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Sunburst
A nuclear accident ravages a small town outside of Chicago, resulting in a government quarantine isolating it from the rest of the world. A generation later, with the quarantine still in place, strange mutations have affected the minds of the town's children -- mutations which could either spell the next stage in human evolution, or something far more sinister. As the children's psychic powers begin to manifest themselves in more demented and destructive forms, the kids escape their compound. Now it is up to Shandy Johnson and her friends to track down the runaways. Possessing similar powers, Sandy and her friends find themselves facing increasingly frightening confrontations with their escaped peers. First published in 1964 and again in 1978, Sunburst has lost neither its edge nor its relevance. Predating the near-misses and disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, Gotlieb reminds us of the tremendous forces we have at our fingertips -- powers that humans use daily but do not fully comprehend.
165 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
2 people are currently reading
149 people want to read
About the author
Phyllis Gotlieb
57 books25 followersPhyllis Fay Gotlieb, née Bloom, BA, MA was a Canadian science fiction novelist and poet.
The Sunburst Award is named for her first novel, Sunburst. Three years before Sunburst was published, Gotlieb published the pamphlet Who Knows One, a collection of poems. Gotlieb won the Aurora Award for Best Novel in 1982 for her novel A Judgement of Dragons.
She was married to Calvin Gotlieb, a computer science professor, and lived in Toronto, Ontario.
The Sunburst Award is named for her first novel, Sunburst. Three years before Sunburst was published, Gotlieb published the pamphlet Who Knows One, a collection of poems. Gotlieb won the Aurora Award for Best Novel in 1982 for her novel A Judgement of Dragons.
She was married to Calvin Gotlieb, a computer science professor, and lived in Toronto, Ontario.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
March 16, 2024
Every time I re-read this book I get as much or more out of it. Marvellous book, deserves more recognition. 2024
The author, Phyllis Gotlieb, was a Canadian science fiction novelist and poet, and the Canadian Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic is named after this novel.
Written in 1960's and set in the far, far future of 2020's Sunburst is a visionary novel of what could happen in a American small town if a nuclear reactor exploded and leaked radiation everywhere. Twenty years after the reactor leak, as the town was getting ready to open again, a large group of teenagers from troubled families suddenly erupted with powerful, unanimously destructive PSI powers. They were rounded up, enclosed in a shielded 'dump' and the town locked down more strongly than ever.
Enter our leading lady Shandy Johnson, just thirteen years old who has grown up in the chaotic Sorrel Park and knows it's ins and outs. A happy, too intelligent for her own good sort of girl, she has no PSI powers but is about to be sucked in to the world around them.
In many ways this is an utterly visionary novel; in the 1960's there was NO such thing as 'Young Adult' class of literature, but this is definitely a YA from before it was a thing. Dystopian was not yet a classification either, though people were writing that kind of novel they were still all 'science fiction'. This is absolutely, dystopian and in lots of other ways it is also ahead of it's time. I loved it when I first read it and I loved it on re-reading just as much. However, in a few ways it has dated very badly and I am not sure how well any younger person would go with reading it today. Very sad.
Not so much action packed as character and intellect packed, in Sunburst, the super intelligent Shandy wants to understand the question of the PSI, and the young people closed up in the dump. The novel uses a battery of psychology concepts to examine where PSI might come from and how it manifested after the radiation hit the town. Popular science concepts for the 60's are used to build the novel; Rosarch tests, body typing, the writings of Margaret Mead and many other sources. It is a fascinating book to read. But since several of the concepts have been discredited (Margaret Mead, for example) a young modern reader will probably not have heard of them and older readers may wince at the concepts occasionally.
Other than that, brilliant book, well deserved to have a literary prize named after it!
The author, Phyllis Gotlieb, was a Canadian science fiction novelist and poet, and the Canadian Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic is named after this novel.
Written in 1960's and set in the far, far future of 2020's Sunburst is a visionary novel of what could happen in a American small town if a nuclear reactor exploded and leaked radiation everywhere. Twenty years after the reactor leak, as the town was getting ready to open again, a large group of teenagers from troubled families suddenly erupted with powerful, unanimously destructive PSI powers. They were rounded up, enclosed in a shielded 'dump' and the town locked down more strongly than ever.
Enter our leading lady Shandy Johnson, just thirteen years old who has grown up in the chaotic Sorrel Park and knows it's ins and outs. A happy, too intelligent for her own good sort of girl, she has no PSI powers but is about to be sucked in to the world around them.
In many ways this is an utterly visionary novel; in the 1960's there was NO such thing as 'Young Adult' class of literature, but this is definitely a YA from before it was a thing. Dystopian was not yet a classification either, though people were writing that kind of novel they were still all 'science fiction'. This is absolutely, dystopian and in lots of other ways it is also ahead of it's time. I loved it when I first read it and I loved it on re-reading just as much. However, in a few ways it has dated very badly and I am not sure how well any younger person would go with reading it today. Very sad.
Not so much action packed as character and intellect packed, in Sunburst, the super intelligent Shandy wants to understand the question of the PSI, and the young people closed up in the dump. The novel uses a battery of psychology concepts to examine where PSI might come from and how it manifested after the radiation hit the town. Popular science concepts for the 60's are used to build the novel; Rosarch tests, body typing, the writings of Margaret Mead and many other sources. It is a fascinating book to read. But since several of the concepts have been discredited (Margaret Mead, for example) a young modern reader will probably not have heard of them and older readers may wince at the concepts occasionally.
Other than that, brilliant book, well deserved to have a literary prize named after it!
June 9, 2015
Another classic science fiction from the 1960's I found at the flea market--and a good one. Demonic children resulting from a nuclear accident. What's not to love? Unusually thought provoking with well definded characters and nifty wtist at the end. PLeasant surprise at how well it is written. Lacks any kind of suspense, and has a certain level of predictability--but all in all a good read.
August 24, 2015
Classic SF novel of Shandy Johnson, thirteen and not sure who or what she is, living in the town of Sorrel Park, where a nuclear meltdown years ago led first to the town being shut off from the rest of the world and then to mutations in children, giving them various psi powers. These psi-powered kids are almost invariably juvenile delinquents and are kept isolated in a facility called the Dump . . . but of course they escape. Shandy, however, is impervious to psi so becomes a valuable asset in solving the problem while also learning important things about herself. Unconventional treatment of psi as not a benefit but an atavistic throwback to more primitive aspects of life. The novel ends up offering a very unconventional take on how human evolution might unfold. Dated somewhat, admittedly, but very well written and plausible.
September 23, 2020
Sunburst is the flash of a nuclear accident
A possible scenario if a nuclear accident happened in America. A story of people impacted by the accident. Lots of thought about what it means to be human.
Just as important if Neanderthal man was human version 1.0 a d we are version is 2.0 what might the first 3.0 be like.
I have not expressed well how special this story is. It’s so special to me, 35 years after I read it and the internet and email was finally invented I tracked down the author and sent her a fanboy email thanking her for the story and gushed about the book. She was polite enough to thank me for my gushing in a reply back to me.
A possible scenario if a nuclear accident happened in America. A story of people impacted by the accident. Lots of thought about what it means to be human.
Just as important if Neanderthal man was human version 1.0 a d we are version is 2.0 what might the first 3.0 be like.
I have not expressed well how special this story is. It’s so special to me, 35 years after I read it and the internet and email was finally invented I tracked down the author and sent her a fanboy email thanking her for the story and gushed about the book. She was polite enough to thank me for my gushing in a reply back to me.
February 29, 2020
Reread this after a long last read - with fond memories. It has aged well, and is an interesting story about society and class.
Was hard to ignore the pseudo-scientific babel of stereotypes -- the part of the book that aged least well.
but interesting story and the setting made it a worthwhie reread.
Was hard to ignore the pseudo-scientific babel of stereotypes -- the part of the book that aged least well.
but interesting story and the setting made it a worthwhie reread.
June 20, 2021
The concept for this book is brilliant. A sleepy american city is hit by an accident at the local nuclear power plant and a generation later the local juvenile delinquents start getting super power, with all the problems that entails. Sounds interesting, right? Just too bad it's not well written. The story peters out halfway, and all that's left are some speculations about how to discover criminals young and help them before it's too late. The science is hopelessly dated and makes the book much less enjoyable. Still an interesting read, but not a very good one.
February 27, 2017
A futuristic tale of a society that has locked kids in kids that has recieved supernatural powers psi after a radioactive accident. A good story.
November 15, 2019
Still great...
June 26, 2020
Interesting premise, but some problematic old fashioned sociology
August 9, 2024
2/5
A muddled and messy showing from Gotlieb. Sunburst takes place after some sort of nuclear disaster, where radiation has killed off a lot of the older generation, whose surviving children are sometimes left with latent psychic, teleportation, or other superhero powers. These children are rounded up by a government-esque group that locks them in a force field where they can't escape. Shandy, a child that is immune to psychic powers, is eventually rounded up by the government and taken to the facilitate, where she tries to understand her place in freeing the tortured group of children.
If Gotlieb does something well, it's writing characters with emotion. The children in this story are very much people with valid concerns and believable emotions. Certainly for the time, Gotlieb also writes women well, and portrays youth as persons capable of immense mental and emotional strength.
Unfortunately, Gotlieb does a lot more telling than showing. There are many sections of lengthy exposition where the history of the world, the way that powers work, and the government agency are all explained dryly. The limited amount of action that's written here is a jumbled mess that's both confusing and off putting. The prose is at best passable, with no real sense of mastery or artistry to the writing. Overall it just feels like it was written by an amateur.
What's really cringey though is the horribly outdated sociology/psychology that Gotlieb uses as an explanation for why children and delinquents are the only ones to have psi powers:
"Their minds are organized more primitively".
"Most come from families without very strong morals - often immigrants".
"I think these kinds of shirtless helpless people could be a cause of poverty too."
Yeesh. Sort of out of the blue, Gotlieb starts having her main character, a child, go on long expositional diatribes about what a nuisance these kids are, and how their minds are close to that of animals. I don't know if mental illness was really thought of this way in the 60's, but Jesus, even if it was this ages so poorly as to be almost comical. Regardless of the few positive qualities in Sunburst, this turn towards the end of the novel casts a dim shadow over my opinion of it.
Mediocre, forgettable, and sometimes distasteful. I'm glad I only paid a dollar for it, and back to some used bookstore's stack of pulp paperbacks it will go.
A muddled and messy showing from Gotlieb. Sunburst takes place after some sort of nuclear disaster, where radiation has killed off a lot of the older generation, whose surviving children are sometimes left with latent psychic, teleportation, or other superhero powers. These children are rounded up by a government-esque group that locks them in a force field where they can't escape. Shandy, a child that is immune to psychic powers, is eventually rounded up by the government and taken to the facilitate, where she tries to understand her place in freeing the tortured group of children.
If Gotlieb does something well, it's writing characters with emotion. The children in this story are very much people with valid concerns and believable emotions. Certainly for the time, Gotlieb also writes women well, and portrays youth as persons capable of immense mental and emotional strength.
Unfortunately, Gotlieb does a lot more telling than showing. There are many sections of lengthy exposition where the history of the world, the way that powers work, and the government agency are all explained dryly. The limited amount of action that's written here is a jumbled mess that's both confusing and off putting. The prose is at best passable, with no real sense of mastery or artistry to the writing. Overall it just feels like it was written by an amateur.
What's really cringey though is the horribly outdated sociology/psychology that Gotlieb uses as an explanation for why children and delinquents are the only ones to have psi powers:
"Their minds are organized more primitively".
"Most come from families without very strong morals - often immigrants".
"I think these kinds of shirtless helpless people could be a cause of poverty too."
Yeesh. Sort of out of the blue, Gotlieb starts having her main character, a child, go on long expositional diatribes about what a nuisance these kids are, and how their minds are close to that of animals. I don't know if mental illness was really thought of this way in the 60's, but Jesus, even if it was this ages so poorly as to be almost comical. Regardless of the few positive qualities in Sunburst, this turn towards the end of the novel casts a dim shadow over my opinion of it.
Mediocre, forgettable, and sometimes distasteful. I'm glad I only paid a dollar for it, and back to some used bookstore's stack of pulp paperbacks it will go.
Read
October 23, 2025In the hideous aftermath of the atomic sunburst, the people of Sorrel Park had been written off. Now they were nothing but a kind of human garbage, festering and hopeless. In the center of town lived the worst of them -- and by far the most dangerous. A new breed of children, possessed of terrifying supernormal powers. A race of monsters bred out of the sunburst. And if they ever broke loose, they could destroy the world...
April 2, 2020
este libro es tan malo que ni siquiera es simpático. en el afán del autor de describir algo grotesco, transformó la narración completa en algo vacío de belleza, de admiración. no nos ha dejado nada a lo cual aferrarnos.
April 30, 2025
compelling enough
August 25, 2024
Sunburst, published in 1964, was Canadian poet Phyllis Gotlieb’s first science fiction novel, written because she was experiencing writer’s block with her poetry. After Sunburst, all Gotlieb’s science fiction is set in her GalFed universe of multiple alien races and multiple inhabited planets. The action in Sunburst takes place on Earth, and there are no alien races.
A nuclear accident took place a number of years before the start of the novel. Radiation from the accident has led to many children born with mutations. The mutations, however, have given the children psychic abilities, including telekinesis, pyrokinesis, telepathy, and so on.
Telepathy plays a large role in Gotlieb’s GalFed, although she usually refers to it in these later works as ESP, or “esping,” which generally has a broader meaning than telepathy. In Sunburst and in her later works, the powerful telepaths have the ability not only to read the thoughts of others but to transmit their own thoughts and to change the thoughts of others.
The mutant children in Sunburst are a dangerous group of delinquents who must be imprisoned in the “Dump” to protect the rest of humanity from their powerful psychic abilities. These “Dumplings” eventually escape and threaten to cause chaos in the world.
The main character in Sunburst is the girl Shandy, who has a very special kind of mutation, she is an “impervious," meaning that the psychic abilities of the Dumplings are unable to affect her. Aided by several other renegade psychics, Shandy saves the world from the Dumplings.
Sunburst is good science fiction. Indeed, the Sunburst Award for Canadian science fiction is named after it. I don’t think it is in the same class as some of Gotlieb’s later work—her Lyhhrt Trilogy, for example. Nevertheless, Sunburst is a first novel after all, and hints of what will come later with the GalFed universe.
A nuclear accident took place a number of years before the start of the novel. Radiation from the accident has led to many children born with mutations. The mutations, however, have given the children psychic abilities, including telekinesis, pyrokinesis, telepathy, and so on.
Telepathy plays a large role in Gotlieb’s GalFed, although she usually refers to it in these later works as ESP, or “esping,” which generally has a broader meaning than telepathy. In Sunburst and in her later works, the powerful telepaths have the ability not only to read the thoughts of others but to transmit their own thoughts and to change the thoughts of others.
The mutant children in Sunburst are a dangerous group of delinquents who must be imprisoned in the “Dump” to protect the rest of humanity from their powerful psychic abilities. These “Dumplings” eventually escape and threaten to cause chaos in the world.
The main character in Sunburst is the girl Shandy, who has a very special kind of mutation, she is an “impervious," meaning that the psychic abilities of the Dumplings are unable to affect her. Aided by several other renegade psychics, Shandy saves the world from the Dumplings.
Sunburst is good science fiction. Indeed, the Sunburst Award for Canadian science fiction is named after it. I don’t think it is in the same class as some of Gotlieb’s later work—her Lyhhrt Trilogy, for example. Nevertheless, Sunburst is a first novel after all, and hints of what will come later with the GalFed universe.
March 4, 2012
A neglected classic of young-adult science fiction.
Preternaturally-unnoticeable orphan Shandy lives in the fenced-off town of Sorrel Park where a decades-ago nuclear accident prompted a government coverup. Sociopathic psychic children have been born to the citizens and have been further fenced off in an institution, drugged and kept under strict control. Shandy meets and is recruited by Jason, a low level good-guy psychic working for the government, because she is an Imperv -- psychics can't detect her at all.
Plot ensues, and it is well-written and exciting.
The language, social attitudes, and psychology are a little old-fashioned for a future setting (the story was first published in 1964), but it's a rollicking good read anyhow, worthy of a place next to A Wrinkle In Time and the White Mountains trilogy.
Preternaturally-unnoticeable orphan Shandy lives in the fenced-off town of Sorrel Park where a decades-ago nuclear accident prompted a government coverup. Sociopathic psychic children have been born to the citizens and have been further fenced off in an institution, drugged and kept under strict control. Shandy meets and is recruited by Jason, a low level good-guy psychic working for the government, because she is an Imperv -- psychics can't detect her at all.
Plot ensues, and it is well-written and exciting.
The language, social attitudes, and psychology are a little old-fashioned for a future setting (the story was first published in 1964), but it's a rollicking good read anyhow, worthy of a place next to A Wrinkle In Time and the White Mountains trilogy.
April 30, 2016
I first read this book when I was 12, and all I remember is that I enjoyed it quite a bit and it was a little more literary than run of the mill Sci Fi. What strikes me on this reading is how prescient the author was. Writing In 1964, she presents the diminished hopes and quality of life for middle class Americans in the near future almost as though she had glimpsed the early 21st C, Sunburst is the story of a group of children who develop psi powers after a melt down at a nuclear power plant. Utterly unlike comic book stories of the same ilk, these kids form a kind of gestalt gang of sociopaths. The novel holds together well, and is genuinely scary. Worth reading if you can find a copy (long out of print).
September 26, 2014
I found her by accident, I think a list of her stories in the back of another book I was reading. Sunburst was fascinating and a page turner. Set in a future Earth, with children with mental powers and their adventures.
March 19, 2009
The book isn't bad and is kind of interesting. The main problem I found was that some parts were a bit confusing and hard to follow.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews