John Brunner (1934–1995)

First published in 1969, [b:The Jagged Orbit|470186|The Jagged Orbit|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1175028806l/470186._SY75_.jpg|2202667] is set in 2013. It's always slightly surreal to read scifi set in a future that is now the past, but I'm getting used to it. The novel deals with a remarkable number of 21st century American problems, among them loss of social trust, racism, mass shootings, waiting for tech support to fix your work computer, neo-Puritans, journalism being overtaken by advertising, militarisation of the police, and awkward zoom calls. The linguistic worldbuilding is pretty dense at first and takes some getting used to, e.g knees & blanks = black & white people. Once you become familiar with it, though, it adds a lot to the atmosphere.

I did not find [b:The Jagged Orbit|470186|The Jagged Orbit|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1175028806l/470186._SY75_.jpg|2202667] as powerful Brunner's [b:The Sheep Look Up|41074|The Sheep Look Up|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386924437l/41074._SY75_.jpg|900514] or [b:Stand on Zanzibar|41069|Stand on Zanzibar|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1360613921l/41069._SY75_.jpg|2184253], but like both of them it manages a large cast of characters (almost all men) very deftly. Brunner is notably excellent at this and I missed it in [b:The Shockwave Rider|41070|The Shockwave Rider|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386921650l/41070._SY75_.jpg|868164], which only had one main protagonist. A wider range of characters makes for more interesting examination of big themes, I tend to find. The variety of settings was also notable - they include a psychiatric hospital, upmarket and downmarket New York homes, several workplaces, a presidential press conference, and the worst party in a flat with no toilet. Brunner employs his trick of including extended quotations and little editorial comments as mini-chapters, which I enjoyed so much in [b:Stand on Zanzibar|41069|Stand on Zanzibar|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1360613921l/41069._SY75_.jpg|2184253].

The plot is complicated, so I won't attempt to summarise it. The scenes of Lyla the Pythoness tripping are a highlight, as they are intensely vivid and strange. I also liked the ending, which is surprisingly hopeful and full of irony. An AI given the task of maximising profits for a weapons manufacturer self-destructs in the face of a paradox: continually provoking conflict to drive up sales will destroy the human race, resulting in zero sales.

[b:The Jagged Orbit|470186|The Jagged Orbit|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1175028806l/470186._SY75_.jpg|2202667] definitely feels like a 1960s, sliding into the cynical 1970s, type of novel. It is densely imagined and cleverly plotted, with strident points to make on many different topics. As ever, Brunner is not very interested in female characters, although his handling of race has aged better than I expected. I think [b:The Jagged Orbit|470186|The Jagged Orbit|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1175028806l/470186._SY75_.jpg|2202667] remains involving and thought-provoking to read ten years after it is set, providing insight into how social concerns both have and haven't changed in the last 54 years.… (meer)

I've previously read two John Brunner novels that both had quite a profound impact on me: [b:Stand on Zanzibar|41069|Stand on Zanzibar|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1360613921l/41069._SY75_.jpg|2184253] (1968) and [b:The Sheep Look Up|41074|The Sheep Look Up|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386924437l/41074._SY75_.jpg|900514] (1972). The former is an all-time favourite sci-fi novel of mine and the latter the most devastating novel of environmental breakdown that I've ever read. What I didn't realise is that Brunner was incredibly prolific and I happened to encounter these two as they were part of the SF Masterworks series. Now that [b:The Shockwave Rider|41070|The Shockwave Rider|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386921650l/41070._SY75_.jpg|868164] is as well, the library has acquired a copy. Brunner published nearly 60 novels, most of which I expect are now out of print. Based on my own reading experience and his wikipedia page, those that are still in print were also most celebrated at first publication and all deal with social issues of great concern to the US and Europe in the 1960s/70s. In [b:Stand on Zanzibar|41069|Stand on Zanzibar|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1360613921l/41069._SY75_.jpg|2184253], the topic is overpopulation. In [b:The Sheep Look Up|41074|The Sheep Look Up|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386924437l/41074._SY75_.jpg|900514], environmental disaster. And in [b:The Shockwave Rider|41070|The Shockwave Rider|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386921650l/41070._SY75_.jpg|868164], information technology and data overload.

In my opinion, of the three [b:The Sheep Look Up|41074|The Sheep Look Up|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386924437l/41074._SY75_.jpg|900514] retains the greatest relevance today, while [b:Stand on Zanzibar|41069|Stand on Zanzibar|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1360613921l/41069._SY75_.jpg|2184253] is the best-written. Both use an original and very powerful polyphonic structure, with many characters and interjections from media. I was surprised, and a little disappointed, to find that [b:The Shockwave Rider|41070|The Shockwave Rider|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386921650l/41070._SY75_.jpg|868164] has a more conventional structure. I understand from friends that the collage approach is not to everyone's taste, but I love it. Given that it seemed particularly appropriate to the novel's topic, I think it could have worked well if used more here. Snippets of news reports and other information are interjected periodically, but the plot sticks close to the protagonist rather than involving a large cast.

[b:The Shockwave Rider|41070|The Shockwave Rider|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386921650l/41070._SY75_.jpg|868164] is set in an alternate 2010s America where everyone has access to the 'datanet' via phone booths. There is ubiquitous tracking and surveillance by technology, as well as videocalling via 'veephone'. (Another addition to my collection of names from sci-fi for proto-smart phones that are no stupider than 'smart phone'.) America has socially fractured and is mired in gang violence, while professional jobs require constant relocation and travel. There is an obvious temptation to sift the worldbuilding for prescience. The most significant element of this, in my opinion, is Brunner putting his finger on this frustration of internet access:

Theoretically any one of us has access to more information than ever in history, and any phone booth is a gate to it. But suppose you live next door to a poker who's suddenly elected to the state congress, and six weeks later he's had a hundred-thousand-dollar facelift for his house. Try to find out how he came by the money; you get nowhere.

Really important information is not accessible and instead we are drowned in trivia and misinformation. Brunner doesn't get into the risks of the latter (try Melissa Scott's [b:The Jazz|1268279|The Jazz|Melissa Scott|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1312021757l/1268279._SY75_.jpg|1257182] instead), but does sort of predict people asking Reddit AITA in the form of Delphi panels. Delphi Method is actually a qualitative methodology sometimes used in academic research, albeit one I find rather dubious. Indeed, the novel's protagonist Nickie Haflinger is an escapee from a US government attempt at hothousing intelligent kids into a Delphi panel. There are a lot of conversations, some part of Halflinger's interrogation after he's recaptured by the government, about how the American population has been controlled with 'behaviourist techniques'. In 2023, the concerns about government manipulation look simultaneously like conspiracy theory and naivety. Such centralised efforts seem unnecessary in a neoconversative world where poverty or the threat of it constrains most people. Brunner's world still has the USSR as an ideological rival to the US, but the arms race has shifted from weapons to 'wisdom'; a brain race. I didn't find that side of the world-building very satisfactory as the concept has been explored better elsewhere.

The elements around information technology are much more interesting, however. Haflinger is a hacker, indeed an early cyberpunk protagonist. He writes worms (a term that Brunner apparently coined which we still use now) via telephone that let him evade surveillance and invent new identities for himself. Switching identity is depicted as a mentally and physically taxing process. While on the run from the US government, he meets a young woman and they take refuge in a utopian community that's mostly cut off from the datanet. Haflinger then decides to use his skills to try and fix America's problems, in a dramatic fashion.

In this respect, [b:The Shockwave Rider|41070|The Shockwave Rider|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386921650l/41070._SY75_.jpg|868164] felt much more optimistic than the other two Brunner novels I've read. Particularly [b:The Sheep Look Up|41074|The Sheep Look Up|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386924437l/41074._SY75_.jpg|900514], which is truly one of the most devastating books I've read in my life and has an extremely bleak ending. Haflinger and his allies seem to prefigure the techno-utopianism that accompanied the first decades of the internet. (This now seems to have atrophied into Zuckerberg defending the right to spread holocaust denial on facebook, and similarly self-serving libertarianism.) In Haflinger's world, information wants to be free and the paradoxical solution to overload is releasing more of it. While the execution of this plotline was rather ingenious, it has been copied too many times since to have the impact it once did. Another aspect of the book that hasn't aged too well is the relationship between Haflinger and Kate. Everyone gets over him hitting her in a rage remarkably quickly, which is depressing. Although I found many of Brunner's ideas interesting, [b:The Shockwave Rider|41070|The Shockwave Rider|John Brunner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386921650l/41070._SY75_.jpg|868164] doesn't have the impact of his polyphonic masterpieces.… (meer)