The Wrong End Of Time by John Brunner (book review).
It was not unusual back in the 1970s for the write-up on the back cover of SF books to be occasionally different or highlighting different things to the content. A case in point is John Brunner’s ‘The Wrong End Of Time’, both in title and content. You can’t always necessarily blame the writer.
A lot of the time, it’s the publisher looking at how they are going to promote a book, especially a Hugo winner. Has it got a sufficiently Science Fiction name? Putting a spaceship on the cover will garner sales. All little hooks to up the sales long before authors had a known fanbase. I can’t see anything here to do with time travel either.
I’m still trying to work out what the title has to do with the plot. Danty Ward observes the arrival of the Soviet Vassily Sheklov on the shore and discreetly follows him into the interior of the country, even committing a murder that is noted as illegal but managed to be overlooked. The plot suddenly becomes delayed in the town of Lakonia, where Ward stops in while he hangs around with the local population.
It’s at this point we also discover Ward is Black, as is the majority of the local population. Even then, two-thirds of the way through the book do we discover that there is an alien spaceship in the outer reaches of the solar system, but not how Ward knows this or what is going to be done about it and then ignored. It is only a couple lines, so it is not even part of the plot.
Much of it is life in Lakonia with hints of racism but not going too far. Bear in mind this book was written in the early 1970s and feels more like Brunner was testing the waters. The fact that this book had a couple of reprints shows it must have had a readership.
It’s interesting to see how Brunner deals with characters with some insight, but a lot of it feels surface, mostly because we don’t get the motivations or just what is going on. He captures the dialogue well and never gets away with swear words, which were largely missed in other SF novels. It almost makes me wonder if the book was composed to fulfil a contract and have a book in time for release or just to make some much-needed money.
Don’t go after this book if you expect a space adventure. It’s not. Quite where it’s doing it, I’m still not sure. As an examination of American small-town social life, for a Brit, Brunner captures an interesting essence from that time period.
GF Willmetts
February 2026
(pub: Methen, 1976 of a 1971 release. 185 page paperback. Price: varies. ISBN: 0-413-34586-7).
