Wed 7 Jun 2017
SF Review: JOHN BRUNNER – The Altar of Asconel.
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Science Fiction & Fantasy[8] Comments
JOHN BRUNNER – The Altar of Asconel. Interstellar Empire series #4. Ace Double M-123, paperback original; 1st printing, July 1965. Published back to back with Android Avenger, by Ted White (reviewed here ). Cover art: Gray Morrow. Previously serialized in If, April-May 1965. Collected in Interstellar Empire (Daw #208, paperback, 1976).
Pure space opera, through and through — the kind of science fiction that might also be called swords and spaceships — but none the less enjoyable, as it should be in the hands of an author who would win a Hugo for his novel Stand on Zanzibar, published only three years later.
The basic premise of The Altar on Asconel is that mankind is in the midst of a galaxy-wide decay after a huge expansion based on what they have found left behind by a prior empire, now mysteriously collapsed. Billions of interstellar spacecraft, for example, are there for the taking.
But borrowing so extensively from another civilization is no way to build another one from the ashes, as mankind has now discovered. One world that has fallen to a cult-like ruler and a priesthood that follows him without question is Asconel. Can the three brothers of the former ruler fight to win back the planet on their own, with only the female companion of one and the fortuitous discovery of a young girl with as yet untapped telepathic powers?
The answer, of course, is yes. You only need to read this book to just begin to understand what such powers can do on the behalf of a ragtag group of rebels such as this. (It’s almost cheating.) As I said earlier, this is pure space opera, such as that championed in the pages of Planet Stories a decade earlier. In one sense, this is more of the same, but with more than the usual amount of thought behind it, it’s also a jump higher — a solid, definitive jump.
June 8th, 2017 at 10:49 am
I read THE ALTAR OF ASCONEL when it was first published as half of an ACE Double. I read it again in the INTERSTELLAR EMPIRE edition. Brunner had a long and mostly successful career. He hoped to reach the Best Sellers list with an historical novel that flopped. That disappointment seemed to crush Brunner and he never recovered.
June 8th, 2017 at 11:57 am
I had forgotten about that book. It has to be The Great Steamboat Race, published by Ballantine in 1983. Doing some research on it (Googling) I found it was “based on the well-known 1870 race between the Mississippi steamboats Natchez and the Rob’t E. Lee.” (Excerpted from a post on Jerry House’s blog. He was giving it away.)
https://jerryshouseofeverything.blogspot.com/2014/11/ (Read down.)
As I recall, the book sank like a stone. I think you’re right about the rest of the story and how it affected his career, which was badly.
June 8th, 2017 at 5:48 pm
My understanding that poor (and perhaps, half-hearted) marketing had a lot to do with the failure of THE GREAT STEAMBOAT RACE.
Brunner’s career was plagued by such disappointments, most of which was not his doing. Much earlier, he had written a mainstream book (if I recall correctly, it’s title was MANALIVE) that he felt would do for his career that LUCKY JIM had done for Kingley Amis’. The timeliness of the book, however, was tied to the then-current situation in Britain. The publishers delayed and delayed the book until the timeliness of the book had passed and then dropped it; it remains unpublished. Brunner’s brief series about Max Curfew, a Black spy, died when his publisher insisted on a certain plot for the next book. Brunner tried to explain that he had used that plot in an earlier Max Curfew novel. That kerfluffle ended a very good series.
Brunner was just one of many talented talented authors who never got the full recognition he deserved.
June 8th, 2017 at 6:56 pm
Your last sentence sums his career up very well. I enjoy his space opera and time travel books quite a bit, but as sure as anything, he was never going to make much of a living from writing them.
An excerpt of MANALIVE appears in THE BOOK OF JOHN BRUNNER (Daw #177, 1976), but I don’t recall reading it.
June 8th, 2017 at 8:18 pm
My impression is that John Brunner is much admired today by science fiction experts. He may not have been a huge “success” during his lifetime. But he created a big body of work of permanent value.
There’s a lesson in there somewhere!
June 8th, 2017 at 9:50 pm
You’re quite right, Mike. Brunner did indeed get out of the space opera sub-genre he was in, and wrote some very fine books at a much higher level, all acclaimed very highly. I don’t know why he wanted more — monetary reasons comes first to mind as a possibility — but a book about a steamboat race? What a huge non-use of talent.
June 10th, 2017 at 10:04 am
I’m not sure Brunner ever “got out of the Space Opera subgenre” — he wrote a wide variety of books, I think, throughout his career. (With, as noted, some of that variety causing him career or publisher problems.)
His late and more ambitious novels are very impressive indeed. But I love the earlier novels, including the space operas, like “The Wanton of Argus” (one of his very earliest stories), which was also in INTERSTELLAR EMPIRE. Oddly, I have not yet read “The Altar on Asconel”, for the weird reason that I have one of the issues of IF in which it was serialized, and I want to get the other one (or two?) and read it in the original form.
June 10th, 2017 at 10:46 am
For what it’s worth, I am quite sure that the next John Brunner novel I read is going to be another of his space opera or time travel books, not one of his more ambitious/serious ones, not all of which have I read.