The Shockwave Rider

The Shockwave Rider PDF Author: John Brunner
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1497617847
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
In a world drowning in data, a fugitive tries to outrun the forces that want to reprogram him, in this smart, edgy novel by a Hugo Award–winning author. Constantly shifting his identity among a population choking on information, innovation, and novelty, Nickie Haflinger is a most dangerous outlaw, yet he doesn’t even appear to exist. As global society falls apart in all directions, with corporate power run amok and personal freedom surrendered to computers and bureaucrats, Haflinger is caught and about to be re-programmed. Now he has to try to escape once again, defy the government—and turn the tide of organizational destruction, in this visionary science fiction novel by the author of The Sheep Look Up and Stand on Zanzibar. “Brunner writes about the future as if he and the reader were already living in it.” —The New York Times Book Review “When John Brunner first told me of his intention to write the book, I was fascinated—but I wondered whether he, or anyone, could bring it off. Bring it off he has, with cool brilliance. A hero with transient personalities, animals with souls, think tanks and survival communities fuse to form a future so plausibly alive it as twitched at me ever since.” —Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock “One of the most important science fiction authors. Brunner held a mirror up to reflect our foibles because he wanted to save us from ourselves.” —SF Site

The Shockwave Rider

The Shockwave Rider PDF Author: John Brunner
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1497617847
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Get Book

Book Description
In a world drowning in data, a fugitive tries to outrun the forces that want to reprogram him, in this smart, edgy novel by a Hugo Award–winning author. Constantly shifting his identity among a population choking on information, innovation, and novelty, Nickie Haflinger is a most dangerous outlaw, yet he doesn’t even appear to exist. As global society falls apart in all directions, with corporate power run amok and personal freedom surrendered to computers and bureaucrats, Haflinger is caught and about to be re-programmed. Now he has to try to escape once again, defy the government—and turn the tide of organizational destruction, in this visionary science fiction novel by the author of The Sheep Look Up and Stand on Zanzibar. “Brunner writes about the future as if he and the reader were already living in it.” —The New York Times Book Review “When John Brunner first told me of his intention to write the book, I was fascinated—but I wondered whether he, or anyone, could bring it off. Bring it off he has, with cool brilliance. A hero with transient personalities, animals with souls, think tanks and survival communities fuse to form a future so plausibly alive it as twitched at me ever since.” —Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock “One of the most important science fiction authors. Brunner held a mirror up to reflect our foibles because he wanted to save us from ourselves.” —SF Site

The Shockwave Rider

The Shockwave Rider PDF Author: John Brunner
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0575101660
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
He was the most dangerous fugitive alive, but he didn't exist! Nickie Haflinger had lived a score of lifetimes . . . but technically he didn't exist. He was a fugitive from Tarnover, the high-powered government think tank that had educated him. First he had broken his identity code - then he escaped. Now he had to find a way to restore sanity and personal freedom to the computerised masses and to save a world tottering on the brink of disaster. He didn't care how he did it . . . but the government did. That's when his Tarnover teachers got him back in their labs . . . and Nickie Haflinger was set up for a whole new education! First published in 1975.

Stand on Zanzibar

Stand on Zanzibar PDF Author: John Brunner
Publisher: Orb Books
ISBN: 1429978848
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
The brilliant 1969 Hugo Award-winning novel from John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar, now included with a foreword by Bruce Sterling Norman Niblock House is a rising executive at General Technics, one of a few all-powerful corporations. His work is leading General Technics to the forefront of global domination, both in the marketplace and politically---it's about to take over a country in Africa. Donald Hogan is his roommate, a seemingly sheepish bookworm. But Hogan is a spy, and he's about to discover a breakthrough in genetic engineering that will change the world...and kill him. These two men's lives weave through one of science fiction's most praised novels. Written in a way that echoes John Dos Passos' U.S.A. Trilogy, Stand on Zanzibar is a cross-section of a world overpopulated by the billions. Where society is squeezed into hive-living madness by god-like mega computers, mass-marketed psychedelic drugs, and mundane uses of genetic engineering. Though written in 1968, it speaks of now, and is frighteningly prescient and intensely powerful. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

John Brunner

John Brunner PDF Author: Jad Smith
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252094514
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
Under his own name and numerous pseudonyms, John Brunner (1934–1995) was one of the most prolific and influential science fiction authors of the late twentieth century. During his exemplary career, the British author wrote with a stamina matched by only a few other great science fiction writers and with a literary quality of even fewer, importing modernist techniques into his novels and stories and probing every major theme of his generation: robotics, racism, drugs, space exploration, technological warfare, and ecology. In this first intensive review of Brunner's life and works, Jad Smith carefully demonstrates how Brunner's much-neglected early fiction laid the foundation for his classic Stand on Zanzibar and other major works such as The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Rider. Making extensive use of Brunner's letters, columns, speeches, and interviews published in fanzines, Smith approaches Brunner in the context of markets and trends that affected many writers of the time, including Brunner's uneasy association with the "New Wave" of science fiction in the 1960s and '70s. This landmark study shows how Brunner's attempts to cross-fertilize the American pulp tradition with British scientific romance complicated the distinctions between genre and mainstream fiction and between hard and soft science fiction and helped carve out space for emerging modes such as cyberpunk, slipstream, and biopunk.

The Compleat Traveller in Black

The Compleat Traveller in Black PDF Author: John Brunner
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1497617693
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
One journey. Six stories. Mind-blowing fantasy from the Hugo Award winner, “one of the most important science fiction authors” (SF Site). In The Compleat Traveller in Black, six linked tales, comprising one of Brunner’s rare ventures into fantasy, relate the legend of a man with many names, who travels the world with a staff made of light and performs his eternal duty by bringing order to a world filled with chaos. What he dispenses is always asked for but not always welcomed by the recipients. And the world becomes, step by slow step, a better place for those who remain. For each generation, there is a writer meant to bend the rules of what we know. Hugo Award winner (Best Novel, Stand on Zanzibar) and British science fiction master John Brunner remains one of the most influential and respected authors of all time, and now many of his classic works are being reintroduced. For readers familiar with his vision, this is a chance to reexamine his thoughtful worlds and words, while for new readers, Brunner’s work proves itself the very definition of timeless.

The Shockwave Riders

The Shockwave Riders PDF Author: John Brunner
Publisher: Del Rey
ISBN: 0345467175
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
He was the most dangerous fugitive alive, but he didn’t exist! Nickie Haflinger had lived a score of lifetimes . . . but technically he didn’t exist. He was a fugitive from Tarnover, the high-powered government think tank that had educated him. First he had broken his identity code—then he escaped. Now he had to find a way to restore sanity and personal freedom to the computerized masses and to save a world tottering on the brink of disaster. He didn’t care how he did it—but the government did. That’s when his Tarnover teachers got him back in their labs . . . and Nickie Haflinger was set up for a whole new education.

Born Under Mars

Born Under Mars PDF Author: John Brunner
Publisher: Gateway
ISBN: 0575101385
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 115

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Book Description
When mankind colonized the stars, they travelled out from Earth in two directions - to Centaurus and its Southern Hemisphere neighbours 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 antagonistic types. For Ray Mallin, born under the surface of Mars in the sparse colony of Earth's inhospitable old neighbour, neither the anarchic 'bears' nor the autocratic 'Centaurs' commanded his loyalty. So when secret agents of both galactic groupings suddenly focus 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.

John Brunner

John Brunner PDF Author: John Brunner
Publisher: Orion
ISBN: 9780575101883
Category : Science fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
THE SHEEP LOOK UP: 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. THE SHOCKWAVE RIDER: Nickie Haflinger had lived a score of lifetimes ... but technically he didn't exist. He was a fugitive from Tarnover, the high-powered government think tank that had educated him. First he had broken his identity code - then he escaped. THE TRAVELLER IN BLACK: This is a collection of stories of the Traveller in Black. It is set in a world where chaos rules. One man - the man with many names, but one nature - is charged with creating order out of the warring forces of nature.

The Crucible of Time

The Crucible of Time PDF Author: John Brunner
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1497622328
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
An alien race struggles to survive on an uninhabitable planet in this “impeccably detailed and beautifully thought out” novel from a Hugo Award winner (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). On a planet besieged with cosmic dust, where meteors of all sizes frequently hit, wiping out entire civilizations, a strange alien species struggles against extinction over the course of millennia. As their star grows hotter, melting ice caps and causing more earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, higher levels of radiation lead to higher rates of mutation. Plants that had been edible become poisonous or die off altogether. Watching their dire situation only get worse, the planet’s scientists finally acknowledge that to survive long-term, the inhabitants will have to abandon their fraught home world and become a space-faring species. In a story that spans millennia, Hugo Award–winning author and British science fiction master John Brunner introduces us to an alien race that takes control of their own evolution and builds the technological society that will be their way into space. “One of the most important science fiction authors. Brunner held a mirror up to reflect our foibles because he wanted to save us from ourselves.” —SF Site

The Sheep Look Up

The Sheep Look Up PDF Author: John Brunner
Publisher: Del Rey
ISBN: 9780345295590
Category : Science fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
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.