The time is the future. The place, an America so isolated by fear that it is cut off from the rest of the world by a massive defense system. Into this armed, barricaded state comes a young Russian scientist bearing a strange- and almost unbelievable story:
Superior, intelligent life- of a far higher order than any on earth- has been detected near the planet Pluto. Immune themselves by virtue of their far greater intelligence, these Aliens are about to destroy the planet Earth.'
Only being 160 pages, the book is very short but don't expect a story which dabbles half-and-half of the above synopsis. The first 90% of the book merely mentions aliens beyond Pluto and only in the last remaining pages is there an explanation about what the aliens are about. There are no space scenes, no descriptions of the spaceship or the aliens (except that that are made of anti-matter) and it seems the fact is moot if were not for the Russian secret and its affect on the American government.
To give credit where credit is due, I enjoy many of Brunner's old paperback novels, but this wasn't one of them. Brunner wrote a number of sci-fi novels which are taken place in space, which one would gather that The Wrong End of Time is one of those novels (picture big spaceship on the cover). Written in 1971, Brunner has an accurate description of future America. He wrote of soy burgers, carbon fiber, sulfur dioxide and skin-bond- all of which have become predominant in our society.
One major & one minor problem with the book:
- The character Danty is a man at the `wrong end of time' but this trait is never explored fully. Is it simply luck which drives him to correct decisions or is he an alien agent on planet Earth?
- The following line rambles and make very little sense to me: `...a newspaper cutting... from the Chinese official paper Red Banner and it showed a North Vietnamese official press photo of a captured American pilot... being led through the streets of Hanoi... because this man had committed the crime of bombing Angkor Wat.' Angkor Wat is in Cambodia, which borders Vietnam.