John Brunner

Ciudad de Vados was the pride of Latin America - a gleaming city of the future where only ten years before there had been barren rock and wasteland. But Vados had problems. When Boyd Hakluyt was called in, his brief seemed simple: reroute the traffic to drive out the shanty towns that disfigured the city. It was an easy job - until Hakluyt found himself unwillingly involved in a web of deadly political rivalries. Then came the first murder . . . Hakluyt started getting answers to questions he hadnt asked. Too many people got too interested in him. And the pattern that started emerging was sinister, terrifying - and almost unbelievable . . .First published in 1965.

Until he became an alcoholic, Murray Douglas was one of Britains leading actors. Now, after treatment, hes ready to resume his career, but his first come-back part isnt exactly what he thought it would be. The idea was to create an avant-garde play where the actors made up the script as they rehearsed. Unusual but hardly frightening. What was frightening was the rest of the cast. Like Murray, they all had some kind of craving. And each of them was given access to whatever had addicted them. It was doubtful if the play would ever entertain the public. But it seemed to entertain the director . . .(First published 1967)

One citizen of your planet shall go to the capital of the Federation of Worlds. He shall live there for thirty days. If your representative can survive and demonstrate his ability to exist in a civilized society with creatures whose outward appearance and manner of thinking differ from his own, you will pass the test. You will be permitted to send your starships to other planets of the galaxy.If he fails the test, if prejudice, fear, intolerance or stupidity trip him up, then you world will be sealed of from the stars for ever!This was the ultimatum from space. The task before the world then was - who shall go? What man or woman could be found to take this frightening test for the whole of humanity and be certain not to fail?(First published 1961)

It was carnival time on Earth. Prosperity was at its peak; science had triumphed over environment; all human needs were taken care of by computers, robots and androids. There was nothing left for humans to do but enjoy, themselves . . . to seek pleasure where they found it, without inhibitions and without thinking of the price. Then an android died - in a senseless, brutal murder. And young Derry Horn was shocked out of his boredom and alienation. His life of flabby ease had not prepared him for a fantastically dangerous mission to outlying, primitive stars - but now, at last, he had a reason for living. And even when he found himself a prisoner of ruthless slavers, even when he learned the shocking truth about what the androids really were and where they came from . . . even when he saw all the laws of the orderly, civilised universe he knew turned upside-down and inside-out . . . he fought on. For that universe had to be shattered and reborn - even if Derry Horn and the Earth he had irrevocably left behind died in the process!(First published 1968)

Un escritor visionario que, desde el pasado nos ayuda a comprender el presente.En un futuro en el que la datarred está monitorizada y los ciudadanos no tienen derecho a la intimidad, rebelarse está al alcance de muy pocos. Nick Haflinger, fugitivo del centro de adiestramiento gubernamental de Tarnover, programador experto y mago de la impostura, ha conseguido evadir al sistema durante años.. Hasta que comete un error... y se enfrenta a un interrogatorio neurologico que amenaza con desvelar todos sus secretos.Si ha habido alguien que supo entender, a la vista de los primeros sintomas, que nos deparaba el futuro, ese alguien fue John Brunner (1934-1995). Y si ha habido un libro que supo retratar como somos y como nos sentimos ahora, ese libro es El jinete de la onda del shock (1975), la novela de ciencia ficcion que logro dejar de serlo.Un futuro tan vivido que todavia me inquieta.

Tileman could make our fantasies come true - create reality from your dreams - for a very high fee. Catering to the desires of Londons most powerful - and decadent - figures, Tileman had top-level connections to guarantee him protection and influence. But he had killed Laird Walkers best friend - and Walker, the dead mans sister, and a bizarre nightclub entertainer began a private war on Tileman...a war whose final battle was unimaginable horror.

Because of a twist in the structure of Time, three strangers were brought unexpectedly together: Red Hawkins of California, Chantal Vareze of London and a man from the 41st Century. Their meeting seemed an impossible prank of a universe gone mad - but it turned out to be quite otherwise. For it seemed there was a war going on throughout space and time. A war fought by men of different epochs, on planets of different cultures, but for a cause that all could acknowledge - the very continued existence of creation itself. And the coming together of these three very unlikely people - a modern man, a lovely girl and a futurian soldier - was to prove the master stroke of a super-science strategy that had already brought humanity to the THRESHOLD OF ETERNITY.

Are there aliens among us? Are the chariots of the gods returning? If so - are they for us or against us? John Brunner, award-winning author and science fiction writer extraordinary, takes the questions now on everyones mind, and gives one possible answer in this startling novel. Here is an edge-of-the-seat story of the man who discovers that the vanguard of the aliens are indeed amongst us - and that the human species has but a few hours left before our time runs out. Its a science fiction thriller you wont be able to put down.

A stardropper got its name from the belief that the user was eavesdropping on the stars. But that was only a guess . . . nobody really knew what the instrument did. The instrument itself made no sense scientifically. A conventional earpiece, an amplifier, a power source - all attached to a small vacuum box, an alnico magnet, and a calibrated tuner. What you got from all this was some very extraordinary noises and the conviction that you were listening to beings from space and could almost understand what you were hearing. What brought Special Agent Dan Cross into the stardropper problem was the carefully censored news that users of the instrument had begun to disappear. They popped out of existence suddenly - and the worlds leaders began to suspect that somehow the fad had lit the fuse on a bomb that would either destroy the world or change it forever.(First published 1972)

Matthew Flamen, the last of the networks spoolpigeons, is desperate for a big story. He needs it to keep his audience - and his job. And there is no shortage of possibilities: the Gottschalk cartel is fomenting trouble among the knees in order to sell their latest armaments to the blanks; which ties in nicely with the fact that something big id brewing with the X Patriots; and it looks as if the inconceivable is about to happen and that one of Britains most dangerous revolutionaries is going to be given a visa to enter America. And then theres the story that just falls into his lap. The one that suggests that the respected Director of the New York State Mental Hospital is a charlatan.Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1970

He was The Visitor . . .in a society revolutionised and troubled by a transportation device that let you walk through a door and be anywhere in the world - instantly. He was The Visitor . . . at a time when unauthorised travel had caused the violent deaths of countless millions and the survivors were quaking in fear.He was The Visitor . . .in a world where the invasion of privacy was the ultimate crime and where his obsession with visiting places where he had no right to be led him on a perilous adventure towards his own destruction.

AWAKEN, TERROR!When the first expedition descended to the bottom of the Atlantic in a perfected high-pressure diving bell, their speculation ran wild as to the wonders they would encounter in that unknown sea-bottom world.But their wildest dreams did not prepare them for uncovering first, the stones of an ancient civilization, and second, the monstrous body of an inhuman creature that had been sealed beneath the waters for countless eons.Then, at the height of their excitement, elation turned to horror. For they had brought back an abomination so old that the memory of it had been lost to mans remotest ancestors. Shops were disappearing, men and women were becoming enslaved by invisible whips of mental mastery, and it began to look as if it might be beyond the powers even of modern science to stop something that had so successfully defied time and space.

Nineteen light years from Earth, on Sigma Draconis, an international space team stumbles upon the first evidence of another highly advanced civilization in the universe.Tragically, however, the Draconians are extinct and have been for a hundred thousand years. What mysterious disaster destroyed mans nearest neighbour in the colossal emptiness of space? And will the same fate befall Earth?The answers, as Earth degenerates into squabbles, paranoia and self-destruction, are vital. But how to begin the almost insuperable task of cracking the enigma of a long-buried and utterly alien culture?

Life had become too interesting on one world crawling across the rubble-strewn arm of a spiral galaxy. For as the system moved it swept up cosmic dust and debris. Ice ages and periods of tropical warmth followed one another very quickly. Meteors large and small fell constantly. Yesterdays fabled culture might be tomorrows interesting hole in the ground. But society had always endured. Many thought it always would. Only the brightest scientists admitted that to survive, the race would have to abandon the planet. And to do that theyd have to invent spacecraft . . .This engrossing epic describes the development, over millennia, of a species from a culture of planet-bound medieval city-states to a sophisticated, technological civilization. With The Crucible of Time, John Brunner returns to the large-canvas science fiction he pioneered in his Hugo Award-winning, novel Stand on Zanzibar.First published in 1982.

A hundred thousand years from now, it was discovered that a star was approaching the world on a collision course. Its discoverer, Creohan, figured there might be time to save the world if he could arouse everyone to the danger.But the Earth had become a strange and kaleidoscopic place in that distant era. Too many empires had risen and fallen, too many cultures had spread their shattered fragments across a planet whose very maps had long since been forgotten. People were too busy with their own private dreams to pay attention to one more new alarm.The story Creohans effort to Catch a Falling Star is one of John Brunners most colourful science-fiction concepts.