Our Separate Ways
Bedlam Planet
By John Brunner

26 Sep, 2023
Shockwave Reader
John Brunner’s 1968 Bedlam Planet is a stand-alone science fiction novel.
Most of the nearby solar systems visited by humanity’s first faster-than-light probes contained only dead worlds. Sigma Draconis was the notable exception. Asgard is in many ways Earth’s twin, a world on which humans can survive unprotected. Or so the initial scouting mission suggested. The colonists planned to test Asgard’s habitability for themselves, assisted by two of the original scouts, Pyotr Tang-Lin and Dennis Malone. Starflight being fearfully expensive, the settlers will be left to succeed or fail without help from Earth1.
The settlement begins badly, with a tragic mishap.