The Altar on Asconel/Android Avenger

by John Brunner, Ted White

The Altar On Asconel (143 p.)
He remembered the day ten years ago when his older brother had been made a Warden of Asconel, a prosperous and happy planet, and he and his other brothers had left in the interests of their people. Now they had returned to a world where a fanatical cult had usurped the Warden's chair, and man and women were gladly offering themselves up as human sacrifices to Belizuek - whoever or whatever that being from beyond the galaxy was....

Android Avenger (113 p.)
My body turned into an office building and raced down the corridor to a room where a man was sitting at a console. He'd begun to swing around in his chair when my mouth opened, and a thin, blood-red ray thot out, cleaving the man from head to abdomen.

Then it was over. My mouth closed, and I stood there, stunned. Up to today I was Bob Tanner, an average, sane Citizen. Now what was I, man or murder machine?

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

John 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"..

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun Ace Doubles read. Ironically, I came for the psychic Long Night geopolitics of Asconel. The author mimics many of the fun concepts set elsewhere by Poul Anderson’s Flandry Series. But while I came for Brunner, I stayed for the insanely weird but fun thriller Android Avenger.


Oh Android Avenger. You are a story I won’t forget, even if society has. This is one of those many forgotten AI stories that actually peppered mid-century sci-fi well before AI began making headlines this year (2025). And like many of those Ace Doubles and Analog Magazine stories, the AI comes off as far more sensible than the humans who live in a dystopian mess of their own creation.

We wake up in the near future (as with the Matrix, the peak of humanity always lies in contemporary ages, in this case the 1960s). As one reviewer noted, we the reader have no idea what the Android character is exactly avenging. All we know is our android hero wakes up from a mediocre life set in some weird 1984 tyranny that makes less sense the more you think about it. Our hero, horrified by a public execution, ends up tripping himself into a hospital, realizes he’s an android, escapes the secret police, kills some people, and rapidly seduces a stunning redhead with the line “you’re prettier than your sister” [who I just incinerated with my laser gun].


Let’s clear things up from another reviewer. Our android hero does not in fact hook up 3 times. He hooks up 2x with the same redhead, and then once in a dream sequence with some hippie blonde. He is not a complete lech. But yes, he (and the author) obsesses rather quickly about said redhead’s bum mere minutes after the insane body count starts exploding and the redhead’s redhead sister dies. Now while I think the red headed love interest is a bit strange for falling into a relationship with the Android who so recently killed her sister, it does make some sense in the narrative and was a fun enough romance to read. Maybe I am just a sucker for sci-fi romance. But it worked for me.

Anyway, at barely 130 pages, the story moves fast. Our hero learns a lot of lessons along the way about being human, and the AI learns to understand humans through the power of love. Or something. Aww..

Android Avenger is apparently part of a duology. But I sadly note that the sequel I have heard about throws away the nice romance that forms the core emotional heart of this book, so I will not read further. But for what it was, this was nice sci-fi.

[Roddy Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Android Avenger

‘BORN OF MAN AND MACHINE, TO WHOM DID HE OWE HIS LOYALTY?

CYBERNETIC ASSASSIN

All of a sudden, I was moving faster than usual. The other passengers standing on the subway platform seemed rooted to their places. It took me only seconds to reach the top of the six flights of stairs, and then I was out of the station and moving down Fulton Street at better than forty miles an hour!

What was happening to me? It was as though I were the helpless passenger in a runaway car. Something else has assumed control and was guiding me.

My body turned into an office building and raced down the corridor to a room where a man was sitting at a console. He’d begun to swing around in his chair when my mouth opened, and a thin blood-red ray shot out, cleaving the man from head to abdomen.

Then it was over. My mouth closed, and I stood there, stunned. Up to today I was Bob Tanner, an average sane Citizen. Now what was I, man or murder machine?’

Blurb from the M-123 Ace Doubles 1965 Edition.


A seemingly ordinary citizen of a near future USA where people pass through regular scans to pick out seditionists finds himself suddenly compelled to track someone down whom he then kills with lasers seemingly issuing from his own body.
Escaping from the scene he is involved in an accident and ends up in hospital where it is discovered that his human flesh is merely a covering for a metal framework. He then embarks upon a quest to find out who or what he is, and why someone or something is controlling him and using him as an assassin.
There is an odd noir-ish feel about this novel, which although set in the future, seems all too rooted culturally in an America of the 1960s.

[Steven]

John Brunner / Ted White