Muddle Earth [Mass Market Paperback]

John Brunner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 4, 1993

Rinpoche Gibbs wakes up in the twenty-fourth century and finds a world populated by weird characters, such as Pope Joan II, Sherlock Holmes and his Biker Street Irregulars, and others. By the author of A Maze of Stars.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Del Rey; First Edition edition (August 4, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345378512
• ISBN-13: 978-0345378514
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,262,258 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars This book was confusing and amusing., June 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Muddle Earth (Mass Market Paperback)

Muddle Earth caught my eye because of the title's resemblance to Middle Earth (Tolkien). It kept my eye because it reminded me of Douglas Adams. The book made me laugh while making me think a lot to try to sort things out. I really enjoyed it and am planning to read more of Brunner's books.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Muddled, October 16, 2010

By 

Paul Brooks (New Hampshire) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Muddle Earth (Mass Market Paperback)

John Brunner (1934-1995) was a prolific science fiction writer, one of many from England that had great commercial success in the United States. Muddle Earth was published in 1993.

Admirers of Mr. Brunner's writings, and I count myself as a member of that large community, will, I believe, be somewhat disappointed in this, his last novel. The story is a tongue in cheek satire concerning an individual returned to life - resurrected - after being "frozen" for many years. Not an original story concept by any means but ripe with possibilities. Brunner employees this theme as an opportunity to lampoon just about everything - handled with a sharp barb this approach could be enchanting but Brunner uses a cleaver. There are lots of puns, plays on other science fiction authors names (a medical machine is THEODOR Surgeon, another quack in Wrong Ghoulart and on and on) and a mammoth assortment of robots and disguised aliens playing historical persons - and some from Earth fiction - Sherlock Holmes and Watson for example.

A interesting book for the dedicated Brunner fans, but casual readers would be better entertained reading his "The Sheep Look Up" - "Shockwave Rider" - or "Stand on Zanzibar".

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Major writer, but a minor work, July 2, 2007

By 

wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Muddle Earth (Mass Market Paperback)

Brunner's best is pretty spectacular, whether in thoughtful fables like Traveler in Black or crumbling futures like The Sheep Look Up. This, I regret, is not his best. Humorous SF has been around for years. "The Hitch Hiker's Guide" was relatively recent when this came out, and Pratchett's Discworld saga was well under way. Perhaps Brunner felt that he needed to write something in that genre to prove himself as a well-rounded writer.

It gets off to a promising start. There are potentially humorous misunderstandings just before the start of his centuries-long cryogenic sleep, more just before the end of it, and a steady stream that carry him on a wild ride through the weirdness of that far-future Earth. For some odd reason, he wakes from his hibernation with after-effects that initially flatten his emotions. That's a clue, dear reader: the dullness within him goes well with the dullness that drags him from one laugh-track episode to the next. Every skit in the sequence falls somehow flat, from the in-jokes of the 1990s SF world to the outlandish names assigned to hero Rinpoche Gibbs, the faux Tibetan, and Nixy Anangaranga-Jones. Perhaps naming the poor girl for a traditional Indian sex manual was to have been mitigated by the fact that she's genetically engineered for irresistable beauty, but that plan fell flat as well.

It doesn't really end, so much as collide with the back cover of the book, something it could have done long since without losing anything that mattered. I really did read it all the way through out of remembered loyalty to Brunner's finest work, but I'm not sure I should have bothered.

-- wiredweird