Review of The Traveler in Black by John Brunner

Breaking into the business with Silver Age space opera but putting himself on the map by writing intelligent dystopia with a social conscience, few are aware that for a brief moment John Brunner put aside science fiction and dabbled in fantasy.  After the success of Stand on Zanzibar, The Jagged Orbit, and The Sheep Look Up, he wrote the four novelettes starring the other-wordly traveler in black.  Unconventional to say the least, the eponymous collection is fantasy without being fantasy.  A wizard (of sorts) may be the common thread binding the stories together, but humanity is at stake.  The novelettes thus embrace the general idea of genre, but eschew its epic-ness in favor of parables.

“He had many names, but one nature, and this unique nature made him subject to certain laws not binding upon ordinary persons. In a compensatory fashion, he was also free from certain other laws more commonly in force.” is the quote which opens the first novelette in the collection, “Imprint of Chaos”.  The traveler in black seen carrying only a staff of light, he walks the land granting wishes in satirical fashion, fending off the ingress of Chaos to give Order its place.  And indeed the city of Ryovora requires every ounce of his wisdom if they are to survive the malevolent enchanter who seeks to twist the roots of the people’ ideology to the rudiments of a forgotten era. 

“Break the Door of Hell”, the second novelette in the collection, is another story with morals of human dimension.  Believing its ancestors have set them on the wrong path, the people of Ys request the traveler in black resurrect the town’s dead in order that they might berate the sentient corpses and force them to provide the labor necessary to get the town back into shape.  Getting more than they wished for, the town’s folk later come to the traveler with even more desperate requests.

After a terrible calamity strikes the village of Wantwich, the traveler in black confronts the General guilty of the destruction and makes him an offer he can’t refuse.  “The Wager Lost by Winning” a clever tale, it’s up to the reader to discover whether life is indeed nothing but a punt.

The only of the stories to be nominated for an award (the Hugo, interestingly enough), “Dread Empire” tells of the traveler in black’s usage of Four Elementals towards teaching wisdom to the Duke and chandler of a small town.  The note upon which the story ends, however, may be of most important regarding the collection as a whole.

In the end, The Traveler in Black is a collection of morally enlightening tales.  Brunner writing in the dense style readers of his other works will be familiar with, it’s possible to pick at random any of the parables as none are connected in a linear sense, though, given the manner in which “Dread Empire” ends, it’s best to read it last.  Formulaic, Brunner reintroduces his main character through humorous wish grantings at the outset of each novelette, little if any work having been completed prior to compiling the four stories to smoother blend them together. Nothing exceptionally notable about the collection, and neither nothing particularly terrible, they are run-of-the-mill stories which have seeped into history of the genre and would have perhaps better to have been fleshed out into novella length.  For those looking for a comparison, I would easily nominate Moorcock’s Elric as a notable parallel as each deal with the war between Order/Law and Chaos.  The Traveler in Black later republished as The Compleat Traveler in Black upon the release of a fifth novelette, “The Things That Are Gods”, readers be warned that if this review sounds intriguing, there are other options.