The Long Result by John Brunner
190 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published July 1981 by Ballantine Books (1st edition 1965)
After reading several new releases I was craving some old-school retro SF. I had some on my TBR but I thought I was a little overdue to read some John Brunner and decided to go with a shorter off-the-beaten-path title. Not considered one of his classics, The Long Result is considered a transitional novel between his more high-class masterpieces of the late sixties and early seventies. I don’t know his timeline like I do PKD, so I could be wrong. Squares of the City which was Hugo nominated and considered one of those border fine literature masterpieces was shopped around for four years in the SF marketplace before it was published the same year as the Long Result.
I suspect the LR was written after SOTC, and it was considered by Brunner to be a safer bet on getting published quicker. My Dickheads out there take note that this is a very Dickian novel that balances message, a little satire, and high concept. Much will be made of this novel being a statement on racism, and that is true, but it is also about Colonialism and how humanity will interface with a wider universe.
Roald Vincent is our primary point-of-view character, who I mentally cast as a Paul Giamatti type rather than a square-jawed Brad Pitt type. He is a low-level government official deep in the bureaucracy, a character you find more often in the SF of Barry Malzberg. That said there is much about the put-upon government work that reminded me of more tongue-in-cheek SF of PKD like The Man Who Japed. This is John Brunner, so you don’t have to worry about it lacking a message and a strong expression of various opinions.
The offices of the Bureau of Cultural Relations chapters early in the novel were some of my favorite parts and I wish Brunner had written more satire. I mean I like the blacker than black Brunner novels like The Sheep Look Up, but the tone here is refreshing. I wanted way more BCR office and government work. That faded a bit as the story went on.
The agency is tasked with helping Aliens who crashed on Earth from Tau Ceti, and many are not happy about these new aliens. The dynamic of this growing human civilization is that the Starhome, a colony world has started to advance well beyond the people who remain on Earth. Divides started to grow including activist groups like “The Stars Are For Man League” pushing human supremacy. Earth in this novel appears to have a liberal government for the whole planet, of course, in this context, we only get a very Western concept of Democracy. Asia and Africa are ignored, a mistake Brunner avoided in Stand on Zanzibar.
Brunner was born in 1934 in England and grew up as Britian had started the post-WWII imperial decline, although sentiments that fostered colonialism were still a part of life at that time. The racism that was common in Anglo-controlled foreign countries is clearly on Brunner’s mind here. All too familiar immigration fears get transplanted in science fictional stand-ins of less technologically advanced species. The humans appear past global war and conflicts but there is drama between conflicting political systems. Much like the inherited supremacist views of colonialist English, the two human colonies are organized on the principle that humans are superior to aliens.
“Cultural survey missions are the next big step. Got to be doubly sure what is and is not safe to trade with them. In the way of information, I mean, for instance, the Sagittarians are completely cooperative, as I’m sure you know. Their psychology doesn’t include the concept of the competition, let alone violence. So we gave them radiotracers without hesitation, and they found techniques immensely useful. They have this big thing in silicon-oxygen genetics and tailor living creatures to their own specifications.”
I don’t believe Brunner as the author wanted to convey the idea humans were superior, only their technology. But there is an interesting reversal as one of the colonies, the Starhome develops faster and solves many problems that we on Earth just assume are the price of living. Now Starhome (explained off-camera in this novel) has developed an anarchist utopia.
“True, we have a very stable society, and for the past two centuries, it's been damned nearly perfect. Now one stars; No one lacks work if he wants it, no one's forced to work if he doesn't want to; We have negligible crime, so our police go unarmed and so on. Any society that's stable and not utterly perfect is capable of being surpassed from the beginning star home has been dedicated to maximum utilization of its human resources. We shy away from that we say totalitarianism and run a mile.”
This very progressive ideal is in a blink and you’ll miss dialogue scenes but it is one example of deeper asides in this novel. This is a utopia colony to a point, but as tightly organized as they are this freedom comes with sacrifices. It is enough to push Starhome past Earth in development. This is the most interesting idea in the novel, and it is a throwaway line that is hardly developed. Although it is interesting how Earth just accepts Starhome’s system as better. Could you imagine America just admitting that Europe has a better health care system, much the entire system of government? Our country wouldn’t so the idea of Earth accepting that the colonies are better run is something that I wish Brunner explored deeper.
The Long Result is largely dismissed as one of Brunner's lesser pulpy works, but it is peppered with moments of inventive Sci-fi and political ideas while not progressive by today’s standards are good points. It is a good Brunner novel but not in the top tier of his canon.
I am not sure I would consider a must-read for everyone, but John Brunner fans it is. For readers interested in the New Wave I would not put it high on the list. There are 5 or 6 Brunner titles I would give priority to. That said you could do worse.