Search Results for: brunner

A Top-Notch Wordsmith, and a Master of Speculative Fiction: The Best of John Brunner

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The Best of John Brunner (Del Rey, 1988). Cover by Barclay Shaw After several years, I’m finally gotten to the last of the Del Rey Classic Science Fiction Series! The Best of John Brunner was published in 1988. But is this book even part of that series? The previous installment, The Best of James Blish was published 9 years earlier. And though The Best of John Brunner is indeed a Del Rey publication, and it says “Classic Science Fiction” on…

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Giving People What They Want: James Nicoll on The Traveler in Black by John Brunner

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The Traveler in Black (Ace Books, 1971). Cover by Diane Dillon and Leo Dillon Outside of Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, and Michael Moorcock, the 20th Century didn’t produce a great many enduring Sword and Sorcery series. Which is why we cherish those we have, like John Brunner’s The Traveler in Black. The Traveler in Black first appeared in a short story in Science Fantasy in 1960. He was a captivating and enigmatic figure, and he proved popular enough that Brunner returned…

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Big, Ambitious and Experimental: BBC Culture on John Brunner

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John Brunner was one of the greatest science fiction writers of the 20th Century. Unlike many of his peers, however — like Philip K. Dick. Ursula K. Le Guin, Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein — his star has dimmed considerably since his death in 1996, and virtually all of his fiction is now out of print. So I was very pleased to see this May 10th feature story on Brunner at the BBC Culture site, focusing on his uncannily on-target predictions,…

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A Desperate Battle Against an Alien Enemy: Threshold of Eternity by John Brunner and Damien Broderick

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Phoenix Pick (236 pages, $14.99 trade paperback/$3.99 digital, November 2017) A couple of years ago I read an early John Brunner novel called Threshold of Eternity, published as half an Ace Double. Here’s a bit of what I wrote about that: Threshold of Eternity was first published in New Worlds, December 1957 through February 1958. The Ace Double version came out in 1959. It opens in California in 1957 or so, as one-legged Red Hawkins encounters a French-speaking girl who couldn’t…

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Temporal Surges and Shapeshifting Invaders: Rich Horton on Threshold of Eternity by John Brunner and The War of Two Worlds by Poul Anderson

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One of the reasons I collect Ace Doubles — aside from the great cover art, and their historical significance — is that they frequently featured early work by some of my favorite authors. That’s definitely the case with Double D-335, which paired very early novels from two of the greatest SF writers of the late 20th Century, John Brunner’s Threshold of Eternity and Poul Anderson’s The War of Two Worlds. Neither volume was reprinted in a standandalone edition after their original…

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Disasterville U.S.A. :The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner

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If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing. Nick Halflinger in The Shockwave Rider   Cyberpunk appeared as a description of a sub-genre in the early eighties. The word first appeared in print in 1983 as the title of a story by Bruce Bethke and it was quickly adopted to cover the works of near-future science fiction by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, and others. The general connection…

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An Interlude with Messrs Brunner & Van Vogt

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Ace Double D-391. Covers by Ed Valigursky Ace Doubles are a popular topic at Black Gate. I suspect there may even be a bit of friendly competition to see who can unearth items not already reviewed. While John O’Neill and Rich Horton most certainly have a lead on the rest of us, it is a pleasant experience to find a book that has not yet been dealt with and add one’s own commentary. That was the case with D-391, originally…

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Vintage Treasures: The Best of John Brunner

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In 1974 Lester Del Rey hit on the idea for a series of collections showcasing the best early SF writers in the field — especially those who had a publishing contract with his Del Rey imprint, naturally enough. The Classic Science Fiction line grew to roughly two dozen volumes, creating an essential library of early science fiction. It became one of the seminal SF series of my childhood, introducing me to such writers as C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Edmond Hamilton, Fritz Leiber,…

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Space Stations With Secret Passages, and Snow White in Space: Rich Horton on Sanctuary in the Sky by John Brunner/The Secret Martians by John Sharkey

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After a series of duds, our intrepid retro-reviewer Rich Horton turns to the always-reliable John Brunner. I’ve read some weak Ace Doubles lately, so I tried to improve my fortunes by picking one with a John Brunner half. I can almost always count on Brunner for entertainment with a thoughtful edge. Brunner (1934-1995) of course was one of the field’s greats, a Hugo winner for Stand on Zanzibar (1968). He had a bifurcated career a bit like Robert Silverberg’s: beginning…

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A Tale of Two Covers: Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner

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For this installment of A Tale of Two Covers, we look at my favorite book by one of my favorite writers: John Brunner’s Hugo Award-winning Stand on Zanzibar. Stand on Zanzibar was published in 1969. I read it about a decade later, when I was in my mid-teens, and it pretty much blew my mind. It’s set in the far-distant future of 2010, when the Earth groans under the weight of a staggering seven billion souls, terrorists are the major…

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