15 Science Fiction Classics by John Brunner
Requirements: ePUB, MOBI Reader, 9.4MB
Overview: John Kilian Houston Brunner (24 September 1934 – 26 August 1995) was a prolific British author of science fiction novels and stories. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, about an overpopulated world, won the 1968 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. It also won the BSFA award the same year. The Jagged Orbit won the BSFA award in 1970.
The 100th Millennium (1959) A hundred thousand years from now, it was discovered that a star was approaching the world on a collision course. Its discoverer, Creohan, figured there might be time to save the world if he could arouse everyone to the danger. But the Earth had become a strange and kaleidoscopic place in that distant era. Too many empires had risen and fallen, too many cultures had spread their shattered fragments across a planet whose very maps had long since been forgotten. People were too busy with their own private dreams to pay attention to one more new alarm.
The World Swappers (1959) The inhabited galaxy was caught in the crushing vice of a struggle for power. The political titans of the planets of mankind were making their bids for supremacy. The contestants: Cornice, man of strange powers, authority in the spheres of the intellect; and Bassett, man of money-power, financial and business wizard. As the association of human worlds drew near the teetering edge of internal revolutions; one of these men would be in a position to triumph. The only thing that neither side could foresee was that there were Others hovering among the stars, loo ling for new worlds to conquer!
The Rites of Ohe (1963) 'How short a time a century really is . . .' The speaker was Immortal Karmesin, and he had lived a thousand years. He stood, a gigantic figure against the rush of time, a permanently open channel for the infants of the galaxy to explore the deep past. He was anathema to the Phoenixes, for their creed was that of birth in death, of regeneration in destruction. And he knew that he - one man - had to unravel the Phoenix mystery, or live to watch it bring fiery death to all the planets of man . . .
Telepathist (1964) also published as The Whole Man Howson was a runt. Twisted, ugly, crippled. The kind of guy people just didn't want to know. But when he took a deep breath, braced himself and projected his thoughts thousands of miles into space, they were all over him. Howson's telepathic powers were like nothing they'd ever known before . . . and he became the greatest curative telepathist in the world. But when they put him to work chasing people's nightmares deep down inside their minds, could they be expected to cope with what the runt found in there? More importantly, could Howson?
The Day of the Star Cities (1965) The first hint that Earthmen had that aliens had come to their planet was a catastrophic one. Suddenly, without warning, all the atomic weapons and fissionable material on Earth were blown up. Panic, death and chaos reigned for months before things began to get back under control. By that time reports were already coming in of five mysterious star-shaped cities scattered over the globe - huge areas of flickering light and awesome free energy, disorganizing to human senses and impregnable to attack. The aliens had built their bases on Earth. But were they only bases, or - something else?
The Squares of the City (1965) "Built in the heart of the jungle, The City was an architect's masterpiece--& the scene of a flesh-&-blood game of chess where the unwitting pawns were real people!"
The Squares of the City is a sociological story of urban class warfare and political intrigue, taking place in the fictional South American capital city of Vados. It explores the idea of subliminal messages as political tools, and it is notable for having the structure of the famous 1892 chess game between Wilhelm Steinitz and Mikhail Chigorin. The structure is not coincidental, and plays an important part in the story.
Born Under Mars (1966) When mankind colonized the stars, they traveled out from Earth in two directions - to Centaurus and its Southern Hemisphere neighbors and to Ursa Major and the constellations around Polaris. And strange to say the humans who settled on those various worlds began to develop into two differing and antagonistic types.
For Ray Mallin, born under the surface of Mars in the sparse colony of Earth's inhospitable old neighbor, neither the anarchic "Bears" nor the autocratic "Centaurs" commanded his loyalty. So when secret agents of both galactic groupings suddenly focused their unwelcome attention on his most recent star-piloting mission, he knew only that something of vast significance was up - and that he unknowingly was the key to it.
The Jagged Orbit (1969) Matthew Flamen, the last of the networks' spoolpigeons, is desperate for a big story. He needs it to keep his audience - and his job. And there is no shortage of possibilities: the Gottschalk cartel is fomenting trouble among the knees in order to sell their latest armaments to the blanks; which ties in nicely with the fact that something big is brewing with the X Patriots; and it looks as if the inconceivable is about to happen and that one of Britain's most dangerous revolutionaries is going to be given a visa to enter America. And then there's the story that just falls into his lap. The one that suggests that the respected Director of the New York State Mental Hospital is a charlatan... John Brunner's brilliant and scathing vision of a society disintegrating under the impact of violence, drugs, high-level corruption and the casual institutionalization of the 'insane' was a powerful and important statement in 1969. It remains a compelling and chilling tour de force three decades on.
Timescoop (1969) A Pandora's box of evil Freitas had commanded the engineers of his vast, world-wide empire to build him a device that could ransack the past. Now all the riches of the ages were his for the taking. But mere wealth was not what Freitas was after. Supreme power was what he sought, and from the past he picked the men and women who could help him gain absolute mastery over his rivals. But one thing he had not reckoned on - the power these creatures fro the past would have over him the reign of terror about to begin
Entry to Elsewhen (1972) Entry to Elsewhen is a collection of science fiction short stories. It contains the following stories:
Eventually it is discovered that the plague is being spread by human military forces who have traveled through time from several centuries in the future. The head of this group explains that the plague was developed by an aggressive alien species with the purpose of destroying humanity. The plague's effectiveness derives in part from atrophied immune systems resulting from long-term prevention of exposure to any infectious agent. Traveling to the past is a desperate measure to introduce the virus to humans with more robust immune systems in the hope that the survivors will be better able to resist the virus when the alien species creates it.
On reaching the destination planet, the Tripborn refuse to leave the ship. Never having lived on a planet, they don't seem to see the appeal. Additionally the idea causes severe agoraphobia, as experienced by one Tripborn crew member who makes a landing on the planet and must be retrieved by remote control. The Earthborn crew members employ a variety of means to make the Tripborn less comfortable on the ship, such asPsychoactive Drug included in the food supply and subtle background sounds designed to cause unease. However this fails to move the Tripborn, even despite the fact that the ship will be unable to support the full crew's life for more than a few weeks more. The Tripborn also note that it's difficult to accept the Earthborn crew's rosy predictions for the future when the overall mission calls for the Earthborn to return home, leaving the Tripborn to establish the colony.
Since the ship's cargo includes the necessary tools to build a city suitable for 10,000 inhabitants on the destination planet, the Earthborn crew suggests that they instead be employed in the construction of a second spaceship. The reduced crew on the original ship could be supported by the ship's systems, and the Earthborn crew would no longer need the original ship for the return voyage.
The story ends before this plan has been carried out, leaving the reader to imagine whether the plan would be successful.
Vanessa marries a man who is involved with an organization calling itself Real Truth, which she describes as a cult. The "Real Truthers" beliefs include a belief in the supremacy of human thought as the primary force in the universe, and the idea that by working together they can think into existence someone who they describe as the Perfect Man.
After being drawn into a meeting of Real Truth, Colin and Vanessa accidentally cross over into a parallel-universe Earth in which mental powers such as psychokinesis are practiced by a number of adepts, who use these powers to enslave the rest of the population. It is explained that these abilities originated thousands of years past as the result of a mutation which the adepts carry. The leader, Telthis, is the one with the strongest mental powers, and has been using his abilities to influence events on Colin and Vanessa's Earth with the purpose of eventually invading it and ruling both Earths. It was Telthis's efforts which caused Colin's breakdown and hallucinations. Telthis also manipulated Colin and Vanessa into their apparently random meetings, because they also carry the genetic mutation of the adepts on Telthis' Earth, and he hopes that by bringing them together they will eventually have children and promote psychokinetic and other mental powers. Kolok, it turns out, is Telthis' chief opponent, who has appeared to Colin and Vanessa in the hope of preventing this.
Colin and Vanessa manage with Kolok's help to escape from captivity and return to their own Earth. Shortly afterward, Telthis' invasion begins. However he discovers that his mental powers do not function outside of his own Earth. He and his soldiers are attacked by an angry mob and carried off by police.
The Sheep Look Up (1972) An enduring classic, this book offers a dramatic and prophetic look at the potential consequences of the escalating destruction of Earth. In this nightmare society, air pollution is so bad that gas masks are commonplace. Infant mortality is up, and everyone seems to suffer from some form of ailment. The water is polluted, and only the poor drink from the tap. The government is ineffectual, and corporate interests scramble to make a profit from water purifiers, gas masks, and organic foods. Environmentalist Austin Train is on the run. The Trainites, environmental activists and sometime terrorists, want him to lead their movement. The government wants him in jail, or preferably, executed. The media wants a circus. Everyone has a plan for Train, but Train has a plan of his own. This suspenseful science fiction drama is now available to a new generation of enthusiasts.
Age of Miracles (1973) In Age of Miracles Brunner confronts his characters with an alien transportation system produced by unknown creatures clearly superior in knowledge & application of science. While human characters do learn to make some limited use of the system, their position at the end is comparable to that of rats on a sea-going ship, &, as the characters themselves indicate, their future use of the network is predicated on just how annoying these human rats become to the aliens: "...since we quit pilfering live artefacts, the aliens have shown no sign of noticing us. I suspect they can't be bothered. We've put up with rats & mice for thousands of years, & we only take steps against them when they cause great harm"
Total Eclipse (1974) In 2020, an international space team, exploring Sigma Draconis, 19 light years from earth, discovers the remains of a highly advanced society that has left behind as its most spectacular artifact the largest telescope imaginable, carved & polished from a natural moon crater. Successive space crews determine that the native culture evolved & disappeared mysteriously after a mere 3000 years of existence. It's now 2028. Another mission reaches the planet with just one goal--to discover why the civilization disappeared--& with just one hope--that this knowledge will prevent the same thing from happening on earth.
Exhibiting that rare sense of sf mystery that distinguished Arthur C. Clarke's 2001, John Brunner weaves a haunting tale of how 30 people attack the nearly insuperable task of unriddling the mysteries of a long-buried culture. Was it a fatal virus, an internecine war, a religion of lunatic brutality or a deleterious mutation that destroyed an entire civilization? All remains hypothesis until Ian Macauley unravels the riddle. But does it provide a solution to human problems & will the answer reach earth in time?
The Shockwave Rider (1975) This book has always been popular with the techy-geeky crowd, but, since it was first published in the '70s, it missed out on the cyberpunk revolution of the '80s. It's too bad, because this is a compelling story of a future world tied together by a universal data network, a world that could be our tomorrow. It's a tense place filled with information overload and corporate domination, and nearly everything is known about everybody. Except Nickie Haflinger, a prodigy whose talents allow him to switch identities with a phone call. Nickie plans to change the world, if only he can keep from getting caught.
The Crucible of Time (1982) This is what they call an "ambitious novel". It portrays a non-human alien race as the only characters. Life had become too interesting on one world crawling across the rubble-strewn arm of a spiral galaxy. For as the system moved it swept up cosmic dust and debris. Ice ages and periods of tropical warmth followed one another very quickly. Meteors large and small fell constantly. Yesterday's fabled culture might be tomorrow's interesting hole in the ground. But society had always endured. Many thought it always would. Only the brightest scientists admitted that to survive, the race would have to abandon the planet. And to do that they'd have to invent spacecraft . . . This engrossing epic describes the development, over millennia, of a species from a culture of planet-bound medieval city-states to a sophisticated, technological civilization.
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Links updated 12/6/22
Requirements: ePUB, MOBI Reader, 9.4MB
Overview: John Kilian Houston Brunner (24 September 1934 – 26 August 1995) was a prolific British author of science fiction novels and stories. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, about an overpopulated world, won the 1968 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. It also won the BSFA award the same year. The Jagged Orbit won the BSFA award in 1970.
The 100th Millennium (1959) A hundred thousand years from now, it was discovered that a star was approaching the world on a collision course. Its discoverer, Creohan, figured there might be time to save the world if he could arouse everyone to the danger. But the Earth had become a strange and kaleidoscopic place in that distant era. Too many empires had risen and fallen, too many cultures had spread their shattered fragments across a planet whose very maps had long since been forgotten. People were too busy with their own private dreams to pay attention to one more new alarm.
The World Swappers (1959) The inhabited galaxy was caught in the crushing vice of a struggle for power. The political titans of the planets of mankind were making their bids for supremacy. The contestants: Cornice, man of strange powers, authority in the spheres of the intellect; and Bassett, man of money-power, financial and business wizard. As the association of human worlds drew near the teetering edge of internal revolutions; one of these men would be in a position to triumph. The only thing that neither side could foresee was that there were Others hovering among the stars, loo ling for new worlds to conquer!
The Rites of Ohe (1963) 'How short a time a century really is . . .' The speaker was Immortal Karmesin, and he had lived a thousand years. He stood, a gigantic figure against the rush of time, a permanently open channel for the infants of the galaxy to explore the deep past. He was anathema to the Phoenixes, for their creed was that of birth in death, of regeneration in destruction. And he knew that he - one man - had to unravel the Phoenix mystery, or live to watch it bring fiery death to all the planets of man . . .
Telepathist (1964) also published as The Whole Man Howson was a runt. Twisted, ugly, crippled. The kind of guy people just didn't want to know. But when he took a deep breath, braced himself and projected his thoughts thousands of miles into space, they were all over him. Howson's telepathic powers were like nothing they'd ever known before . . . and he became the greatest curative telepathist in the world. But when they put him to work chasing people's nightmares deep down inside their minds, could they be expected to cope with what the runt found in there? More importantly, could Howson?
The Day of the Star Cities (1965) The first hint that Earthmen had that aliens had come to their planet was a catastrophic one. Suddenly, without warning, all the atomic weapons and fissionable material on Earth were blown up. Panic, death and chaos reigned for months before things began to get back under control. By that time reports were already coming in of five mysterious star-shaped cities scattered over the globe - huge areas of flickering light and awesome free energy, disorganizing to human senses and impregnable to attack. The aliens had built their bases on Earth. But were they only bases, or - something else?
The Squares of the City (1965) "Built in the heart of the jungle, The City was an architect's masterpiece--& the scene of a flesh-&-blood game of chess where the unwitting pawns were real people!"
The Squares of the City is a sociological story of urban class warfare and political intrigue, taking place in the fictional South American capital city of Vados. It explores the idea of subliminal messages as political tools, and it is notable for having the structure of the famous 1892 chess game between Wilhelm Steinitz and Mikhail Chigorin. The structure is not coincidental, and plays an important part in the story.
Born Under Mars (1966) When mankind colonized the stars, they traveled out from Earth in two directions - to Centaurus and its Southern Hemisphere neighbors and to Ursa Major and the constellations around Polaris. And strange to say the humans who settled on those various worlds began to develop into two differing and antagonistic types.
For Ray Mallin, born under the surface of Mars in the sparse colony of Earth's inhospitable old neighbor, neither the anarchic "Bears" nor the autocratic "Centaurs" commanded his loyalty. So when secret agents of both galactic groupings suddenly focused their unwelcome attention on his most recent star-piloting mission, he knew only that something of vast significance was up - and that he unknowingly was the key to it.
The Jagged Orbit (1969) Matthew Flamen, the last of the networks' spoolpigeons, is desperate for a big story. He needs it to keep his audience - and his job. And there is no shortage of possibilities: the Gottschalk cartel is fomenting trouble among the knees in order to sell their latest armaments to the blanks; which ties in nicely with the fact that something big is brewing with the X Patriots; and it looks as if the inconceivable is about to happen and that one of Britain's most dangerous revolutionaries is going to be given a visa to enter America. And then there's the story that just falls into his lap. The one that suggests that the respected Director of the New York State Mental Hospital is a charlatan... John Brunner's brilliant and scathing vision of a society disintegrating under the impact of violence, drugs, high-level corruption and the casual institutionalization of the 'insane' was a powerful and important statement in 1969. It remains a compelling and chilling tour de force three decades on.
Timescoop (1969) A Pandora's box of evil Freitas had commanded the engineers of his vast, world-wide empire to build him a device that could ransack the past. Now all the riches of the ages were his for the taking. But mere wealth was not what Freitas was after. Supreme power was what he sought, and from the past he picked the men and women who could help him gain absolute mastery over his rivals. But one thing he had not reckoned on - the power these creatures fro the past would have over him the reign of terror about to begin
Entry to Elsewhen (1972) Entry to Elsewhen is a collection of science fiction short stories. It contains the following stories:
- Host Age
Eventually it is discovered that the plague is being spread by human military forces who have traveled through time from several centuries in the future. The head of this group explains that the plague was developed by an aggressive alien species with the purpose of destroying humanity. The plague's effectiveness derives in part from atrophied immune systems resulting from long-term prevention of exposure to any infectious agent. Traveling to the past is a desperate measure to introduce the virus to humans with more robust immune systems in the hope that the survivors will be better able to resist the virus when the alien species creates it.
- Lungfish
On reaching the destination planet, the Tripborn refuse to leave the ship. Never having lived on a planet, they don't seem to see the appeal. Additionally the idea causes severe agoraphobia, as experienced by one Tripborn crew member who makes a landing on the planet and must be retrieved by remote control. The Earthborn crew members employ a variety of means to make the Tripborn less comfortable on the ship, such asPsychoactive Drug included in the food supply and subtle background sounds designed to cause unease. However this fails to move the Tripborn, even despite the fact that the ship will be unable to support the full crew's life for more than a few weeks more. The Tripborn also note that it's difficult to accept the Earthborn crew's rosy predictions for the future when the overall mission calls for the Earthborn to return home, leaving the Tripborn to establish the colony.
Since the ship's cargo includes the necessary tools to build a city suitable for 10,000 inhabitants on the destination planet, the Earthborn crew suggests that they instead be employed in the construction of a second spaceship. The reduced crew on the original ship could be supported by the ship's systems, and the Earthborn crew would no longer need the original ship for the return voyage.
The story ends before this plan has been carried out, leaving the reader to imagine whether the plan would be successful.
- No Other Gods But Me
Vanessa marries a man who is involved with an organization calling itself Real Truth, which she describes as a cult. The "Real Truthers" beliefs include a belief in the supremacy of human thought as the primary force in the universe, and the idea that by working together they can think into existence someone who they describe as the Perfect Man.
After being drawn into a meeting of Real Truth, Colin and Vanessa accidentally cross over into a parallel-universe Earth in which mental powers such as psychokinesis are practiced by a number of adepts, who use these powers to enslave the rest of the population. It is explained that these abilities originated thousands of years past as the result of a mutation which the adepts carry. The leader, Telthis, is the one with the strongest mental powers, and has been using his abilities to influence events on Colin and Vanessa's Earth with the purpose of eventually invading it and ruling both Earths. It was Telthis's efforts which caused Colin's breakdown and hallucinations. Telthis also manipulated Colin and Vanessa into their apparently random meetings, because they also carry the genetic mutation of the adepts on Telthis' Earth, and he hopes that by bringing them together they will eventually have children and promote psychokinetic and other mental powers. Kolok, it turns out, is Telthis' chief opponent, who has appeared to Colin and Vanessa in the hope of preventing this.
Colin and Vanessa manage with Kolok's help to escape from captivity and return to their own Earth. Shortly afterward, Telthis' invasion begins. However he discovers that his mental powers do not function outside of his own Earth. He and his soldiers are attacked by an angry mob and carried off by police.
The Sheep Look Up (1972) An enduring classic, this book offers a dramatic and prophetic look at the potential consequences of the escalating destruction of Earth. In this nightmare society, air pollution is so bad that gas masks are commonplace. Infant mortality is up, and everyone seems to suffer from some form of ailment. The water is polluted, and only the poor drink from the tap. The government is ineffectual, and corporate interests scramble to make a profit from water purifiers, gas masks, and organic foods. Environmentalist Austin Train is on the run. The Trainites, environmental activists and sometime terrorists, want him to lead their movement. The government wants him in jail, or preferably, executed. The media wants a circus. Everyone has a plan for Train, but Train has a plan of his own. This suspenseful science fiction drama is now available to a new generation of enthusiasts.
Age of Miracles (1973) In Age of Miracles Brunner confronts his characters with an alien transportation system produced by unknown creatures clearly superior in knowledge & application of science. While human characters do learn to make some limited use of the system, their position at the end is comparable to that of rats on a sea-going ship, &, as the characters themselves indicate, their future use of the network is predicated on just how annoying these human rats become to the aliens: "...since we quit pilfering live artefacts, the aliens have shown no sign of noticing us. I suspect they can't be bothered. We've put up with rats & mice for thousands of years, & we only take steps against them when they cause great harm"
Total Eclipse (1974) In 2020, an international space team, exploring Sigma Draconis, 19 light years from earth, discovers the remains of a highly advanced society that has left behind as its most spectacular artifact the largest telescope imaginable, carved & polished from a natural moon crater. Successive space crews determine that the native culture evolved & disappeared mysteriously after a mere 3000 years of existence. It's now 2028. Another mission reaches the planet with just one goal--to discover why the civilization disappeared--& with just one hope--that this knowledge will prevent the same thing from happening on earth.
Exhibiting that rare sense of sf mystery that distinguished Arthur C. Clarke's 2001, John Brunner weaves a haunting tale of how 30 people attack the nearly insuperable task of unriddling the mysteries of a long-buried culture. Was it a fatal virus, an internecine war, a religion of lunatic brutality or a deleterious mutation that destroyed an entire civilization? All remains hypothesis until Ian Macauley unravels the riddle. But does it provide a solution to human problems & will the answer reach earth in time?
The Shockwave Rider (1975) This book has always been popular with the techy-geeky crowd, but, since it was first published in the '70s, it missed out on the cyberpunk revolution of the '80s. It's too bad, because this is a compelling story of a future world tied together by a universal data network, a world that could be our tomorrow. It's a tense place filled with information overload and corporate domination, and nearly everything is known about everybody. Except Nickie Haflinger, a prodigy whose talents allow him to switch identities with a phone call. Nickie plans to change the world, if only he can keep from getting caught.
The Crucible of Time (1982) This is what they call an "ambitious novel". It portrays a non-human alien race as the only characters. Life had become too interesting on one world crawling across the rubble-strewn arm of a spiral galaxy. For as the system moved it swept up cosmic dust and debris. Ice ages and periods of tropical warmth followed one another very quickly. Meteors large and small fell constantly. Yesterday's fabled culture might be tomorrow's interesting hole in the ground. But society had always endured. Many thought it always would. Only the brightest scientists admitted that to survive, the race would have to abandon the planet. And to do that they'd have to invent spacecraft . . . This engrossing epic describes the development, over millennia, of a species from a culture of planet-bound medieval city-states to a sophisticated, technological civilization.
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