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Double, Double
page tanning, good readable condition a2
222 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
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111 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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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
March 3, 2020
Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...
"John Brunner has long been one of my favorite SF authors and it almost pains me to review dismal disasters like Double, Double (1969). I find it mind-boggling that an author who produced the otherworldly Stand on Zanzibar (1968) can turn around and release Double, Double the very next year. Yes, yes I know, even brilliant SF" [...]
"John Brunner has long been one of my favorite SF authors and it almost pains me to review dismal disasters like Double, Double (1969). I find it mind-boggling that an author who produced the otherworldly Stand on Zanzibar (1968) can turn around and release Double, Double the very next year. Yes, yes I know, even brilliant SF" [...]
March 19, 2018
A rock band is partying on a beach as evening falls. And--something--is it a dog? a human?-- is seen staggering ashore. The rockers don't realize that an alien invasion is underway. This story by British author John Brunner (1934-1995) was published in 1969. The title refers to the creature's ability to duplicate itself--and it's a shapeshifter as well. A good little story with some suspense, it could have been more fully developed. I give it only *** (so so) as it is certainly a weak effort compared to Brunner's SF classics--"Stand on Zanzibar" and "The Sheep Look Up," not to mention one of my favorite SF books by Brunner- "Times Without Number."
October 20, 2009
This is basically the plot of Horror on Party Beach.
August 7, 2013
review of
John Brunner's Double, Double
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 6, 2013
Brunner has done it for me again. I've reviewed 5 bks by him now: The World Swappers ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23... ), Times Without Number ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63... ), The Whole Man ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/86... ), The Long Result ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31... ), & Born Under Mars ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/74... ).
In my 1st Brunner review, that of The World Swappers, I wrote "So what's my take on Brunner? Will he enter my pantheon of SF favorites? Will he join the company of Philip K. Dick, Samuel Delaney, Stanislav Lem, J. G. Ballard, & the Strugatsky Brothers? Not quite.. at least not quite yet.." Well, folks, that's all changed. He's entered the pantheon. I consider Double, Double to be writing on a par w/ that of the Strugtasky Brothers. High praise from me, indeed. By the time I reviewed The Long Result I wrote "I'm now a full-fledged Brunner enthusiast" & I think I'm beyond even that by now.
As is often my wont, I don't really want to give away the plot so I'll concentrate on a few details that pleased me here & there. The bk's copyrighted 1969, some central characters are a pop music band traveling in a brightly painted van. In other words, as they wd've been perceived at the time, "hippies". & Brunner portrays them in a completely positive light. Given that I was alive at the time & a guy w/ what was considered to be 'long hair' & given that when I walked around I got to hear more than my fair share of insults screamed at me by morons from passing cars, it's nice to read Brunner's more positive spin. I remember it being around 1969 when I was sitting in the kitchen w/ my mom. She was reading an editorial in the daily newspaper in wch it was asserted that all males w/ long hair were homosexual. My mom emphatically agreed w/ this. Since she was a robopath & highly susceptible to propaganda, she didn't let the presence of her long-haired & obviously not gay son disturb her acceptance of this bullshit. That's just a little anecdote to set the tone of the time.
Making things even better, Brunner's pop group is called "BRUNO AND THE HERMETIC TRADITION" (p 7) explained by a black man in the group thusly: ""Ran across it in The New York Review of Books," he said. "I saw where someone had written a book called Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, and I thought that was a hell of a name fro a pop group.["]" (p 15) For me, that's a great reference, I'm interested in Bruno & I read a bk by him. For those of you not familiar w/ him, he was tortured by the Catholic Church for 8 yrs & then brutally executed in public for doing things much like Galileo did.
Brunner manages to load alot into this one. There're plenty of diverse characters, there's a marine research center, an old lady living nearby in a partially burnt-out bldg, a polluting chemical company, police, a dog, &.. a "shapechanger". The same black man in BRUNO is reading Evergreen Review, one of those cultural details I delight in given that Evergreen Review was an excellent publication. AND there's a pirate radio stn: "You ought to be able to pick up Radio Jolly Roger from here—that's lying off Margate, isn't it?" (p 30) I'm hooked. (Samples of some of my own Pirate Radio programs can be read about, listened to, & downloaded here: http://archive.org/details/Radio2001 , http://archive.org/details/Radio2004 ). Indeed, there's a lot here to appeal to me:
"He lifted his bass out of its case. Silently the others copied him: Gideon with his guitar and Rupert with his collection of miscellaneous instruments including such exotica as Swanee whistles and a Jew's harp. His regular instrument was the electric organ, but that was already delivered and on-stage, like Glenn's drum kit." - p 66
Jew's harp? Yes! I just recently listened to Lukas Foss's fantastic piece entitled "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" that has the great percussionist Jan Williams playing a bit of Jew's harp. Of course, there're plenty of other great examples, but I'll confine myself to a plug for the latest CD I copublished called "MM 26" wch has 3 pieces by Zout on it that have Jew's harp in the instrumentation. (You can spend yr money wisely here: http://cdbaby.com/cd/mm4 )
"Rupert bridled. He was the most talented of the group, they all agreed to that—he had studied at the Royal College of Music and come away with a first-rate result. But he found his own talent boring; he played nineteen instruments competently, from harmonica to bagpipies, and lately he had been concentrating on the electronic effects he could wheedle out of a tape recorder with a score of curious attachments of his own design. Some of the items he had come up with were strangely disturbing, but so far the group had not found a way to integrate the latest of his discoveries into their stage performances, only into their records." - pp 66-67
In other words, a group after my own passions: a little Jimi Hendrix, a little Soft Machine, a little Stockhausen, perhaps? For a recent list of some of my own favorite records listened to from 1968-1974 go here: http://cruciblesound.blogspot.com/201... .
This was a thoroughly engrossing fun novel.. It's not really a substitute for the life I'm trying to have (&, apparently, failing at) but it's close enuf to keep me going. & it's got ye olde post-atomic-bomb-dropping worry in it that I can certainly relate to:
""What could have caused it?"
""You're asking me?" Tom sighed. "But I can guess, and so can you. In the past couple of decades we've put more mutation-inducing substances into the sea than you'd normally expect in several centuries—fallout from H-bomb tests, canned waste from nuclear power stations . . ."" - p 158
By the way, while I was writing this, I was listening to Paul Robeson's LP entitled Songs of Free Men * Spirituals. If you don't know Robeson, check him out. He sings in English, Russian, Hebrew, & Spanish (or is it Catalan?). What a fuckin' repertoire the guy has!!
John Brunner's Double, Double
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 6, 2013
Brunner has done it for me again. I've reviewed 5 bks by him now: The World Swappers ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23... ), Times Without Number ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63... ), The Whole Man ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/86... ), The Long Result ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31... ), & Born Under Mars ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/74... ).
In my 1st Brunner review, that of The World Swappers, I wrote "So what's my take on Brunner? Will he enter my pantheon of SF favorites? Will he join the company of Philip K. Dick, Samuel Delaney, Stanislav Lem, J. G. Ballard, & the Strugatsky Brothers? Not quite.. at least not quite yet.." Well, folks, that's all changed. He's entered the pantheon. I consider Double, Double to be writing on a par w/ that of the Strugtasky Brothers. High praise from me, indeed. By the time I reviewed The Long Result I wrote "I'm now a full-fledged Brunner enthusiast" & I think I'm beyond even that by now.
As is often my wont, I don't really want to give away the plot so I'll concentrate on a few details that pleased me here & there. The bk's copyrighted 1969, some central characters are a pop music band traveling in a brightly painted van. In other words, as they wd've been perceived at the time, "hippies". & Brunner portrays them in a completely positive light. Given that I was alive at the time & a guy w/ what was considered to be 'long hair' & given that when I walked around I got to hear more than my fair share of insults screamed at me by morons from passing cars, it's nice to read Brunner's more positive spin. I remember it being around 1969 when I was sitting in the kitchen w/ my mom. She was reading an editorial in the daily newspaper in wch it was asserted that all males w/ long hair were homosexual. My mom emphatically agreed w/ this. Since she was a robopath & highly susceptible to propaganda, she didn't let the presence of her long-haired & obviously not gay son disturb her acceptance of this bullshit. That's just a little anecdote to set the tone of the time.
Making things even better, Brunner's pop group is called "BRUNO AND THE HERMETIC TRADITION" (p 7) explained by a black man in the group thusly: ""Ran across it in The New York Review of Books," he said. "I saw where someone had written a book called Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, and I thought that was a hell of a name fro a pop group.["]" (p 15) For me, that's a great reference, I'm interested in Bruno & I read a bk by him. For those of you not familiar w/ him, he was tortured by the Catholic Church for 8 yrs & then brutally executed in public for doing things much like Galileo did.
Brunner manages to load alot into this one. There're plenty of diverse characters, there's a marine research center, an old lady living nearby in a partially burnt-out bldg, a polluting chemical company, police, a dog, &.. a "shapechanger". The same black man in BRUNO is reading Evergreen Review, one of those cultural details I delight in given that Evergreen Review was an excellent publication. AND there's a pirate radio stn: "You ought to be able to pick up Radio Jolly Roger from here—that's lying off Margate, isn't it?" (p 30) I'm hooked. (Samples of some of my own Pirate Radio programs can be read about, listened to, & downloaded here: http://archive.org/details/Radio2001 , http://archive.org/details/Radio2004 ). Indeed, there's a lot here to appeal to me:
"He lifted his bass out of its case. Silently the others copied him: Gideon with his guitar and Rupert with his collection of miscellaneous instruments including such exotica as Swanee whistles and a Jew's harp. His regular instrument was the electric organ, but that was already delivered and on-stage, like Glenn's drum kit." - p 66
Jew's harp? Yes! I just recently listened to Lukas Foss's fantastic piece entitled "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" that has the great percussionist Jan Williams playing a bit of Jew's harp. Of course, there're plenty of other great examples, but I'll confine myself to a plug for the latest CD I copublished called "MM 26" wch has 3 pieces by Zout on it that have Jew's harp in the instrumentation. (You can spend yr money wisely here: http://cdbaby.com/cd/mm4 )
"Rupert bridled. He was the most talented of the group, they all agreed to that—he had studied at the Royal College of Music and come away with a first-rate result. But he found his own talent boring; he played nineteen instruments competently, from harmonica to bagpipies, and lately he had been concentrating on the electronic effects he could wheedle out of a tape recorder with a score of curious attachments of his own design. Some of the items he had come up with were strangely disturbing, but so far the group had not found a way to integrate the latest of his discoveries into their stage performances, only into their records." - pp 66-67
In other words, a group after my own passions: a little Jimi Hendrix, a little Soft Machine, a little Stockhausen, perhaps? For a recent list of some of my own favorite records listened to from 1968-1974 go here: http://cruciblesound.blogspot.com/201... .
This was a thoroughly engrossing fun novel.. It's not really a substitute for the life I'm trying to have (&, apparently, failing at) but it's close enuf to keep me going. & it's got ye olde post-atomic-bomb-dropping worry in it that I can certainly relate to:
""What could have caused it?"
""You're asking me?" Tom sighed. "But I can guess, and so can you. In the past couple of decades we've put more mutation-inducing substances into the sea than you'd normally expect in several centuries—fallout from H-bomb tests, canned waste from nuclear power stations . . ."" - p 158
By the way, while I was writing this, I was listening to Paul Robeson's LP entitled Songs of Free Men * Spirituals. If you don't know Robeson, check him out. He sings in English, Russian, Hebrew, & Spanish (or is it Catalan?). What a fuckin' repertoire the guy has!!
November 1, 2018
Meh. Lot's of filler. The plot is obvious and dragged out to an almost interminable degree.
April 21, 2018
1988 Grade A-.
2018 Grade B+/A-.
Monster SciFi. It felt like I was reading a 50s-60s SciFi monster movie, only better. A monster comes out of the ocean in the late 60s and terrorizes scientists and authorities in a small UK coastal area. Even the pirate radio ship was in the story. It was quite a lot of fun to read and was easy to read. Although it was not a novel pushing great concepts and that cannot be put down, I still recommend it.
2018 Grade B+/A-.
Monster SciFi. It felt like I was reading a 50s-60s SciFi monster movie, only better. A monster comes out of the ocean in the late 60s and terrorizes scientists and authorities in a small UK coastal area. Even the pirate radio ship was in the story. It was quite a lot of fun to read and was easy to read. Although it was not a novel pushing great concepts and that cannot be put down, I still recommend it.
October 15, 2015
overall sturdy older sf of dealing with an unknown weird life-form on then present day England. Likable characters, plot unremarkable once set in motion and slow at times but enjoyable overall
April 29, 2020
I've long been a John Brunner fan since somone introduced me to Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up many years ago. I've found the quality of is other books to be variable - his writing style is often overly florid to an American eye, but I really enjoy his story lines even when the prose does not flow so well. This is the first exception I've encountered. I winced through the first chapter and the flood of excess adjectives describing his characters, expecting the reward of an interesting story. No such luck. As others have commented, this one is really pretty much a stinker. My hopes of all of these threads coming together into some kind of cohesive story were dashed in the closing pages as I saw the end coming and no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Really can't recommend this one, even at the thrift store price I obtained it at. Read the back of a cereal box; at least you can eat the cereal.
August 15, 2025
The plot was enjoyable, a bit slow at times, but I can't complain. Keeping count of the characters wasn't difficult despite there being a good few of them. And the way things unfolded made sense, at least to me, so it never really felt like the plot was moving forcefully.
I picked it up because I thought it inspired the name of a Double variant on Skullgirls mobile, but it didn't disappoint me. I wouldn't know whether to say that it's good or just decent, but I enjoyed it as a week-long read and my first book after a couple of months of not reading any. I enjoyed it and would recommend it. Good read!
I picked it up because I thought it inspired the name of a Double variant on Skullgirls mobile, but it didn't disappoint me. I wouldn't know whether to say that it's good or just decent, but I enjoyed it as a week-long read and my first book after a couple of months of not reading any. I enjoyed it and would recommend it. Good read!
April 3, 2019
Solid Alien Precursor
Another good, solid horror/science fiction story from Brunner. Some elements of these monsters that eventually show up in Alien include acid and the rapid growth/transformation process. It would make a good movie of its own.
Another good, solid horror/science fiction story from Brunner. Some elements of these monsters that eventually show up in Alien include acid and the rapid growth/transformation process. It would make a good movie of its own.
April 11, 2020
Even as a big Brunner fan it is hard to find much of a positive nature to say about this book. The story is slight and predictable. Many passages read like something that is paid for by the word. That he wrote this immediately after Stand On Zanzibar is mind boggling! Read that instead.
April 30, 2024
This is a pretty middle of the road Brunner book, but still fairly enoyable. It deals with a creature coming up from the depths that is causing people appear in more than one place at a time. The small coastal town is working on discovering what this creature is and how to stop it.
November 15, 2019
Band entdeckt Monster am Meer. Sehr schwach. 3/10
July 25, 2022
This is a perfectly passable example of the late '60s sci-fi thriller. I wouldn't go out of my way to find it, but if you come across a copy it's a pleasant enough way to spend a summer afternoon.
October 6, 2024
Is it not great to read quality Science Fiction written in English?
Those were the days.
If you are exhausted by all the Americanes out there try this.
I found it, in a word, quaint.
Those were the days.
If you are exhausted by all the Americanes out there try this.
I found it, in a word, quaint.
April 7, 2015
Double, Double (1969) 221 pages by John Brunner.
A pop rock band looking for a place to throw a party finds a beach with chalk cliffs. After having a picnic there they see someone struggling in the water. They go to help the guy then get spooked when they see he hasn't taken a breath and his face is half eaten away. They bolt but when they come back the body is gone. They report the incident to the local police but are not believed. Still they go check it out and find nothing. Other incidents start happening crazy old Felicia Beeding is spotted in two places at once.
The reader is presented with the different and seemingly changing clues. The first two thirds of the book is kind of a mystery, followed by now we know what it is, how are we going to stop it.
The back cover of the book touts all the different characters, true, but then goes on to say something about invisibility which has nothing to do with the story. Brunner does a good job mixing in all the characters. Just when we think how is he going to explain all these different characteristics of the unknown animal? He does, very suitibly. Then goes on to the suspense part of the novel.
Not a masterpiece, but really good light reading.
A pop rock band looking for a place to throw a party finds a beach with chalk cliffs. After having a picnic there they see someone struggling in the water. They go to help the guy then get spooked when they see he hasn't taken a breath and his face is half eaten away. They bolt but when they come back the body is gone. They report the incident to the local police but are not believed. Still they go check it out and find nothing. Other incidents start happening crazy old Felicia Beeding is spotted in two places at once.
The reader is presented with the different and seemingly changing clues. The first two thirds of the book is kind of a mystery, followed by now we know what it is, how are we going to stop it.
The back cover of the book touts all the different characters, true, but then goes on to say something about invisibility which has nothing to do with the story. Brunner does a good job mixing in all the characters. Just when we think how is he going to explain all these different characteristics of the unknown animal? He does, very suitibly. Then goes on to the suspense part of the novel.
Not a masterpiece, but really good light reading.
January 29, 2023
It's hard to believe that John Brunner wrote "Double, Double" the year after he wrote the presciently grim epic "Stand On Zanzibar," but it's easy to believe that he wrote it the same year "Scooby-Doo" first aired because it is basically a Scooby-Doo episode with some c. 1970 kids in an oddly decorated van investigating strange occurrences in a creepy seaside English village. There's even a large dog.
Spider Robinson dismissed this novel, saying "there just ain't all that much right with it... It's a shame writers have to do this stuff to stay alive."
Spider Robinson dismissed this novel, saying "there just ain't all that much right with it... It's a shame writers have to do this stuff to stay alive."
February 28, 2022
The first 40 pages of this novel can be summarized in just one sentence:
We meet a rock band, that is looking for a beach to host a party and a scientist who is living with his wife in a research facility.
That's all. After that, some stuff starts happening, but it gets only marginally more interesting. So 20 pages later I quit, because I came to the conviction that the author was wasting my time. My time is admittedly not that precious, but still..
We meet a rock band, that is looking for a beach to host a party and a scientist who is living with his wife in a research facility.
That's all. After that, some stuff starts happening, but it gets only marginally more interesting. So 20 pages later I quit, because I came to the conviction that the author was wasting my time. My time is admittedly not that precious, but still..
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews