Foreign Constellations by John Brunner
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Overview: Eight stories by a British science-fiction writer who's far more original (Stand on Zanzibar) than this good but oddly slight collection might suggest. Brunner's trenchant polemicism is well represented by "The Berendt Conversion" (a pastiche of historical accounts of starvation, hung on a story designed to show how the noblest invention can be prostituted to the use of the haves against the have-nots) and "The Protocols of the Elders of Britain" (in which a young computer expert stumbles on proof of all our most paranoid suspicions about how power maintains itself). But "The Suicide of Man," in which a future humanity learns to dissolve the shackles of individual identity, is a grandiose fable of a sort done better by Brian Aldiss and others; and there are fairly ordinary explorations of fairly ordinary sf premises (a euthanasic device, telepathy). Still, Brunner's un-padded directness works to witty effect in a story like "What Friends Are For" (confrontation between neighborhood enfant terrible and benevolent robot-tutor), and overall this is far-above-routine work--brisk, shapely--that's only somewhat disappointing by Brunner's own high standards.
Genre: Fiction > Sci-Fi/Fantasy
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Requirements: .ePUB reader, 0.7Mb
Overview: Eight stories by a British science-fiction writer who's far more original (Stand on Zanzibar) than this good but oddly slight collection might suggest. Brunner's trenchant polemicism is well represented by "The Berendt Conversion" (a pastiche of historical accounts of starvation, hung on a story designed to show how the noblest invention can be prostituted to the use of the haves against the have-nots) and "The Protocols of the Elders of Britain" (in which a young computer expert stumbles on proof of all our most paranoid suspicions about how power maintains itself). But "The Suicide of Man," in which a future humanity learns to dissolve the shackles of individual identity, is a grandiose fable of a sort done better by Brian Aldiss and others; and there are fairly ordinary explorations of fairly ordinary sf premises (a euthanasic device, telepathy). Still, Brunner's un-padded directness works to witty effect in a story like "What Friends Are For" (confrontation between neighborhood enfant terrible and benevolent robot-tutor), and overall this is far-above-routine work--brisk, shapely--that's only somewhat disappointing by Brunner's own high standards.
Genre: Fiction > Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Download Instructions:
Uploaded
Lilfile