25 Apr, 2023
Shockwave Reader
John Brunner’s 1962 The Ladder in the Sky is a stand-alone science fiction novel. It was published under a penname, Keith Woodcott.
Kazan has lived all his eighteen years in Berak’s notorious Dyasthala, a slum from which escape seems impossible. Now escape of a sort presents itself, as a human sacrifice to forces from beyond the stars.
28 Mar, 2023
Shockwave Reader
John Brunner’s 1962 No Future in It and Other Stories is a short story collection. As far as I can tell, it was John Brunner’s first short story collection.
28 Feb, 2023
Shockwave Reader
John Brunner’s 1959 The World Swappers is a first-contact science fiction novel.
Four centuries earlier, bold visionaries embraced the promise of the stars. Hundreds of thousands left Earth to whatever dismal fate awaited them. They found thirty-one known habitable worlds within two hundred parsecs of Earth. The colonists had different notions of the utopias to which they aspired, but all of them found difficulty in achieving them.
Meanwhile, Earth did not descend into the over-populated, poverty-stricken hellhole predicted by doomsayers. Twenty-sixth century Earth is rich and lazy. However, the end of the golden age is in sight, unless adjustments are made in interstellar relations, adjustments that would allow emigration to restart.
Top oligarch Bassett is that confident he alone has the vision and the resources needed to restart and manage emigration. Shadowy cabal leader Uncredited social activist Saïd Counce knows that Bassett’s schemes are doomed. Were that not serious enough, Counce knows that the alien Others are about to stumble across humanity.
31 Jan, 2023
Shockwave Reader
John Brunner’s Times Without Number is a collection of time travel stories later re-published as a fix-up. For reasons that will become clear, assigning this work a publication year is not straightforward. This review is of the 1969 edition.
27 Dec, 2022
Shockwave Reader
John Brunner’s 1968 Catch a Falling Star is a substantial rewrite of his 1959 The 100th Millennium, which in turn is an expanded version of the 1958 novella Earth Is But a Star.
One hundred thousand years from now, a community of humans lives in what past eras would call utopia. Each person has their own living house that provides them with life’s necessities and each is free to pursue whatever pastime amuses them. Creohan, for example, is an astronomer, devoting his life to studying the stars.
As a consequence of a hundred thousand years of history, novelty is rare. Whatever a person might consider doing has been done a thousand times before. But … thanks to historical data provided to him by a Historicker friend, Creohan succeeds connecting dots no other person has connected:
A rogue star is headed directly for the Solar System. Earth and everything on it are doomed.
29 Nov, 2022
Shockwave Reader
John Brunner 1951’s Galactic Storm is a stand-alone1 near-future science fiction novel. Published under the Gill Hunt penname, it was Brunner’s debut, appearing when Brunner was still a teenager.
And how has this terrible bit of juvenilia stood the test of time?
20 Oct, 2022
Shockwave Reader
1988’s The Best of John Brunner is a late entry (possibly the final entry) in Ballantine’s Classic Library of Science Fiction. It is exactly what one would expect from the title: a selection of short works the editor deemed Brunner’s best. The Best of John Brunner is the first of what I hope will be my long-running monthly survey of Brunner’s fiction.
Sure hope I come up with a name for the series by Thursday.
19 Dec, 2021
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
John Brunner’s 1972 The Sheep Look Up is a stand-alone near-future science fiction novel. It is also one of a series of novels by Brunner that dramatize extrapolations of big issues of the era in which he was writing: The Jagged Orbit (racial violence), Stand on Zanzibar (overpopulation), and The Shockwave Rider (future shock). The Sheep Look Up’s central focus is environmental degradation.
1980s America in particular and the world in general have made enormous strides in reshaping the world to facilitate unbounded profit. The air is poisoned, such water as can be had is filthy, entire seas are lifeless, and children across the nation suffer life-altering disabilities due their exposure to toxic chemicals. In a word: capitalist utopia!
21 Mar, 2021
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
John Brunner’s 1980’s The Infinitive of Go is a standalone science fiction novel.
Cold War paranoia provided the funds to finance Justin Williams and Cinnamon Wright’s revolutionary teleporter. The “poster,” as the device is innocuously dubbed, seems to work perfectly. Preliminary tests show that inanimate and animate payloads arrive intact.
The first long-range human test seems to have gone perfectly until courier George Gunther demands a countersign. Since no such countersign had been arranged, it cannot be given. Gunther immediately kills himself while destroying the documents he was conveying.
Something has clearly gone wrong, but what?
11 Aug, 2019
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
John Brunner’s 1971 fantasy collection The Traveler in Black was the first book published as an Ace Science Fiction Special. It has since been republished under several titles and with varying contents; nevertheless, like its protagonist, we can say that it has but one nature.
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.