John Brunner

echomadman

Anyone here ever read any Brunner stuff, I found a copy of "Stand on Zanzibar" two years ago. also have "The Jagged Orbit and The Sheep look up"
Fantastic "dystopian"(god i hate that phrase) sci/fi, along the lines of Vonnegut, bradbury and Phil K , but a bit more grounded in hard science and possibility.

Also without the McCarthy era american paranoia which pervades the aforementioned trio.

anyhoo, anyone got any comments/reccomendations?

Dónall

I've been a few pages into Stand On Zanzibar for a couple of months now.
Brunner was someone I was sure I'd like but didn't expect to find the prose so turgid. And I'm a huge Vonnegut fan, I also like Philip K Dick and Bradbury, though I wouldn't link these three writers together so readily. I see Vonnegut as a tremendous stylist and social satirist, Dick's great on paranoia, yeah. Bradbury's a nostalgic sentimentalist, a romantic, which is what makes his SF so unique, I think. I've read Martian Chronicles a couple of times and relished it. Maybe I'll give Brunner another bash.

Have you read Alfred Bester at all? Great stuff from the 50's and 60's. Quite Vonnegutish too (except that he didn't turn his back on SF once the literati started liking him)

echomadman

heheh
Stand on zanzibar is a nightmare to get into, it only begins to come together after page 200 or so,
Luckily I read it while lazing about in a hammock in thailand and was able to devote serious time to reading, rereading and generally going WTF, for the first hundred pages.

read the sheep look up first, if you can find it.
it coheres into a story much quicker, scarily parallels the current world political scene and its brilliant.

MarVeL

I was particularily impressed by the end of "the sheep look up". It wasn't what I was expecting at all but was very apt.

The Beer Baron

I work with Echomadman. (in our reverberant subterrianian pit of techno-lunacy)
I'm reading Zanzibar and I can say- I feel your pain.
Read Sheep look up 1st- that's what I did and it gave me a headache but I was unemployed and I had nothing else to do.
I left it in the bog- read a bit, went what the ****, read a page more, a page more, a page more.
After about 30 pages I found myself with pins and needles and empty bowels lurching out of the toilet hours later. Hmm, come to think of it the scene was like the book in many ways.
Great book. Hilarious really, because the scene was so like the current day political climate it's not funny.
The Pres- man if he's not GWBush...

Brunner- up there with Orwell, it's been a long, long time since I read something that I was caught for breath after finishing. That made me think about it for months and months.
Zanzibar is having a simular effect on me ATM.
As for Jagged Orbit- it's on the floor someplace- I'll read it- honestly I will. But it made my brain hurt.

Funny though- I look @ the news and I wonder was Brunner so much a writer or a man blessed (or cursed) with the gift of prophecy.