Up until last week I don't think I had ever really read John Brunner. Not a matter of conscious avoidance, I just hadn't gone beyond hearing the name and some titles.
Over the past few days I've read The Shockwave Rider. It's an interesting read, about a rebellious spirit named Nickie Halflinger who flees from place to place, using a few other names. It's known for foreseeing the development of the internet and being sort of a proto-cyberpunk novel. Brunner did guess well at how the 21st century would actually feel, although his Midwestern United States may feel more British than he intended. It's sort of a more optimistic 1984, in part because the O'Brien figure (Paul T. Freeman) is redeemable.
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John Brunner is a name I haven't heard in quite some time. In fact the only book of his I read was Stand on Zanzibar back when he won a Hugo Award for having authored it and I recall having been so impressed I never read another of his books. Impressed, did I say? You really had to wonder if Mr. Brunner was a prophet because 'Zanzibar' was very close to what became reality and those were some very frightening concepts to consider. Maybe I should read it again now I'm older and wiser than I was in 1969.
Seeing you enjoyed Shockwave Rider I'm thinking it might be time for me to read it too. Brunner did envision some of what would have been considered ideas about the future that were inconceivable. I wonder what was motivating him to come up with predictions that got so close to coming true? Do you think that sometimes outrageous truths are projected into the past for a few open minded people to find?
I'm pretty sure Stand on Zanzibar will be the next Brunner I read, although I'm not diving back in right away. Interesting to see that it concerns overpopulation. That started to be a big concern at the time, with The Population Bomb being published the year before. And huh, Paul Ehrlich just got around to leaving the population himself a few weeks ago. Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room, the basis for Soylent Green was also around that time. The population is actually dropping in a number of places, so who knows?
I don't know if it's more a matter of predicting or just having a compelling vision. Even if the future in a book is dystopian or otherwise bleak, people may be inclined to see it in the real world if it's well-written. Brunner could write and seems to understand people as much as he does any of his more exotic subject matters.
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