tapes, that's curio." - p 35

It's fun for me, as the reviewer, to be able to quote a summation of sorts from near the end of a bk w/o having it actually spoil the plot. For the reader of this review, the following quote is too out-of-context to be overly revealing but may be intriguing as it stands:

"Allyn glanced at him. "You have to regard it this way," she said. "Physical and mental are conjoined and interdependent; you cannot have a mind discarnate, but it has to grow within a growing brain. Contrariwise, it appears to me, physical reality is a kind of sum total or common denominator of that which is perceived by consciousness. It is possible to act mentally on this physical reality so as to change not it itself, but the mode in which it is perceived. Do you follow me?" - p 150

Part of what interests me about the above is the idea of acting mentally on the mode in wch physical reality is perceived in order to, effectively, change what constitutes physical reality for ourselves. Beauty is in the mind of the beholder.

My Twitter name is "Psychic Weed" wch is NOT meant to imply that I consider myself a "psychic" (even tho I might be to a teeny extent) or to express an advocacy for pot (by all means make it legal - otherwise, I find pot of little value). Instead, it's a reference to my notion that freedom lies largely in the defiance of geometrical containers (both physical & conceptual) by biomorphic phenomena. Consider this:

"Also true, they made no allowance for the difference between their society—an oligarchy ruling a 'black-boxed' majority—and ours, so they never reckoned on Mr. Hole's yonder boys, or with Director Lanchery's animals and wild men."" - p 151 ( )

This flawed but wildly inventive 1961 Brunner novel gives us a near future scenario in which ruthless capitalists compete to exploit parallel worlds, in the face of superstitious and at times violent opposition from the slacker riff raff of society.

The book offers a relentless pace, a surprisingly broad cast of interesting and unusual characters (characters who offer little depth but who often act with delicious irrationality), compelling imagery, and a plot that manages to feel both contrived and disjointed at the same time. There is no clear protagonist; the two characters who end up driving the climax of the story are not who you would have expected.

It doesn't work particularly well as a novel, but it is a profoundly more ambitious work than the other early Brunner novels I have read to date, and clearly a work by an author who might bring us Stand on Zanzibar several years down the road. ( )

This is an early novel by John Brunner (first published in 1961) and it has been all but eclipsed by his later work – rather regrettably so, as this is well worth reading, not just as juvenilia that paved the way for greater things, but as an excellent novel in its own right.

Meeting at Infinity starts off very much at the deep end, with a prologue written in rhythmically accented, suggestive prose that shoots a barrage of names and concepts at the reader none of which are in the least explained. It lends the novel a very hectic, modernist feel right from the start, and things slow down only slightly when the plot proper sets in, and a plethora of viewpoint characters flick past in quick succession while the action rushes along at a fast pace, leaving the reader trying to catch up breathlessly. And once everything seems to fall into place and things finally start to make turns, it turns out that nothing is really as it seems…

While the novel never really loses steam and keeps the reader gripped until the nicely delivered twist at the end, it seems to run out of new ideas to throw around about two thirds in and ends somewhat blandly as an alien invasion story. While this a bit disappointing it is relatively minor quibble for a novel that packs an insane amount of ideas in such a small space (showing once again that a novel can be great and entertaining even under 300 pages). It reads a bit like a Philip K. Dick novel, and while it is not quite as mind-boggling as the best by Dick, it is much better written. I also could not help but wonder how much of an influence this novel might have had on later writers, namely William Gibson, Iain M. Banks and Hannu Rajaniemi came to my mind quite often while reading this. In any case, it’s great to see this made available again by the SF Gateway, and I’m rather looking forward to eventually making my way through all of Brunner’s oeuvre.