The Squares of the City
Posted 27 Feb, 2005 at 16:50 by matt in /Books | Permanent link
John Brunner is a science-fiction author that anyone who's interested in SF should read. He writes social
SF for the most part; what there is in the way of technological gadgetry is mostly subordinate to questions of how people -- large groups of people -- manage to live together under different circumstances. Often the results of his ponderings are dystopic; unlike the classic dystopias, though, Brunner almost always allows for a thread of hope in his broken worlds.
Brunner had a ten-year period, roughly centered around 1970, of banging out one classic novel after another. Probably his best known are the award-winning Stand on Zanzibar (1968), which looks at population pressure, and The Shockwave Rider (1975), which now looks like an immediate precursor to the cyberpunk movement. I've been finding and reading other Brunner books from this period, and a little while ago I picked up The Squares of the City.
Squares deals with mind control: not in the sense of direct thought control or zombification or anything like that, but through more subtle vectors. Advertising and propoganda. Subliminal imagery. Base manipulation. The protagonist's craft is that of "traffic engineer", and he's brought to a Latin American utopia of a city in order to eliminate certain unplanned, undesirable features of the city. Throughout the story one finds chess imagery, echoing both the main character's profession (of subtly manipulating circumstances to desired ends) and the discussions of the role of media in shaping public opinion.
The story works on several levels. At its base, it's a narration of a conflict where neither side seems to be entirely pure or correct, and so it's interesting purely for the reason. At the same time, it's a meditation on freedom and manipulation and responsibility. And above all that, is a beautiful bit of structural play which reveals itself as the book progresses. It's worth reading, but do yourself a favour: if you grab a copy of it, skip over the preface (written by Emmanuel Laskar, a chess-master); it doesn't say much that Brunner himself doesn't say in the afterword, and it gives away something of the game.