James Nicoll Reviews

John Brunner’s 1987 The Shift Key is a stand-alone novel.

Usually, I start out by telling readers the genre, but in this case revealing the genre would be a bit of a spoiler. Read on!

Weyharrow Goodsir’s name is the oddest aspect of an otherwise unremarkable British village. Weyharrow has no crime-solving spinsters, no outbreaks of murder, not even the occasional alien mass-impregnation events so common elsewhere in the UK. Such crises that Weyharrow experiences are interpersonal, unremarkable, and entirely conventional.

Until the day the town goes mad.

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John Brunner’s 1983 The Great Steamboat Race is a stand-alone historical novel.

Despite the advanced technology and skilled pilots of the 1870s, the Mississippi was still an often-dangerous river on which to operate steamboats. Prudent men would not exacerbate the hazards with dubious endeavors such as races.

Prudence is a virtue more lauded than practiced. Which brings us to the matter of the steamboats Atchafalaya and Nonpareil.

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John Brunner’s 1984 The Tides of Time is a stand-alone science fiction novel.

Travelers Gene and Stacy make port and set up camp in a cave on a backwater Greek island. They will be there for some time… centuries, by some measurements.

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John Brunner’s 1982 Manshape is a stand-alone science fiction novel.

Jorgen Thorkild oversees the Bridge System, which allows people to step from one world to another, provided only that both worlds are spliced into the interstellar transportation network. Physical challenges now solved, that leaves only cultural impediments standing between all the human worlds and a single, unified society.

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John Brunner’s 1980 Players at the Game of People is a stand-alone science fiction/horror novel.

Godwin Harpinshield is blessed to enjoy a life that is exactly what he wants. He has a fancy car, portals leading to idyllic beaches, opportunities for heroism, and the ability to muddle the minds of authority figures who ask too many questions.

Godwin accepts that there is a price for all of this. He does not fully appreciate what that price is.

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1971’s Honky in the Woodpile is the third and final book in John Brunner’s Max Curfew thriller series.

Dr. Aloysius Small, on track to become the first non-white Member of Parliament since Saklatvala, is shot and killed by a sniper firing from the South African embassy. Protests are immediate. So are attacks on protestors from Britain’s thriving racist community. Unable to detain the killer, the British police turn to a show of force. They immediately begin brutalizing protestors, particularly those of sub-Saharan ancestry.

Retired international man of mystery Max Curfew intervenes to save two black men from a skinhead attack. This earns Jamaican-born Max and his new friends a brief stay in a British jail. Max emerges from the experience battered but alive, and with a new mission.

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John Brunner’s 1974 Total Eclipse is a stand-alone hard-SF puzzle story.

After the disappointments at Proxima, Epsilon Eridani, and Tau Ceti, humans might have abandoned interstellar flight altogether. The 2020 discovery of alien ruins on the moon of a life-bearing planet orbiting Sigma Draconis saved the dream of interstellar exploration…

At least for a while. The 2028 expedition may be the final expedition.

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John Brunner’s 1974 Web of Everywhere is a stand-alone science fiction novel.

Skelters supplied humanity with inexpensive global teleportation¹. Island paradises were but a step from vast cities. Likewise novel plagues, irate terrorists, and savage bandits were but numbers on a keypad away from vulnerable populations. Faced with a rising tide of chaos, governments lashed out with nuclear weapons. Two thirds of the human race perished.

Decades later, two men visit an outpost of the long-dead world before the Blowup.

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John Brunner’s 1973 The Stone That Never Came Down is a stand-alone near-future¹ science fiction novel.

The future looks like the 1970s dialed to eleven. Society’s leaders being the self-serving liars that they are, every social issue (minority unrest, inflation, decaying cities, rampaging Christians, energy shortages, and the Irish) has been allowed to spiral out of control.

Disgraced teacher Malcolm Fry has more immediate problems. Targeted by deranged Christians, he has lost his job, his wife, his car, and his children². While this did leave him free to hook up with Ruth, this just makes the unmarried couple the sort of people the Godheads hate and persecute.

A depressed Malcolm goes to a pub and gets hammered. While not in his right mind, he takes a drug from a stranger. The drug is called VC, Was this a tragic error or the best thing ever to happen to Malcolm?

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John Brunner’s 1971 The Wrong End of Time is a stand-alone near-future science fiction story.

Affronted by several ungracious rejections of helpful US intervention, offended Americans have retreated back to North America. For the last thirty years, the US has sullenly remained behind what it firmly believes to be impenetrable defenses, reveling in capitalist decadence while doing its best to ignore the existence of the outside world¹.

Now the outside world comes calling, in the form of Vassily Sheklov.

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