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The Stone That Never Came Down
Europe in the 21st Century is a stricken continent. Cities crumble with neglect. Governments topple to military coups. But one man may have the answer. It is a viral drug that drastically alters the human mind, a cure for depression, unemployment, war, madness, national hatreds, prejudice, crime & mass hysteria, but there were those who wanted the cure suppressed until the world collapsed.
206 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1973
35 people are currently reading
313 people want to read
About the author
John Brunner
572 books480 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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June 21, 2020
DAW Collectors #133
Cover Artist: Kelly Freas.
Name: Brunner, John Kilian Houston, Birthplace: Preston Crowmarsh, Oxfordshire, England, UK,
(24 September 1934 - 25 August 1995).
Alternate Names: K. Houston Brunner, Kilian Houston Brunner, Henry Crosstrees, Jr., Gill Hunt, John Loxmith, Ellis Quick, Trevor Staines,Keith Woodcott.
John Brunner postulates a world on the brink of war where fanatical ""godheads"" prowl the streets and every man's hand is raised against his neighbor. Disaster looms until a motley underground discovers and disseminates a deus ex machina drug that compels the perception of complexity; the result is expanded minds and peace on earth. Credible characters, suspenseful plotting.
Cover Artist: Kelly Freas.
Name: Brunner, John Kilian Houston, Birthplace: Preston Crowmarsh, Oxfordshire, England, UK,
(24 September 1934 - 25 August 1995).
Alternate Names: K. Houston Brunner, Kilian Houston Brunner, Henry Crosstrees, Jr., Gill Hunt, John Loxmith, Ellis Quick, Trevor Staines,Keith Woodcott.
John Brunner postulates a world on the brink of war where fanatical ""godheads"" prowl the streets and every man's hand is raised against his neighbor. Disaster looms until a motley underground discovers and disseminates a deus ex machina drug that compels the perception of complexity; the result is expanded minds and peace on earth. Credible characters, suspenseful plotting.
August 4, 2020
Cute and fun, which is probably why the New Worlds critics gave Brunner such a kicking; that and the prose, which is, at best, fuctional - my how he loves an adverb! All that aside it's a nice slice of wishful thinking and a lovely escape from the shitstorm of current affairs. Brunner's reading of the way that late capitalism might progress is actually pretty astute but his solution, well, it's a beautiful dream that I didn't mind buying into for 200 pages. Now give me some post-apocalyptic bleakness and I can get back to biting my nails and worrying about EVERYTHING!
October 29, 2018
review of
John Brunner's The Stone that Never Came Down
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 28, 2018
I've been singing critical praises of John Brunner ever since I discovered him a few years back & every time I read another bk by him it's a pleasure. Here's the epigraph to "BOOK ONE Ascent":
Dissidentes Christianorum antistites cum plebe discissa in palatium intromuissos, monetbat civilus, ut descordiis consopitis, quisque nullo vetante, religioni suae serviret intrepidus. Quod agebat ideo obstinate ut dissensiones augents licentia, non timeret unanimantem postea plebem, nullas infestas hominibus bestias, ut sunt sibi ferales plerique Christianorum expertus.
"—Ammianus Marcellinus: Res Gestae" - p 1
"Ammianus Marcellinus (born c. 330, died c. 391 – 400) was a Roman soldier and historian who wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from antiquity (preceding Procopius). His work, known as the Res Gestae , chronicled in Latin the history of Rome from the accession of the Emperor Nerva in 96 to the death of Valens at the Battle of Adrianople in 378, although only the sections covering the period 353–378 survive." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammianu...
I didn't have much luck producing a coherent translation with online means so here's a bad approximation:
"The leaders of the Christians, with his people was divided up in the king's house: the dissident intromuissos, as per civil law, was executed, there was no opposition, otherwise they were allowed to serve their own religious feelings in an unsurpassed way. The license of which he had allowed so tenaciously that they will increase; they are causing the divisions, there is no fear of a united Christianity later on among the people, & no sense that they trouble the men, the wild beasts, that they are in disagreement with the majority of the Christians.
"—Ammianus Marcellinus: Achievements"
I took so many liberties w/ that that it's probably dramatically wrong. Latin scholars, feel free to add a corrective comment! The time & place seem dystopic. What is going on?:
"It was dreadfully cold in here. Filtered by the dervishes of the snow, a street-lamp beam lanced between the curtains and showed him his breath clouding before his face. The time-switch which had brought the radio to life also controlled an electric fan-heater, but the middle-element was broken and anyhow the power was usually browned out nowadays. If only he could afford to turn on the central heating . . ." - p 4
Then again, this could be a time from my life. There're confrontations w/ Christian bullies running amok. One of the protagonists won't give the bullies any money unless they can answer a question:
""You can have this if you name a weapon of modern wat that wasn't invented and first used by a Christian country!" - p 10
""Can't answer, hm? Not surprising! The whole lot is yours, from the hand-grenade to the hydrogen bomb! So stop wasting my time. I have to go to work. And it wouldn't do you any harm to work for a change, instead of sponging off the rest of us who do!"" - p 11
Needless to say, this, ahem, didn't go over too well. &, yeah, there's racism too:
"These days it was a common habit to pass over a black kid who talked back to teachers, and slap on his record a ribber stamp saying INEDUCABLE. And half of them were glad to be out of school, but furious at being out of work as well." - p 18
The action's taking place in England, where Brunner lived, but one of the characters is an American evangelist who's being recruited by an English Chrsitian crusader who he's dubious about joining forces w/:
"["]You join her in her New Year's Crusade, and you'll be on the map for good and all. It would make you—well it would make you the Billy Graham of the nineteen-eighties!"" - p 20
I don't know how many people remember Billy Graham these days. He only died on February 21, 2018, so it wasn't that long ago, but I think he was far beyond his prime by then. During the Vietnam War he was possibly the most public Christian apologist for the US invasion & continued oppression of the Vietnamese people — not that he put it that way, of course. I was raised in a conservative Christian family & when I was about 15, maybe in late 1968, my sister, later a missionary, took me to a Billy Graham Crusade at the Baltimore Civic Center — a place that held thousands of people. It was the closest thing to a nazi rally that I ever 'hope' to attend. One of the main things I remember about it was the showing of a movie about a teenager whose life becomes extremely degraded as a result of 'straying from the path.' It was very much in the spirit of the hyper-conservative TV show "Dragnet" in which doom & gloom & guilt were slathered on like leprous hog fat on a piece of nice clean white bread. I was horrified by Graham's obviously unscrupulous crowd manipulation. As such, Brunner really nails it w/ his reference here. This bk was published in 1973 when the war was still ongoing & Brunner was an anti-war activist so I'm sure he was fully aware of Graham's significance. Brunner was no fool when it came to his own country's future either as is demonstrated by shades of Brexit in the following:
"—Can it really be on the cards that we'll see a military coup in Italy, like the Greek one? And that a junta of generals would try to pull them out of the Common Market?" - p 30
"—And I said, "Do you really think there's no hope for us at all?" And he looked at me for a bit, with that odd quizzical expression, and then he produced that little phial of capsules, tiny little yellow things no bigger than rice-grains, and said, "This may be the answer. I hope it is." And I said . . . God, I must have been drunk by then! I said, "If that's the case, I'd like some." And he said, "Okay, here you are. You deserve it more than most people." And like a crazy fool I took it!"" - pp 30-31
Now, I've ridiculed the 2011 SF film called "Limitless" about drugs making someone smarter. My point has been that humans seem to want everything to be as easy as popping a pill. Alas, if you want to be smart, you might actually have to work at it & you might not get much respect for it either. Brunner's story might seem to be a precursor to "Limitless" &, to a small extent, it is — but it's much more nuanced.
"["]Living aimal tissue is ideal. Which is why we call it 'viral coefficient'."
""You mean it breeds?" Sawyer cried. "You mean it's infectious?"
""Not infectious!" Randolph snapped. "Cold air, sunlight, even dilution in plain water will inactivate it almost at once. But . . . Well, without being infectious, it may possibly be contagious.["]" - p 51
That's an interesting distinction, eh?!
"Strictly, a contagious disease is one transmitted by physical contact, whereas an infectious one is transmitted via microorganisms in the air or water. In practice there is little or no difference in meaning between contagious and infectious when applied to disease or its spread." - contagious | Definition of contagious in English by Oxford Dictionaries - https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/def...
As you may've noticed by now, in an avoidance of spoiling the plot for you I've dropped hints w/o providing full coherence. As such, my review is somewhat akin to the note left by a dead central character. "These passages, however, were islands of clarity in a muddle of jargon, parasyntaxis, and abominable straining after pointless puns." (p 47)
"Chest Cee! 'Sdense! Corpo di barragio! you spoof of visibility ina freakfog, of mixed sex xases among goats, hill cat and plain mousey, Bugamy Bob and his old Shanvocht! The Blackfriars treacle plaster outrage be liddled! Therewith was released in that kingsrick of Humidia a poisoning volume of cloud barrage indeed. Yet all they who heard or redelivered are now with that family of bards and Vergobretas himself and the crowd of Caraculacticors as much no more as be they not yet now or had they then notever been."*
"Malcolm took the sheet of paper he was offered, glanced at it, and passed it to Ruth. Having read it more slowly, she exclaimed, "Why. it's like something out of Finnegans Wake!"
""Right! Professor, Dr. Post did leave a record of his experience—at any rate, as complete a record as he thought would be necessary, knowing that with total recall he could later compile as detailed an analysis as anyone might wish for. And here it is. Not a farrago of rubbish, but the result of trying to condense scores of different levels of experience—real and vicarious—into the narrowest possible compass. Language isn't designed to carry that kind of load, Not ordinary language, anyhow."" - pp 85-86
*Finnegans Wake p 48, Viking Press, February 1975 paperback edition
"We had done some French and Latin at school but I knew virtually no German or Italian and it was clear that Joyce exploited both of these languages continually. I would take a dictionary and work through a chapter, looking up any word I thought suited the language in question. I soon learned that the most cryptic elements were often pure English. Grotesque orthography was often repeated verbatim in the Oxford English Dictionary. I suspected that Joyce was delbierately revivifying many archaic snd dialectical usages. Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English and the Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs provided numerous identifications of items in FW or of words very close to Joyce's." - p 29, The Finnegans Wake Experience - Roland McHugh
""Urea stimulates activity in the nervous system," Malcolm said. "Loss of power to excrete it as allantoin has been compared to adding a permanent pep-pill to our diet."" - p 142, The Stone that Never Came Down
"Muscle loss, osteoporosis, and vascular disease are common in subjects with reduced renal function. Despite intensive research of the underlying risk factors and mechanisms driving these phenotypes, we still lack effective treatment strategies for this underserved patient group. Thus, new approaches are needed to identify effective treatments. We believe that nephrologists could learn much from biomimicry; i.e., studies of nature’s models to solve complicated physiological problems and then imitate these fascinating solutions to develop novel interventions. The hibernating bear (Ursidae) should be of specific interest to the nephrologist as they ingest no food or water for months, remaining anuric and immobile, only to awaken with low blood urea nitrogen levels, healthy lean body mass, strong bones, and without evidence for thrombotic complications. Identifying the mechanisms by which bears prevent the development of azotemia, sarcopenia, osteoporosis, and atherosclerosis despite being inactive and anuric could lead to novel interventions for both prevention and treatment of patients with chronic kidney disease."
[..]
"This unique ability of bears to recycle urea during hibernation is not present in other hibernating mammals, such as the Columbian ground squirrel or the hedgehog."
- "Hibernating bears (Ursidae): metabolic magicians of definite interest for the nephrologist" - PeterStenvinkel, Alkesh H.Jani, Richard J.Johnson - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...
""How people delude themselves," Malcolm muttered. "Sooner or later all the finest ideals of mankind have led to overreaction. Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire and was perverted into a justification for slavery. The proud slogan of the French Revolution was inscribed over the guillotine. The oppressed victims of the tsars proceede to treat their former rulers with even greater brutality."
""It's a fearful pattern," Sawyer sighed."
Indeed.
John Brunner's The Stone that Never Came Down
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 28, 2018
I've been singing critical praises of John Brunner ever since I discovered him a few years back & every time I read another bk by him it's a pleasure. Here's the epigraph to "BOOK ONE Ascent":
Dissidentes Christianorum antistites cum plebe discissa in palatium intromuissos, monetbat civilus, ut descordiis consopitis, quisque nullo vetante, religioni suae serviret intrepidus. Quod agebat ideo obstinate ut dissensiones augents licentia, non timeret unanimantem postea plebem, nullas infestas hominibus bestias, ut sunt sibi ferales plerique Christianorum expertus.
"—Ammianus Marcellinus: Res Gestae" - p 1
"Ammianus Marcellinus (born c. 330, died c. 391 – 400) was a Roman soldier and historian who wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from antiquity (preceding Procopius). His work, known as the Res Gestae , chronicled in Latin the history of Rome from the accession of the Emperor Nerva in 96 to the death of Valens at the Battle of Adrianople in 378, although only the sections covering the period 353–378 survive." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammianu...
I didn't have much luck producing a coherent translation with online means so here's a bad approximation:
"The leaders of the Christians, with his people was divided up in the king's house: the dissident intromuissos, as per civil law, was executed, there was no opposition, otherwise they were allowed to serve their own religious feelings in an unsurpassed way. The license of which he had allowed so tenaciously that they will increase; they are causing the divisions, there is no fear of a united Christianity later on among the people, & no sense that they trouble the men, the wild beasts, that they are in disagreement with the majority of the Christians.
"—Ammianus Marcellinus: Achievements"
I took so many liberties w/ that that it's probably dramatically wrong. Latin scholars, feel free to add a corrective comment! The time & place seem dystopic. What is going on?:
"It was dreadfully cold in here. Filtered by the dervishes of the snow, a street-lamp beam lanced between the curtains and showed him his breath clouding before his face. The time-switch which had brought the radio to life also controlled an electric fan-heater, but the middle-element was broken and anyhow the power was usually browned out nowadays. If only he could afford to turn on the central heating . . ." - p 4
Then again, this could be a time from my life. There're confrontations w/ Christian bullies running amok. One of the protagonists won't give the bullies any money unless they can answer a question:
""You can have this if you name a weapon of modern wat that wasn't invented and first used by a Christian country!" - p 10
""Can't answer, hm? Not surprising! The whole lot is yours, from the hand-grenade to the hydrogen bomb! So stop wasting my time. I have to go to work. And it wouldn't do you any harm to work for a change, instead of sponging off the rest of us who do!"" - p 11
Needless to say, this, ahem, didn't go over too well. &, yeah, there's racism too:
"These days it was a common habit to pass over a black kid who talked back to teachers, and slap on his record a ribber stamp saying INEDUCABLE. And half of them were glad to be out of school, but furious at being out of work as well." - p 18
The action's taking place in England, where Brunner lived, but one of the characters is an American evangelist who's being recruited by an English Chrsitian crusader who he's dubious about joining forces w/:
"["]You join her in her New Year's Crusade, and you'll be on the map for good and all. It would make you—well it would make you the Billy Graham of the nineteen-eighties!"" - p 20
I don't know how many people remember Billy Graham these days. He only died on February 21, 2018, so it wasn't that long ago, but I think he was far beyond his prime by then. During the Vietnam War he was possibly the most public Christian apologist for the US invasion & continued oppression of the Vietnamese people — not that he put it that way, of course. I was raised in a conservative Christian family & when I was about 15, maybe in late 1968, my sister, later a missionary, took me to a Billy Graham Crusade at the Baltimore Civic Center — a place that held thousands of people. It was the closest thing to a nazi rally that I ever 'hope' to attend. One of the main things I remember about it was the showing of a movie about a teenager whose life becomes extremely degraded as a result of 'straying from the path.' It was very much in the spirit of the hyper-conservative TV show "Dragnet" in which doom & gloom & guilt were slathered on like leprous hog fat on a piece of nice clean white bread. I was horrified by Graham's obviously unscrupulous crowd manipulation. As such, Brunner really nails it w/ his reference here. This bk was published in 1973 when the war was still ongoing & Brunner was an anti-war activist so I'm sure he was fully aware of Graham's significance. Brunner was no fool when it came to his own country's future either as is demonstrated by shades of Brexit in the following:
"—Can it really be on the cards that we'll see a military coup in Italy, like the Greek one? And that a junta of generals would try to pull them out of the Common Market?" - p 30
"—And I said, "Do you really think there's no hope for us at all?" And he looked at me for a bit, with that odd quizzical expression, and then he produced that little phial of capsules, tiny little yellow things no bigger than rice-grains, and said, "This may be the answer. I hope it is." And I said . . . God, I must have been drunk by then! I said, "If that's the case, I'd like some." And he said, "Okay, here you are. You deserve it more than most people." And like a crazy fool I took it!"" - pp 30-31
Now, I've ridiculed the 2011 SF film called "Limitless" about drugs making someone smarter. My point has been that humans seem to want everything to be as easy as popping a pill. Alas, if you want to be smart, you might actually have to work at it & you might not get much respect for it either. Brunner's story might seem to be a precursor to "Limitless" &, to a small extent, it is — but it's much more nuanced.
"["]Living aimal tissue is ideal. Which is why we call it 'viral coefficient'."
""You mean it breeds?" Sawyer cried. "You mean it's infectious?"
""Not infectious!" Randolph snapped. "Cold air, sunlight, even dilution in plain water will inactivate it almost at once. But . . . Well, without being infectious, it may possibly be contagious.["]" - p 51
That's an interesting distinction, eh?!
"Strictly, a contagious disease is one transmitted by physical contact, whereas an infectious one is transmitted via microorganisms in the air or water. In practice there is little or no difference in meaning between contagious and infectious when applied to disease or its spread." - contagious | Definition of contagious in English by Oxford Dictionaries - https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/def...
As you may've noticed by now, in an avoidance of spoiling the plot for you I've dropped hints w/o providing full coherence. As such, my review is somewhat akin to the note left by a dead central character. "These passages, however, were islands of clarity in a muddle of jargon, parasyntaxis, and abominable straining after pointless puns." (p 47)
"Chest Cee! 'Sdense! Corpo di barragio! you spoof of visibility ina freakfog, of mixed sex xases among goats, hill cat and plain mousey, Bugamy Bob and his old Shanvocht! The Blackfriars treacle plaster outrage be liddled! Therewith was released in that kingsrick of Humidia a poisoning volume of cloud barrage indeed. Yet all they who heard or redelivered are now with that family of bards and Vergobretas himself and the crowd of Caraculacticors as much no more as be they not yet now or had they then notever been."*
"Malcolm took the sheet of paper he was offered, glanced at it, and passed it to Ruth. Having read it more slowly, she exclaimed, "Why. it's like something out of Finnegans Wake!"
""Right! Professor, Dr. Post did leave a record of his experience—at any rate, as complete a record as he thought would be necessary, knowing that with total recall he could later compile as detailed an analysis as anyone might wish for. And here it is. Not a farrago of rubbish, but the result of trying to condense scores of different levels of experience—real and vicarious—into the narrowest possible compass. Language isn't designed to carry that kind of load, Not ordinary language, anyhow."" - pp 85-86
*Finnegans Wake p 48, Viking Press, February 1975 paperback edition
"We had done some French and Latin at school but I knew virtually no German or Italian and it was clear that Joyce exploited both of these languages continually. I would take a dictionary and work through a chapter, looking up any word I thought suited the language in question. I soon learned that the most cryptic elements were often pure English. Grotesque orthography was often repeated verbatim in the Oxford English Dictionary. I suspected that Joyce was delbierately revivifying many archaic snd dialectical usages. Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English and the Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs provided numerous identifications of items in FW or of words very close to Joyce's." - p 29, The Finnegans Wake Experience - Roland McHugh
""Urea stimulates activity in the nervous system," Malcolm said. "Loss of power to excrete it as allantoin has been compared to adding a permanent pep-pill to our diet."" - p 142, The Stone that Never Came Down
"Muscle loss, osteoporosis, and vascular disease are common in subjects with reduced renal function. Despite intensive research of the underlying risk factors and mechanisms driving these phenotypes, we still lack effective treatment strategies for this underserved patient group. Thus, new approaches are needed to identify effective treatments. We believe that nephrologists could learn much from biomimicry; i.e., studies of nature’s models to solve complicated physiological problems and then imitate these fascinating solutions to develop novel interventions. The hibernating bear (Ursidae) should be of specific interest to the nephrologist as they ingest no food or water for months, remaining anuric and immobile, only to awaken with low blood urea nitrogen levels, healthy lean body mass, strong bones, and without evidence for thrombotic complications. Identifying the mechanisms by which bears prevent the development of azotemia, sarcopenia, osteoporosis, and atherosclerosis despite being inactive and anuric could lead to novel interventions for both prevention and treatment of patients with chronic kidney disease."
[..]
"This unique ability of bears to recycle urea during hibernation is not present in other hibernating mammals, such as the Columbian ground squirrel or the hedgehog."
- "Hibernating bears (Ursidae): metabolic magicians of definite interest for the nephrologist" - PeterStenvinkel, Alkesh H.Jani, Richard J.Johnson - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...
""How people delude themselves," Malcolm muttered. "Sooner or later all the finest ideals of mankind have led to overreaction. Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire and was perverted into a justification for slavery. The proud slogan of the French Revolution was inscribed over the guillotine. The oppressed victims of the tsars proceede to treat their former rulers with even greater brutality."
""It's a fearful pattern," Sawyer sighed."
Indeed.
October 31, 2016
Clever ideas and well written. I doubted the book to start with but it picks up well and I greatly enjoyed it in the end. An introspective on war and the human condition. Also my first ever John Brunner book but will not be the last.
October 22, 2011
This is a novel written in 1973, and has always been a favorite of mine, and this is probably the third or fourth time that I have read this fine book. Although the tale is set primarily in England, it describes a dystopia in which poverty, inflation, unemployment, and disillusionment are rampant around the world, and WW III seems just around the corner. And, to make matters worse, members of a right-wing political/religious group, The Campaign Against Moral Pollution (Godheads), are armed with crosses which they use as weapons to demand alms and obedience from anyone they can shake down. However, the entire world might change dramatically for the better if a mysterious new drug known as VC is allowed to to spread throughout mankind. There don't appear to be any negative side effects, and the drug drastically increases the individual's natural empathy, and grants total and complete access to one's memory. After being infected, a person's natural filters and prejudices are dismantled, and one is truly free to experience what it means to be human for the rest of their life. The novel describes how this change effects numerous individuals, and ends at kind of a 'dawning of a new age for mankind'. The characters are not that carefully delineated, but the storyline is so compelling that this can be overlooked. And, I think the book authentically demonstrates that the political and social status quo would be violently opposed to anything of this nature since their power lies in fear and divisiveness. I would recommend this book to anyone who understands that some of the best science fiction is more about adventurous storytelling than excellent writing
January 19, 2019
I need to do more writing and less reading.
August 13, 2012
Although I am a big fan of John Brunner, none of his other works have quite come up to the level of "The Sheep Look Up" or "Stand on Zanzibar." I enjoyed the setting of this novel in Europe, and the idea that was raised in the story about a specie being aware of its own evolution, but didn't find the characters particularly engaging, though some were all too accurate in their depiction of contemporary political figures.
October 7, 2009
A morality tale, but an entertaining one. On the brink of WWIII, can a new virus save humanity? Rather sweet and 70s that the only thing he thought wouldn't be affected was partying and recreational drug use.
June 12, 2023
Drill down into the root causes of today’s political dysfunction, and you’ll find the problem—unsurprisingly—in the human mind. In the United States, and no doubt throughout the world, untold millions of people are in the thrall of irrationality. They indulge in magical thinking and conspiracy theories, simply refusing to face facts. But what if it were possible to “cure” them with a pill? To sweep away the cobwebs in their minds with a simple, non-toxic, long-lasting drug—a cure for irrational thinking? It’s a nice fantasy, isn’t it? And British science fiction author John Brunner spun out an engaging story about it half a century ago in The Stone That Never Came Down.
AN UNINTENTIONAL ALTERNATE HISTORY OF EUROPE IN THE 1970S
Brunner’s novel was set in his own time, and it reflects the preoccupations of the age (or at least his own concerns). He imagines Britain in the grip of religious extremism, with a multimillion-member movement called the Campaign Against Moral Pollution terrorizing the public with bands of roving “godhead” thugs. Meanwhile, a neo-Fascist movement is on the verge of capturing the Italian government—and war seems imminent between the Italians on the one hand and the Germans and French on the other. A war that will inevitably turn nuclear.
Now, Brunner himself may have feared such prospects, but in no way does it reflect the reality either in Britain or on the Continent in the 1970s. So, it’s probably best for a reader today to view The Stone That Never Came Down as alternate history, and let Brunner’s fantasies stand. And once you do that, you’ll need to swallow his imagined cure for irrational thinking, too..
A COCKAMAMIE STORY, BUT IT’S ENTERTAINING
Somehow, Brunner manages to cram an army’s worth of characters and half a dozen subplots into barely more than two hundred pages. Unless you manage to retain the names of all the characters in active memory, you might find yourself turning back the pages from time to time. There’s a lot going on here. But this is the gist of it . . .
WORLD WAR III THREATENS
World War III is on the horizon, even though those principally responsible for pushing the world to the brink seem to be entirely unaware of it. Nor is the news media conscious of the danger. But a handful of exceptionally far-sighted people in Britain know perfectly well what’s going on. That’s because they have, wittingly or not, swallowed a pill or inhaled an aerosol that affects the mind. It’s a cure for irrational thinking, so they entertain no false hopes that the world will sidestep a nuclear holocaust unless something drastic happens.
SCIENTISTS BLUNDER INTO A CURE FOR IRRATIONAL THINKING
The first among that handful of people are the scientists at the Gull-Grant Research Institute. They’re the ones whose efforts in the lab have led to the development of VC, a psychoactive drug of unknown properties. It’s what soon proves to be a cure for irrational thinking—among other things. It also radically heightens the senses and makes people smarter.
COMBATING THE TWIN THREATS OF RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM AND NUCLEAR WAR
All over London, godheads are running rampant. Walking about in gangs, they extort bribes from homeowners under threat of breaking all their windows or even setting fire to their homes. The police do nothing. But there is one honest detective at the Met. And he joins with the scientists in a desperate campaign to infect everyone with VC who in a position to affect the course of events. The drug proves remarkably easy to spread and soon finds itself in key places throughout Europe. You can guess what happens next.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Brunner (1934-95) wrote scores of science fiction novels, more than a dozen collections of short stories, and many other works in a career from 1951 to his untimely death in 1995. He won the Hugo Award in 1969 for Stand on Zanzibar, his novel about overpopulation. The British Science Fiction Association gave him its top award the same year. Brunner was born and educated in Oxfordshire. Twice married, he died of a heart attack at the age of sixty in Glasgow, Scotland, while attending the World Science Fiction Convention.
AN UNINTENTIONAL ALTERNATE HISTORY OF EUROPE IN THE 1970S
Brunner’s novel was set in his own time, and it reflects the preoccupations of the age (or at least his own concerns). He imagines Britain in the grip of religious extremism, with a multimillion-member movement called the Campaign Against Moral Pollution terrorizing the public with bands of roving “godhead” thugs. Meanwhile, a neo-Fascist movement is on the verge of capturing the Italian government—and war seems imminent between the Italians on the one hand and the Germans and French on the other. A war that will inevitably turn nuclear.
Now, Brunner himself may have feared such prospects, but in no way does it reflect the reality either in Britain or on the Continent in the 1970s. So, it’s probably best for a reader today to view The Stone That Never Came Down as alternate history, and let Brunner’s fantasies stand. And once you do that, you’ll need to swallow his imagined cure for irrational thinking, too..
A COCKAMAMIE STORY, BUT IT’S ENTERTAINING
Somehow, Brunner manages to cram an army’s worth of characters and half a dozen subplots into barely more than two hundred pages. Unless you manage to retain the names of all the characters in active memory, you might find yourself turning back the pages from time to time. There’s a lot going on here. But this is the gist of it . . .
WORLD WAR III THREATENS
World War III is on the horizon, even though those principally responsible for pushing the world to the brink seem to be entirely unaware of it. Nor is the news media conscious of the danger. But a handful of exceptionally far-sighted people in Britain know perfectly well what’s going on. That’s because they have, wittingly or not, swallowed a pill or inhaled an aerosol that affects the mind. It’s a cure for irrational thinking, so they entertain no false hopes that the world will sidestep a nuclear holocaust unless something drastic happens.
SCIENTISTS BLUNDER INTO A CURE FOR IRRATIONAL THINKING
The first among that handful of people are the scientists at the Gull-Grant Research Institute. They’re the ones whose efforts in the lab have led to the development of VC, a psychoactive drug of unknown properties. It’s what soon proves to be a cure for irrational thinking—among other things. It also radically heightens the senses and makes people smarter.
COMBATING THE TWIN THREATS OF RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM AND NUCLEAR WAR
All over London, godheads are running rampant. Walking about in gangs, they extort bribes from homeowners under threat of breaking all their windows or even setting fire to their homes. The police do nothing. But there is one honest detective at the Met. And he joins with the scientists in a desperate campaign to infect everyone with VC who in a position to affect the course of events. The drug proves remarkably easy to spread and soon finds itself in key places throughout Europe. You can guess what happens next.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Brunner (1934-95) wrote scores of science fiction novels, more than a dozen collections of short stories, and many other works in a career from 1951 to his untimely death in 1995. He won the Hugo Award in 1969 for Stand on Zanzibar, his novel about overpopulation. The British Science Fiction Association gave him its top award the same year. Brunner was born and educated in Oxfordshire. Twice married, he died of a heart attack at the age of sixty in Glasgow, Scotland, while attending the World Science Fiction Convention.
September 18, 2024
In a 1980s world where fundamental Christian beliefs (both racist and misogynist) are enforced by roaming mendicants known as godheads, Malcolm Fry wakes up after a big night out. Gradually he becomes aware that his every sense is heightened and he can assimilate data into logical conclusions at lightning speed. He rashly took a drug called VC at his local pub in England, and one of its designers has now been murdered. Malcolm falls into a deep sleep lasting three days and wakes to the realization that his neighbour Billy and his new girlfriend Ruth have sat by him the whole time, reluctant to inform authorities for many reasons. A casual blood donation has now released VC into the wild and recipients are now prone to revelations of their own. Armed with a list of those exposed to VC, Malcolm must build an army to distribute it and hopefully prevent World War 3! Surprisingly readable tale from John Brunner after although some of the references are a bit dated. The anti-war, anti-racism theme is refreshing. Worth a look.
June 22, 2017
A solid SF effort from Brunner. This is only my second book from him, but I shall b reading more. This story describes a near future, might as well be now, where the world is on the brink of war. There are massive labor strikes around Europe, religious violence from a group of moral protectors, and confrontations between the countries of Europe. A man receives a drug from a scientist and starts feeling very different. The scientist is then murdered. This drug has the power to give the user a clearer conscience, health, reflexes, and a near photographic memory. A group of the people who were accidentally infected by the drug, which is more like a virus, take it upon themselves to stop the world from coming to war and stopping the religious brigade who stands to profit from these conflicts.
August 2, 2022
This is an early entry in the "Flowers for Algernon" mold of stories about chemicals that make humans smarter by activating more of their brains. I loved it when I first read it in the early 1970s, and I still enjoyed the plot and ideas behind it. Perhaps because I've read so much exceptional literature since my early 20s, I was bothered by the two-dimensional characters and somewhat stiff writing style this time. John Brunner was indeed a visionary, however, and it is somewhat dismaying to see that his description of a messed-up society on the brink of nuclear war and ecological disaster still sounds exactly like our current situation. If only a viral outbreak of super-intelligence could fix it in time!
August 22, 2024
Great story. The UK is suffering from Government Austerity and has become dominated by far right Christian groups who will kill anyone who is not white, Christian, heterosexual, and married to the person they are having sex with, whilst demanding tithes from everyone not in their group. The police side with the violent Christians so they act with impunity. Landlords are causing homelessness by evicting residents. WWIII is about to kick off, unusually started by an internal dispute within the EEC (the predecessor to the EU, not the Russia-dominated organisation). A research institute, about to be closed down, creates a biological culture (a virus?) that helps people become more empathetic whilst not letting them forget anything.
March 2, 2025
The DAW edition of this book touts “John Brunner’s novel of the fever-pitched fight against the end of the world will remind readers of Nineteen Eighty Four and A Clockwork Orange — but with a special difference.”
That special difference is that the baddies are religious Christians and the answer is empathy-giving drugs.
Brunner’s characters seem to argue that the reason we’re headed to Armageddon is religious extremism. He even blames nukes and mustard gas on Christians.
To me, it was just too ham-fisted, unoriginal, and tiresome for me to take seriously, making me lose interest about halfway through.
That special difference is that the baddies are religious Christians and the answer is empathy-giving drugs.
Brunner’s characters seem to argue that the reason we’re headed to Armageddon is religious extremism. He even blames nukes and mustard gas on Christians.
To me, it was just too ham-fisted, unoriginal, and tiresome for me to take seriously, making me lose interest about halfway through.
September 28, 2019
Europe in the early part of the 21st century is in the same shape as things are now under tRump's regime. The elites/1%-ers are the haves and everyone else is the have-nots. Homelessness and unemployment is rampant. The "Godheads," faux Christians, are the bullies of society, extorting "tithes" and gay-bashing (and burning). But three professors in a lab have come up with a replicating virus that, when ingested, is contagious and causes an awakening of conscience. A bit naive and contrived; not Brunner's best work.
sony-or-android
October 12, 2021Because James Alan Gardner, in Vigilant, acknowledged a debt to it, and also recommended it, and rec'd all Brunner. What I've read of Brunner I've admired, too.
July 31, 2023
Brilliant
Topical despite being fifty years old. By focusing on human nature, hypocrisy, and willful ignorance Brunner creates a gripping portrait of humanity on the edge. What constitutes the current precipice has changed —less fear of WWIII, more of climate disaster— but the people driving towards the cliff are ever so very familiar. And the proposed cure just as likely to work.
Topical despite being fifty years old. By focusing on human nature, hypocrisy, and willful ignorance Brunner creates a gripping portrait of humanity on the edge. What constitutes the current precipice has changed —less fear of WWIII, more of climate disaster— but the people driving towards the cliff are ever so very familiar. And the proposed cure just as likely to work.
February 8, 2022
A really good book about the mistake often made by people in trusting clergy unquestionably, during this short book the subject is explored with detail that I shall not go into now. There's a new drug and WW3. It is all about to happen no wonder Dick calls the author an inspiration. This is true sci-fi I would recommend this book to anyone.
October 20, 2022
Brisk, with a fairly diverse cast and many moving parts, a kind of viral empathy heist to prevent the end of the world. It’s interesting to read if only for how many more cynical takes I think a scareder author might pursue. I bought it for the cover on the DAW edition (wild blonde hair!!), but was pleasantly surprised to find it a highly digestible quick what-if reader.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 18, 2017
Like one said before me:
Due to the poor editing and plenty of printing errors only four stars; otherwise it could have been five!
Great story, i hope there will be a revival of John Brunners books. And really scary when you think this book is from the seventies, but it could play today.
Due to the poor editing and plenty of printing errors only four stars; otherwise it could have been five!
Great story, i hope there will be a revival of John Brunners books. And really scary when you think this book is from the seventies, but it could play today.
September 25, 2021
Nice concept which enables Brunner to explore his political views. Entertaining and well-paced.
November 10, 2022
Superficial and dull with flat and mostly interchangeable characters. Additionally, Brunner’s writing style just doesn’t work for me.
January 31, 2023
Classic Brunner. A mad scientist tries to save a world on the brink of war.
May 15, 2023
Boring, hard to read and slow. Maybe the founding idea for the movie Limitless and the idea of taking pharmaceuticals to improve humanity, which is an awesome premise, but it falls flat for me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 19, 2025
Depressingly prescient. Deprescient. Apart from the happy ending.
May 6, 2025
Too many characters and too much jumping around for me.
October 28, 2012
I discovered John Brunner though a reference to "The Sheep Look Up" I read at some point this year. I think he is an overlooked Science Fiction master close to the level of Phillip K. Dick. The problem is that he hasn't been rediscovered yet. He needs to be.
I posted in an update that Brunner is an uncomfortable read. You might refer back to a couple of posts that I made about Brunner. He predicts trends in society (albeit that, like Phil Dick, he predicted certain things in society to happen earlier than they have). In this book there is a right-wing Christian movement gone mad, or a hyperbolic version of some of the rhetoric we've seen this campaign season. I'm not going to go too deep into this (you can read this for yourself, and you might not draw the same conclusions I have), but some of the things in this book are very uncomfortably close to things we are seeing today. This is classic John Brunner.
Maybe the only thing I can harshly criticize here is that the "happy ending" was so complete. The world here does live "happily ever after." Probably a product of those early "book of the month" years of science fiction when that sort of ending was needed to sell the manuscript. It's part of PKD's work, too. If this was part of the 70s output of either writer I suspect that the ending would have been "we've made a big step but there's always more to do." Who today thinks the human race will perfect itself? I have to admit that I don't see that ever happening.
I posted in an update that Brunner is an uncomfortable read. You might refer back to a couple of posts that I made about Brunner. He predicts trends in society (albeit that, like Phil Dick, he predicted certain things in society to happen earlier than they have). In this book there is a right-wing Christian movement gone mad, or a hyperbolic version of some of the rhetoric we've seen this campaign season. I'm not going to go too deep into this (you can read this for yourself, and you might not draw the same conclusions I have), but some of the things in this book are very uncomfortably close to things we are seeing today. This is classic John Brunner.
Maybe the only thing I can harshly criticize here is that the "happy ending" was so complete. The world here does live "happily ever after." Probably a product of those early "book of the month" years of science fiction when that sort of ending was needed to sell the manuscript. It's part of PKD's work, too. If this was part of the 70s output of either writer I suspect that the ending would have been "we've made a big step but there's always more to do." Who today thinks the human race will perfect itself? I have to admit that I don't see that ever happening.
Read
July 10, 2012Discovered this on my bookshelves, and somehow I've never read it before.
Judging by the chisel mark in the top I must have bought it as a remainder.
What a discovery! Set in Kentish Town, in a Britain in severe recession (two million unemployed - remember that), severe economic crises in .. er .. Greece and Italy, potential breakdown of - OK, it's still called the Common Market, but you get the idea.
Written in 1973 (Brunner died in 1995), but despite the cassette tapes and telephones with handsets, it somehow still feels up-to-date.
A couple of slightly ropey characters - a doctor with an irritating habit of explaining the plot to the other characters, and a black TV repair man (I'd guess his style of speech might have been accurate black slang for the early 1970's but he comes over sounding like something out of Tom Sawyer), but generally brilliant.
A real find.
Judging by the chisel mark in the top I must have bought it as a remainder.
What a discovery! Set in Kentish Town, in a Britain in severe recession (two million unemployed - remember that), severe economic crises in .. er .. Greece and Italy, potential breakdown of - OK, it's still called the Common Market, but you get the idea.
Written in 1973 (Brunner died in 1995), but despite the cassette tapes and telephones with handsets, it somehow still feels up-to-date.
A couple of slightly ropey characters - a doctor with an irritating habit of explaining the plot to the other characters, and a black TV repair man (I'd guess his style of speech might have been accurate black slang for the early 1970's but he comes over sounding like something out of Tom Sawyer), but generally brilliant.
A real find.
June 21, 2016
Phew, emotionally heavy going as I have come to expect from Brunner. When he says Europe is on the brink of destruction he does not mess around. The rise of right wing movements, troops on the streets and religious fanaticism is believable as it is terrifying. Thankfully the 21st century as he saw it is no way near as bad but odd echoes are here and then which just adds to my respect for this work written more than 40 years ago. The fact that (spoiler) the interesting debate around medical ethics is cut short by a massacre at a gay club is especially poignant. Perhaps not as far reaching in scope as stand on Zanzibar or his other greats this is however a shorter and more accessible book which delivers on Brunner's grim view of the future. It is unusual in that it ends in a positive manner. Probably best not to read too many books like this in a row as it will leave you scared and angry!
December 5, 2012
Brilliant story from the always prescient Brunner. Set in a near-future (from the time of writing, 1973), it outlines a world sliding into global depression, with the resulting rise in racism, class warfare, and church-supplied self-righteousness, coutries defaulting from the European coalition, etc. Brunner has a recipe for a utopian solution that is bit untenable in reality, but serves well to explore the shortcomings of us humans as a rational species.
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