I remember seeing Brunner at a convention 30 years ago, or more, talking about ‘the death of the midlist’: how writers who sold their work steadily to publishers, and to readers, used to be able to make a living from doing so, but no longer could. I wonder what he’d make of the publishing scene today.

Anyway, this slim book from 1966 hides its science-fictional nature till almost the very end. Unless you’ve read the blurb. Or indeed, this post, or the wikipedia entry about it. A theatre actor, a recovering alcoholic not long out of a sanatorium, gets the chance to work with a hip writer and director.

They’re going to get a troupe together, coop them up in a house in the country, and work collaboratively to construct a play.

Or at least, that’s what they want the cast members to think.

It’s not bad, if a little inconsequential.