Brunner, John Books

The Sheep Look Up

John Brunner

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 32 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Top 5 of the Scariest Books I Have Ever Read 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I agree with what others have said about this book. It is written in a very jerky, unusual style, and can be a bit hard to follow at times. But given that it was written so long ago, it is frighteningly, eerily relevant. I read the book in 2 days (which was a feat considering how it is written). It has stayed with me for weeks.

Current news reports are ones that appear in the book, and without wanting to sound like a doom and gloom pessimist, I have to say....I think we're doomed.

Editorial Review:

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.

Stand on Zanzibar

John Brunner

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 40 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Fun, futuristic speculation from the late 1960's 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This big, sprawling novel is essentially a sci-fi spy thriller, but the real star of the show is the whacky world of the future in which the whole story takes place. Written in the late `60's, Brunner employs lots of technical fireworks to bring that future world to life. Many readers will find this annoying and almost incomprehensible at first, but after a hundred pages or so, the main plot emerges and the book finally takes off. Brunner really knows violence, and seems to know a lot about cloning as well, for the period. Hip, funny, and sardonic all at the same time, one wonders how much influence this book had on the emergence of cyberpunk 10 years later. Still, it would've been tempting to cut several of the multitudinous subplots in order to move things along a bit faster.

Editorial Review:

There are seven billion-plus humans crowding the surface of 21st century Earth. It is an age of intelligent computers, mass-market psychedelic drugs, politics conducted by assassination, scientists who burn incense to appease volcanoes ... all the hysteria of a dangerously overcrowded world, portrayed in a dazzlingly inventive style.

The Shockwave Rider

John Brunner

Amazon Price: $17.10 List Price: $19.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Del Rey Amazon Marketplace: 25 new & used starting at $7.92

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

I demand a reprint 5 out of 5 stars.
14 of 16 people found this review helpful.

Little is to be added to the other reviews. This 28-year old book not only decribed the internet as it will become very soon long before its inception, but computer viruses (called "worms" by Brunner) before the first PC too, plus a few other things and issues not even mentioned yet.
Since a friend gave it to me to read many years ago, I've bought every copy of it I could find. I have kept one German and one English version and as I will not let them out of my bookshelf under no circumstances I gave all others away as gifts, still looking for more copies to give away.
It has been sold out so often and for such a long time, each time and in each of those two languages available to me, that if one were to be a follower of conspiracy theories, well, the fact that this book is not reprinted as often as some other books of Brunner are would be reason for suspicion.

Editorial Review:

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

John Brunner

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Interesting biophysics & astrobiology 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I've immensely enjoyed the Brunner books I've read, especially this one. This novel has some great ideas for technology based on biophysics (using plants for pumps, long distance communication, etc.). Don't let "biophysics" scare you, though; you don't have to be a scientist to appreciate this novel. There is another interesting set of ideas about the implications for life on a planet moving through a very crowded (with stars and such) part of the galaxy.

Boring Bugs 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 9 people found this review helpful.

I can live with stories about bug people, but it was like history going on and on and on and never getting anywhere very interesting. I finished it hoping that it would improve towards the end, but it didn't

back jacket summary 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 4 people found this review helpful.

from the back cover of the of the Del Rey July 1984 paperback edition
Cover art by Don Dixon
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...

The Tides of Time

John Brunner

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Strange non linear book 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This book doesn't really have a plot. In fact, it is difficult to tell what is going on while you are reading it. The same two characters live the same life over and over at different times in history, and it is more of a series of vignettes than a normal plotted book.

However, the author John Brunner explores some very interesting ideas, and this is what saves it. This quote summarizes the
book fairly well "Why, that on this world which matched his heart's desire nothing was stable, nothing remained the same. Had he only stayed where he found himself at first, he could have enjoyed all the benefits of change without the shock of coming home to a city where he and his mission were doomed to be forgotten..."

The characters are not aware that they are living in different
time periods simultaneously- they have the same physical traits
but no memrories shared between times. This makes for a book with little character development- but some of the time periods are well sketched.

So in summary, this book is wierd. It is glorifying in a strange perception of the world. Do you like to experience bizarre frameworks? If so, you will enjoy it, if not you will have a hard time getting past the second chapter. To conclude, here is another quote from the book:

"'Tell the rest! [of the story]

'There wasn't any rest', she said. 'That was the beginning and the end, endlessly repeated.'"

New Settlement of Old Scores

John Brunner

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Editorial Review:

This songbook contains twenty songs by Brunner with original lyrics and some original music. Music is provided for all songs. Each song is illustrated by a different sf or fantasy artist. Available in perfect or GBC (comb) binding.

The Jagged Orbit

John Brunner

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

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.

Muddle Earth

John Brunner

List Price: $4.99 By: Del Rey Amazon Marketplace: 36 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

This book was confusing and amusing. 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Muddle Earth caught my eye because of the title's resemblance to Middle Earth (Tolkien). It kept my eye because it reminded me of Douglas Adams. The book made me laugh while making me think a lot to try to sort things out. I really enjoyed it and am planning to read more of Brunner's books.

madness on lovingly pulped and sliced tree 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

ahh in the vein of mr adams,monsiour rankin and jimmmy crankie,muddle earth brings together a veritable phalanx of amusing wriggling and splish-splashing in the shallow end shoal of ideas.having never read any of the authors previous work ,I was surprised to find that shockwave rider was among his many classic works.A well funny read that has the added attribute of getting the brain cells cranking over.If this book were a fruit it would be an amusing shaped dingbung.which exists only in my head.ah well thats what imaginations all about i suppose.buy this book.it will do you much good.

Editorial Review:

Rinpoche Gibbs wakes up in the twenty-fourth century and finds a world populated by weird characters, such as Pope Joan II, Sherlock Holmes and his Biker Street Irregulars, and others. By the author of A Maze of Stars.

The Dramaturges of Yan

John Brunner

List Price: $2.50 By: Del Rey Amazon Marketplace: 41 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Not Free SF Reader 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Big Art reaction time.


A leading and not exactly shy and retiring artiste decides that he would like to put on a show on the planet Yan.

This joint is notable for the structures there that are being studied, and that our artiste protagonist is interested in.

No-one thought to ask the locals, who up until now haven't minded the small presence on their planet.

Catch a Falling Star

John Brunner

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A memorable journey 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

There are few books that I have kept nearby for as long as I have this novel. First read as a teen-ager in the late 70's, John Brunner's literary style and vivid discription embedded in me a love for a well-written jaunt through fantastic futures. A gem, a joy, this book will stay with me to enjoy over and over again for many years to come.

Wandering - but captivating 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Seeing this book in a used bookstore, I snapped it up, and was not dissapointed.

The golden age of humanity has passed, leaving behind a self maintinging organic city where the story picks up. A hobbyist astronomer discovers a meteor headed for earth. He tries in vain to warn people but everyone is too self-centered or apathetic to bother paying attention.

So he sets off into the world searching for answers, and discovers not everyone has well cultured plants to live in. Brunner leads us through a strange and greately varied earth of the distant future.

Brunner's unique style grabs ahold and refuses to let go until the end of the last page.