John Brunner - Reţelele infinitului

John Brunner - Reţelele infinitului
(The Webs of Everywhere)

(1974, 116pg, ro)

Here, Brunner deals with the broader philosophical and sociological implications of the existence of this kind of technology, whereas in the later novel he confronts it as a physics problem. Though Webs roots its story in a few assumptions that are initially a little hard to swallow — that the device, implemented without any sort of security apparatus of any kind, is singly responsible for the destruction of civilization as we know it — ultimately the tale is more thematically and intellectually rewarding.

Once the Skelter made global instantaneous travel a reality, it soon proved to have opened a Pandora's Box. Terrorists, criminals, and other miscreants used to device with impunity, wreaking havoc upon the world leading to an apocalyptic war the characters refer to as the Blowup. Not until after the dust had settled and the straggling remnants of humanity pulled themselves together did one of the world's few remaining wealthy movers and shakers, the philanthropist Chaim Aleuker, invent the privateer, that allowed Skelter owners a privacy code. It's a bit implausible, I know, that Skelters would have been built without such a device in the first place. Kind of like building a house without a door that locks.

Anyway, many years after the Blowup, we meet Hans Dykstra and Mustapha Sharif. Hans is a photographer and hobbyist who has been illegally buying Skelter codes from Mustapha, a blind Egyptian poet who has attained influence and reknown for his own philanthropic work. Hans wants a little reknown of is own, travelling to ruined cities and abandoned, forbidden territories to catalog their history; he hopes that after his own death his work will be appreciated despite its illegality. But soon ambition and greed take over Hans' altruism. One of the few men with a wife (the male/female population ratio is skewed), he is still deeply dissatisfied with his lot. Clearly a man can have what few other men have and still be miserable.