Ésta es la historia de un planeta condenado porque su estela atraviesa una peligrosa zona del brazo espiral de la galaxia, una región de gas, polvo y torbellinos cósmicos que alteran la vida de las estrellas hasta convertirlas en novas y destruir su cortejo de planetas. La vida inteligente del planeta reside en una extraña especie surgida del mundo vegetal. Gente sin esqueleto que se mantiene ergida por efecto de la presión hidráulica en unos frágiles túbulos protegidos por un manto. Usan zarpas para manipular objetos y enfrentarse a un mundo que contemplan con su único ojo y un sofisticado sentido-del-clima. Con el hambre son susceptibles de caer en un peligroso estado de ensoñación que los hace muy vulnerables a la peor histeria religiosa. Pero están obligados a superar sus propias limitaciones para realizar el viaje a las estrellas, único camino que puede salvarlos del inclemente desafío de los cielos.

review of
John Brunner's The Crucible of Time
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 26, 2017

I've already thoroughly praised Brunner in many other reviews but I had the vague feeling that I might've exhausted my praise for him insofar as I thought that anything I might read new by him wdn't surprise me. I was wrong. The Crucible of Time surprised me, it was significantly different from anything I'd already read by him & satisfyingly epic.

The Foreword establishes what I assume to've been the basis for the bk:

"It is becoming more and more widely accepted that Ice Ages coincide with the passage of the Solar System through the spiral arms of our galaxy. It therefore occurred to me to wonder what would become of a species that evolved intelligence just before their planet's transit of a gas-cloud far denser than the one in Orion which the Earth has recently—in cosmic terms—traversed.

"In my attempt to invent history I have frequently relied on the advice of Mr. Ian Ridpath, whose prompt and generous aid I gratefully acknowledge." - p ix

Brunner wasn't satisfied to just take the reader thru such an imagined major shift in a planet's ecological condition. He invented a species, a protagonist being, & its culture & provides an epic in 7 parts an epilogue to show this species faces near extinction over & over again but still manages to have enuf survivors to enable evolving to the degree of being able to attempt to cope w/ these cosmic catastrophes. Each section evolves into the legend of the next section. Each legend feeds the evolution. The initial protagonist is Jing, whose heritage forms an important lineage throughout the bk. One aspect of the epic thread is religion vs science:

"Shuddering, yet determined to pursue his quest, Jing eventually discovered the secret of their dominance. It lay not in their armies, nor their treasures. It consisted in the deliberate and systematic exploitation of the dreams of those less well-to-do than themselves, a possibility which had never occurred to him, and which the language barrier prevented him from comprehending until a lordling he had disappointed in his hope of brand-new armaments set sacerdotes upon him at his lodgings." - p 6

It's never completely obvious what sort of creatures these main characters are:

"children as yet unable to raise themselves upright were playing with a litter of baby canifangs, whose claws were already sharp. Now and then that led to squalling, whereupon a nursh would run to the defense of its charge, mutely seeking a grin of approval from the fathers who sat from left to right. Each had a female companion, and if the latter were in bud made great show of providing for her, but otherwise merely allowed her to bite off a few scraps." - p 12

The language is just close enuf to using (English) human terms to anthropomorphize the situation - but these aren't humans. "canifangs" could be 'canines with fangs', puppies in this instance playing w/ babies; "nursh" obviously is close to 'nurse'; "in bud" = pregnant.

"And strode forward fully upright, not letting the least hint of pressure leak from his tubules. Arriving in front of the Count, he paid him the Ntahish compliment of overtopping him yet shielding his mandibles." - p 14

We read physical descriptions of the characters involving tubules, mantles, & mandibles. I think of insects but I also think of Kafka's purported avoidance of having an illustration of what Gregor Samsa turned into in "The Metamorphosis". In other words, I'm not so sure that Brunner wants the reader to think of these creatures in an absolutely defined physical way, it occurs to me that he might want their alienness to be sufficient & for the reader's attn to be directed to more philosophical aspects of the story.

Jing is traveling to investigate rumors about a fantastic observatory in the far north:

"However, he was finding it a disappointment. It was a mere depression in the rock. Walbushes had been trained to make a circular windbreak, and their rhizomes formed crude steps enabling one to look over the top for near-horizon observations. A pumptree whose taproot reached down to a stream of hot water grew in the center where on bitter nights one might lean against it for warmth. A few lashed-together poles indicated important lines-of-sight. Apart from that—nothing." - pp 15-16

These beings specialize in some sort of bioengineering, as alluded to above. Almost everything they have is made of plants controlled to their purposes & other beings that they'd domesticated:

"Next day distraught parents came crying that a snowbelong had killed a child from the furthest-outlying village, and the Count hauled himself out of his sitting-pit and set out to hunt it down with hoverers and canifangs." - p 23

Given that this is an epic, it takes the reader thru the looooonnnnngggg term development of the technology needed for, eventually, leaving the planet:

""Ah! You found another magnifying drop. It's especially clear and fine, I must say."

""Not found," Twig announced solemnly. "Made."

""How? Out of what?"

""Sand, would you believe? Yes, the same sand you find beside the hot marsh! Keepfire's flames are getting better and hotter—oh, I know people are complaining about the smell, but that's a small price to pay!—and this time he's excelled himself! And there's more. Look at this!"

"He produced what he had in his other claw. It was of similar material, equally clear, but twice the size.

""Hold them up together—no, I don't mean together, I mean—Oh, like this!" Twig laid claws on Jing in a way the latter would never normally have tolerated, but it was certainly quicker than explaining. "Now look at something through both of them, and move them apart or together until you see it clearly. Got it?"

"Jing grew instantly calm. There presented to his eye was an image of Twig, albeit upside-down . . . but larger, and amazingly sharp except around the edges." - p 33

Yes! The people with claws have discovered the can-opener! After Jing is the 1st person to cut his claw on the can-opener he gets poisoning, his mantle turns paisley, & he has a vision:

""If stars are fire, then new stars happen when fresh fuel is fed to them. What fuel is there, barring worlds like ours? If we would rather not be fuel for a star, there's no one who can save us but ourselves . . . I've dreamed. It's made me weary. I must rest."" - p 44

So, the people tie a can-opener to a string & launch it with a kite & the sky cracks open! The story jumps forward in time. Out of the vagina in the sky, well, really, out of the hairs surrounding it, come giant crab-like creatures that the people tame as boats. Due to a cloacal misunderstanding, they name them "briqs" after "briq-shithouse".

"The sound he had recognized was the unmistakable munch-and-slurp of Tempestamer feeding.

"Week exhultation filled him. Surely she was the finest briq ever to set forth from Ushere! He had pithed her personally with all the expertise at his command, leaving untouched by his prong nerves which other Wego captains customarily severed. At first his rivals had derided him; then, however, they saw how docile she was, and how fast she grew, and in the end came begging a share of his knowledge, whereupon it was his turn to scoff. Now she had proved herself beyond doubt, for she had defied the worst weather in living memory and—he looked about him—brought her crew to a safe haven" - p 63

It was at this point that yr astute reporter, ME, realized that, YES, this IS an epic:

". . . In a giant tree at the heart of the city, hollowed out deliberately and ornamented with the finest and handsomest secondary plants, a glass container sealed with wax, through which could be glimpsed the original of Jing's scripture." - p 80

B/c, you see, Jing is long since dead, defunct, deteriorated, dried-up, all washed-up, you name it, but his WORD lives on! Hal 'til you're BLUE ya! I still don't get what any of this has to do w/ that Duchamp installation a the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It took me entirely too long to note the way the middle letters of words acted as hinges between 2 words happily conjoined in budding marriage these words into one. I must be becoming unhinged:

"Braverrant had not returned albeit her master was Boldare, wily in weatherways. No more had Governature with Gallantrue and Drymantle, not—next most envied after Tempestamer—Stormock, whose commander had been Cleverule, sole among them to make two-score voyages.

"Nor Wavictor, nor Knowater, nor Billowise . . . and even Tempestamer had not reported back." - p 87

Now, I don't mean to rub your face in this but I'm going to unspell it out for ya: "Braverrant" = "Brave" "Errant" (like brave knights errant of old n'at), "Boldare" = "Bold" "Dare" (the bold one is likely to marry Dr. Kildare), "Governature" = "Govern" "Nature" (as in 'I'm going to govern nature if I have to bulldoze every damn tree in this fucking Amazon forest!'), "Gallantrue" = "Gallant" "True" (Elvis offered his groupie a beer can tab for a ring before getting down to business to show how gallant & true he was), "Drymantle" = "Drym" "Mantle" (Drym used his mantle as a surfboard in order to keep dry). Well, you get the idea.

On p 123 the epic jumps vastly ahead in time again & we're going to join in that process by jumping even further ahead to p 157 so that I can quote a section that refers back to a part that I didn't quote so that you wdn't understand what's going on if I hadn't just told you:

"["] At Ripar, do they know the legend of Skilluck?"

"Yockerbow looked blank, but to his surprise Arranth, standing by as usual but less bashful than before, said, "If the name is Skilq, we have the same tale, probably."" - p 4,000,968,157

I prefer to pronounce it "Scalduck" but maybe that's too much of a corruption. Just say "Balduck" & click yr heels together & you'll be at p 183 but while you're being silly I'll already be at p 188:

"A cable like a single immensely long nerve-strand had been laid along the sea-bed between the two places, and covered over with piles of rock carefully set in place by divers wearing things called air-feeders: ugly bulging, parasitical organisms bred from a southern species unknown, and unhappy, in these cool northern seas, which somehow kept a person alive underwater. Also they had means to lift even extremely heavy objects, using such substance or creature that contracted with vast force." - p 4,000,968,188

They have some nerve! In our world these "ugly bulging, parasitical organisms" are called millionaires but we misbred them so they're without hearts. They can only survive by sucking the blood out of non-millionaires. Gotta do something about that. Thanks to that not-really-a-joke, time is just flying by here as I make the greatest leap yet to the next era starting on p 241. True to the nature of bankers, a potentially sympathetic figure becomes a figurine of a jerk:

"But if he expected to impress her by boasting, he was wrong. Nothing could have more firmed her determination than this display of the luxury Awb had attained through corrupting the minds of the younger generation. Had she not needed food to power the argument she foresaw as inescapable, she would have voiced her contempt of his tactics; as it was, she resignedly filled her maw and, confident that even yet he would never have been trained in the Jingfired's techniques of dark-use, waited until he chose to speak again." - p 290

Turning on my darklite so I can blind better (or is it blend butter?) I scry that "Awb" is short for "Awful Banker" although these days "Awful Health Care Provider" or "Awful TV Newscaster" might be a more heinous insult. Now that we've mastered darkwordplay there's no reason to jump to the next era, we can just calmly walk there w/o necessarily even looking where we're going:

"At first Chybee was too startled to respond. This magnificent home had overwhelmed her even as she approached: its towering crest, its ramifying branches garlanded with countless luminants, its far-spread webs designed to protect the occupants against wingets and add their miniscule contribution to the pool of organic matter at its roots, cleverly programmed to withdraw before a visitor so that they would not be torn—all, all reflected such luxury as far surpassed her youthful experience." - p 299

& I thought that teaching my dog to fetch was something. So what if he's fetching a new girlfriend for me? "Out of the mantles of young'uns" (p 309) as we say.

Remember "Voosla"? One of those post-briqs that became a giant floating city but then got forced way inland b/c of a tidal wave generated by a meteorite crash? NO, of course, you don't remember it! This is the 1st you've heard of it! &, even then, only if you pronounced the word out loud:

""As nearly as we can establish, Slah was once a city of the People of the Sea," Ugant expounded in a perfectly relaxed tone. That may sound ridiculous, given how far it now lies above seas-level, but our researches have confirmed what for countless generations was only a folktale. When the Greatest Meteorite hit, the city Voosla was borne many padlonglaqs from the nearest ocean. Naturally the over-pressure killed its inhabitants." - p 316

Naturally. Our dear friend Chybee gets inveigled (don't you just love that word?) into infiltrating a CULT that may've been a descendent of the Awful Banker. J u s t a s y o u a r e b e i n g i n v e i g l e d i n t o a c u l t r i g h t n o w b y e v e n r e a d i n g t h i s w e i r d r e v i e w.. Boy will she be sorry.

"Impressed, Cometaster said, "And your means . . . ?"

"With stiff dignity, Chybee answered, "Those who attain enlightenment will recognize its import in due time."

"The other three exchanged glances.

""Aglabec is going to be very interested in you," said Witnessunbride. "He's the only other person I ever heard say anything like that. And the only other person so advanced he can contact other planets without needing to fast. That is, assuming you got your knowledge about Sluggard direct. Did you? Ot were you just told it by your budder or someone?"" - p 332

Yes, join my cult (a s i f y o u h a d a n y c h o i c e), & you will never have to eat again! I will take on that Earthly responsibility for you. SO, you joined the CULT OF THE BOOK REVIEWER & the next thing you know you've jumped up to another section beginning on p 357 & tripped over to p 359 where the pre-launch routine is in-progress:

""Propulsion mass and musculator pumps?"

"There were no complaints from the docile creatures responsible for his maneuvers in orbit. He said so.

""Respiration?"

""Sourgas level normal."

""Pheremone absorption?"" - p 359

These claw & mantle folks do things a little differently. For one thing, they know how to put farts to work, bless 'em. Anyway, I, as your book reviewer cult guru, am now ending this review as if I didn't have a care in the world. Good night, Tiny Tim, wherever you are. ( )

This book was very well executed -- the passage of intelligent life through the process of civilization; discoveries, inventions, the slow shift from superstition and magic to science and exploration. I did get bogged down for a while trying to visualize the main characters and the environments that they lived in. The novel jumps forward through the timeline similar to Asimov's Foundation stories, so although the characters change in each section, there remains some continuity. I'm not a huge fan of that format, though I did enjoy seeing the progress and changes in each period. A worthwhile read, though not one that particularly engaged me due to the format. ( )

A fantastic view of an alien species from the onset of astronomy to their attempts at space flight, this book is an amazing read that any scifi fan should have on their shelf. ( )

An epic sci-fi novel about the progression of history and culture on
an alien planet peopled by an insect-like sentient race.
The 'novel' is really six separate stories, each dealing with a
momentous point in their history. It follows the race from a primitive
society to a spacefaring people who desperately need to escape from
the asteroid belt that threatens their planet. In each story, a
brilliant young person with groundbreaking ideas must fight to take a
cultural step forward.
Although the book's not unreadable, I didn't find any of the stories,
or their characters, to be very memorable - I didn't get emotionally
caught up in their lives or their issues. I think part of this is
because I suspect that Brunner might have thought the fact that his
characters were aliens would be a bit off-putting, and therefore he
really intentionally avoids physical descriptions of them and their
surroundings. I kept getting distracted by trying to put small clues
together to try to figure out what they looked like. Although his
alien culture was well-thought-out and featured interesting details,
the book as a whole lacked plot tension. ( )