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The Book of John Brunner
Brunner presents 5 of his SF stories, 5 articles, 5 translations, 5 poems, and various songs, limericks and jokes.
159 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
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105 people want to read
About the author
John Brunner
572 books479 followersJohn Brunner was born in Preston Crowmarsh, near Wallingford in Oxfordshire, and went to school at St Andrew's Prep School, Pangbourne, then to Cheltenham College. He wrote his first novel, Galactic Storm, at 17, and published it under the pen-name Gill Hunt, but he did not start writing full-time until 1958. He served as an officer in the Royal Air Force from 1953 to 1955, and married Marjorie Rosamond Sauer on 12 July 1958
At the beginning of his writing career Brunner wrote conventional space opera pulp science fiction. Brunner later began to experiment with the novel form. His 1968 novel "Stand on Zanzibar" exploits the fragmented organizational style John Dos Passos invented for his USA trilogy, but updates it in terms of the theory of media popularised by Marshall McLuhan.
"The Jagged Orbit" (1969) is set in a United States dominated by weapons proliferation and interracial violence, and has 100 numbered chapters varying in length from a single syllable to several pages in length. "The Sheep Look Up" (1972) depicts ecological catastrophe in America. Brunner is credited with coining the term "worm" and predicting the emergence of computer viruses in his 1975 novel "The Shockwave Rider", in which he used the term to describe software which reproduces itself across a computer network. Together with "Stand on Zanzibar", these novels have been called the "Club of Rome Quartet", named after the Club of Rome whose 1972 report The Limits to Growth warned of the dire effects of overpopulation.
Brunner's pen names include K. H. Brunner, Gill Hunt, John Loxmith, Trevor Staines, Ellis Quick, Henry Crosstrees Jr., and Keith Woodcott.
In addition to his fiction, Brunner wrote poetry and many unpaid articles in a variety of publications, particularly fanzines, but also 13 letters to the New Scientist and an article about the educational relevance of science fiction in Physics Education. Brunner was an active member of the organisation Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and wrote the words to "The H-Bomb's Thunder", which was sung on the Aldermaston Marches.
Brunner had an uneasy relationship with British new wave writers, who often considered him too American in his settings and themes. He attempted to shift to a more mainstream readership in the early 1980s, without success. Before his death, most of his books had fallen out of print. Brunner accused publishers of a conspiracy against him, although he was difficult to deal with (his wife had handled his publishing relations before she died).[2]
Brunner's health began to decline in the 1980s and worsened with the death of his wife in 1986. He remarried, to Li Yi Tan, on 27 September 1991. He died of a heart attack in Glasgow on 25 August 1995, while attending the World Science Fiction Convention there
aka
K H Brunner, Henry Crosstrees Jr, Gill Hunt (with Dennis Hughes and E C Tubb), John Loxmith, Trevor Staines, Keith Woodcott
Winner of the ESFS Awards in 1980 as "Best Author" and 1n 1984 as "Novelist"..
At the beginning of his writing career Brunner wrote conventional space opera pulp science fiction. Brunner later began to experiment with the novel form. His 1968 novel "Stand on Zanzibar" exploits the fragmented organizational style John Dos Passos invented for his USA trilogy, but updates it in terms of the theory of media popularised by Marshall McLuhan.
"The Jagged Orbit" (1969) is set in a United States dominated by weapons proliferation and interracial violence, and has 100 numbered chapters varying in length from a single syllable to several pages in length. "The Sheep Look Up" (1972) depicts ecological catastrophe in America. Brunner is credited with coining the term "worm" and predicting the emergence of computer viruses in his 1975 novel "The Shockwave Rider", in which he used the term to describe software which reproduces itself across a computer network. Together with "Stand on Zanzibar", these novels have been called the "Club of Rome Quartet", named after the Club of Rome whose 1972 report The Limits to Growth warned of the dire effects of overpopulation.
Brunner's pen names include K. H. Brunner, Gill Hunt, John Loxmith, Trevor Staines, Ellis Quick, Henry Crosstrees Jr., and Keith Woodcott.
In addition to his fiction, Brunner wrote poetry and many unpaid articles in a variety of publications, particularly fanzines, but also 13 letters to the New Scientist and an article about the educational relevance of science fiction in Physics Education. Brunner was an active member of the organisation Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and wrote the words to "The H-Bomb's Thunder", which was sung on the Aldermaston Marches.
Brunner had an uneasy relationship with British new wave writers, who often considered him too American in his settings and themes. He attempted to shift to a more mainstream readership in the early 1980s, without success. Before his death, most of his books had fallen out of print. Brunner accused publishers of a conspiracy against him, although he was difficult to deal with (his wife had handled his publishing relations before she died).[2]
Brunner's health began to decline in the 1980s and worsened with the death of his wife in 1986. He remarried, to Li Yi Tan, on 27 September 1991. He died of a heart attack in Glasgow on 25 August 1995, while attending the World Science Fiction Convention there
aka
K H Brunner, Henry Crosstrees Jr, Gill Hunt (with Dennis Hughes and E C Tubb), John Loxmith, Trevor Staines, Keith Woodcott
Winner of the ESFS Awards in 1980 as "Best Author" and 1n 1984 as "Novelist"..
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 27, 2019
I picked this up partly out of a collector’s mentality; it is considered by some to be the final installment of Del Rey/Ballantine’s Classic Library of Science Fiction. The cover includes the text “Classic Science Fiction” and the format, such as it is, is the same: another famous author (Joe Haldeman) providing introductions for their colleague’s stories.
On the other hand, the cover does not resemble the covers of the earlier part of the series, which had a recognizable feel to them. Nor does the book contain the otherwise obligatory list of the other books in the series, opting instead for a list of Brunner’s other works published by Ballantine. The book was published in 1988, nine years after the previous final installment in a series that had been running one or more books a year in the seventies (The Best of Hal Clement and Fritz Leiber both came out in 1979, as far as I can tell the previous latest installments). It was published after Lester Del Rey’s death; and Brunner would be the newest author in the series (that is, least classic), if included.
I suspect that Ballantine was considering restarting the series with newer authors, and the response wasn’t enough to justify it.
The story introductions are over the top even for a best-of collection. Brunner did not start the cyberpunk movement, and the story where Haldeman implies he did is about the opposite of any cyberpunk ethos I have ever seen. Headgear does not a cyberpunk story make. “Fair” is a non-ironical fond look at governments invading and controlling the minds of the young, to counteract the freeing effects of the technology created by the previous generation. Brunner would have been closer to predict the freeing effects of the Internet, and the desperate attempts by governments to convince the young to believe only what comes out of the mouths of politicians and talking heads, and ignore the evidence of their own lying eyes.
But this collection was published in 1988, and neither the stories nor the introductions to the stories show any recognition of that nascent possibility. Further, the major world powers in “Fair” included the United States and the Soviet Union, and the introduction also shows no sense of how unlikely a future that was about to become.
Whether Haldeman’s claim that the story presaged the British New Wave is true I can’t say, as I’ve never had a firm handle on what makes a story New Wave.
Absent the introductions, however, this is a fine collection. I am generally unfamiliar with Brunner’s work, but will probably pick up more based on what I read here. I only remember having read one of them before, “The Vitanuls”, which I read in Other Worlds, Other Gods. It suffers slightly from a math problem, but is otherwise a memorable story.
Some of what makes Brunner’s stories interesting is that he doesn’t focus on what would seem to be the obvious implications, but rather goes for more interesting sideshows. For example, in “The Last Lonely Man” we have discovered a means of merging intellects, so that when you die you can merge with a friend or loved one; your personality lives on in that “contact” as a sort of rider until, in a few months, you and your contact merge personalities, creating a new person who is the product of the two pre-merge personalities. Rather than focusing on the profound implications of that for what makes us human, Brunner very deftly looks at how it affects people who are so unlikable as to have no friends or loved ones, and how the amplified fear of death in a world where everyone else is effectively immortal makes them even more unlikable.
It is reminiscent of Dean Koontz’s focus on the few who cannot become telepathic rather than the many who can in A Mouse in the Walls of the Global Village.
The stories run the gamut from humorous extrapolations to an old-school wonder about the future.
On the other hand, the cover does not resemble the covers of the earlier part of the series, which had a recognizable feel to them. Nor does the book contain the otherwise obligatory list of the other books in the series, opting instead for a list of Brunner’s other works published by Ballantine. The book was published in 1988, nine years after the previous final installment in a series that had been running one or more books a year in the seventies (The Best of Hal Clement and Fritz Leiber both came out in 1979, as far as I can tell the previous latest installments). It was published after Lester Del Rey’s death; and Brunner would be the newest author in the series (that is, least classic), if included.
I suspect that Ballantine was considering restarting the series with newer authors, and the response wasn’t enough to justify it.
The story introductions are over the top even for a best-of collection. Brunner did not start the cyberpunk movement, and the story where Haldeman implies he did is about the opposite of any cyberpunk ethos I have ever seen. Headgear does not a cyberpunk story make. “Fair” is a non-ironical fond look at governments invading and controlling the minds of the young, to counteract the freeing effects of the technology created by the previous generation. Brunner would have been closer to predict the freeing effects of the Internet, and the desperate attempts by governments to convince the young to believe only what comes out of the mouths of politicians and talking heads, and ignore the evidence of their own lying eyes.
But this collection was published in 1988, and neither the stories nor the introductions to the stories show any recognition of that nascent possibility. Further, the major world powers in “Fair” included the United States and the Soviet Union, and the introduction also shows no sense of how unlikely a future that was about to become.
Whether Haldeman’s claim that the story presaged the British New Wave is true I can’t say, as I’ve never had a firm handle on what makes a story New Wave.
Absent the introductions, however, this is a fine collection. I am generally unfamiliar with Brunner’s work, but will probably pick up more based on what I read here. I only remember having read one of them before, “The Vitanuls”, which I read in Other Worlds, Other Gods. It suffers slightly from a math problem, but is otherwise a memorable story.
Some of what makes Brunner’s stories interesting is that he doesn’t focus on what would seem to be the obvious implications, but rather goes for more interesting sideshows. For example, in “The Last Lonely Man” we have discovered a means of merging intellects, so that when you die you can merge with a friend or loved one; your personality lives on in that “contact” as a sort of rider until, in a few months, you and your contact merge personalities, creating a new person who is the product of the two pre-merge personalities. Rather than focusing on the profound implications of that for what makes us human, Brunner very deftly looks at how it affects people who are so unlikable as to have no friends or loved ones, and how the amplified fear of death in a world where everyone else is effectively immortal makes them even more unlikable.
It is reminiscent of Dean Koontz’s focus on the few who cannot become telepathic rather than the many who can in A Mouse in the Walls of the Global Village.
The stories run the gamut from humorous extrapolations to an old-school wonder about the future.
July 11, 2021
A collection of short stories by the late sci fi writer John Brunner. Not all were my cup of tea, but the ones I liked, I loved.
June 26, 2021
This was my first (or second?) John Brunner book and it was excellent. Brunner represents a more "new wave" or Baby Boomer-perspective approach to science fiction. Whereas earlier, "classic" science fiction was more concerned with, as Brunner puts it, "the sheer wonderment at the infinite possibilities of applied technology," Brunner's stories primarily "consisted in the examination of the impact of technological change on the human personality" (from the introduction to this book). I think this is an apt description of the short stories in this volume. It's science fiction more in the vein of Philip K. Dick or Michael Moorcock, who were his contemporaries.
I greatly enjoyed this book and recommend it highly to those who like science fiction to deal with more philosophical or existentially important questions.
I greatly enjoyed this book and recommend it highly to those who like science fiction to deal with more philosophical or existentially important questions.
October 1, 2015
A 3-star book in the very best sense of the term. This odds & ends collection of stories, essays, folk songs and poems, along with some of the most groan-inducing limericks ever penned, is a treasure trove of treats -- for those readers that were already fans of this hard-working, well-meaning British science fiction writer. This is not the place where the uninitiated should begin to read JB; but if you ARE a fan, then this book should make you smile in fond remembrance of Mr. Brunner -- gone 20 years at the time of this posting.
September 2, 2015
"Without being about science, [science fiction] provides a forum in which prospects and risks for the future can be examined in subjective, human terms. Its best writers relate the laboratory to the larger world, as it were, using drama, humour, adventure, as parables of the impact science continues to have on our daily lives" (118).
March 3, 2016
Like any short story collection, some just didn't work for me, but the consistency of the last batch of stories really raised this from a 3 to 4 stars for me. Brunner obviously had a great imagination, and a great way with words. If you can just breeze pasts the Galactic Reports, which were interesting but not terribly effective, there's some great, well written stories in here.
April 10, 2016
I just couldn't finish it. Too much meandering. Though I really like Brunner's novels, I just couldn't stick with it.
April 30, 2020
It's a great book I gotta say...
February 18, 2014
Great story collection by an author more widely known for his many novels.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews