The Shockwave Rider

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John Brunner was born in Preston Crowmarsh, near Wallingford in Oxfordshire, and went to school at St Andrew's Prep School, Pangbourne, then to Cheltenham College. He wrote his first novel, Galactic Storm, at 17, and published it under the pen-name Gill Hunt, but he did not start writing full-time until 1958. He served as an officer in the Royal Air Force from 1953 to 1955, and married Marjorie Rosamond Sauer on 12 July 1958 It’s not because my mind in made up that I don’t want you to confuse me with any more facts. It’s because my mind isn’t made up. I already have more facts than I can cope with. So SHUT UP, do you hear me? SHUT UP!” This is indeed the father and mother of a tapeworm. It’s of a type known as parthenogenetic. If you’re acquainted with contemporary data-processing jargon, you’ll have noticed how much use it makes of terminology derived from the study of living animals. And with reason. Not for nothing is a tapeworm called a tapeworm. It can be made to breed.

I continue to watch for disclosures about peak oil. Nothing so far, but apparently we’ve only seen a small part of what is to come. Already there have been revelations about the U.S. climate change strategy in Copenhagen, and Saudi influence on U.S. climate policy. If there’s one thing BDP [the Federal Bureau of Data Processing] has brought to a fine art, it’s preventing the public from digging unpleasant truths from behind the scenes in government… right?” There's far more to it than this, and though the ending wraps things up a little too neatly (I'm afraid the bad guys would almost certainly have won), this remains a brilliant net-based SF novel. Mi pequeña cabecita alcanza a formular reflexiones pero no le da para desarrollarlas del todo; leyendo este libro me ha dado por preguntarme cómo es posible que alguien en los 70 fuera capaz de percibir la trampa y las falsas religiones que surgirían a partir del desarrollo de los ordenadores, pero no fuera más allá de imaginar un aparato que sería aún más engañoso: el smartphone.

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The novel was written shortly after two pivotal events of the 1970s, the resignation of Richard Nixon and the overthrow of the Chilean President Salvador Allende, which are cited in the novel as examples, in Nixon's case, of a failed attempt by organised crime to suborn the Presidency, and in the second, of the consequences of working against multinational commercial interests. The Sheep seems pretty dated now, while The Traveller – with its almost fable-like quality – may seem too enigmatic for today’s average fantasy fan. Yes, it is dry reading, for the most part. Brunner was perhaps a bit too much the intellectual – after all, this is also a person who was 17 years old when he got his first book (Galactic Storm) published under a pseudonym, and who wrote The Squares of the City, a sociopolitical story of class warfare that used the moves of a famous 1892 chess game between Wilhelm Steinitz and Mikhail Chigorin as its structure. Well, everyone aside from the hippies and drop outs in the 'paid-avoidance zones' that is. But they don't really come up all that much. As with The Sheep Look Up and Stand on Zanzibar, Brunner has opted for a frenetic series of vignettes to frame his story, ranging from a paragraph or two to entire chapters, that hone in on one character or one incident. At times, these seem like disparate vignettes, but collectively, they paint a portrait of the world Brunner was imagining.

About this future America-- damn if he was not prescient! Most people live what is called a 'plug in' lifestyle, willing (and forced) to move all the time to new occupations and places; hence, most accommodations are standardized, as seem to be most personality traits. There are fringes of people who resist and resort to 'tribalism', warring among themselves for no real reason. Strange religions flare up and die; unminded by the powers that be (PTB) as they serve to provide an outlet of frustration/anger not directed at the government. Again, most people resort to some type of medication (can you say soma?) to keep themselves together. Hey!” In an incredulous tone from a man beside Rose Jordan. “All kind of weird stuff has been coming off the beams since yesterday, like they’ve been paying women to bear kids that are sure to be deformed. You mean this is supposed to be true?” FOR many, science fiction is the literature of prophecy. I tend to disagree. I like to think of it as the literature of ideas, mostly about our future but not necessarily restricted to it. Abstract Strategy Game: The fictional game known as Fencing, a futuristic version of Dots and Boxes. The objective is to claim points on the board, and then create triangles that do not enclose dots owned by the opponent. The game has a hidden information aspect, as the player also claims a concealed point along with a visible point. It's claimed to be an automatic win for the first player . Teenagers join “tribes” that commit real mayhem, burning down territories. There are parts of cities that are no-go areas. There are game shows on TV where people are maimed and killed, and there are live circuses broadcast that have gladiatorial games and real deaths.Every now and again, of course, there does come a hilarious misstep, as when it's suggested the cost of shutting down a particularly smart tapeworm would be the net losing "thirty or forty billion bits of data" - which must have sounded loads at the time, but which we'd now say was around four gigabytes, or somewhere around a seventh of the information I currently have stored on my 'phone. But as with Brunner's other great near-future dystopia, Stand On Zanzibar, the main problem is that he's far too optimistic. Brazil and the Philippines are specifically mentioned as being much better off for the new age of big data. Tarnover, the sinister institute squatting at the heart of the story, is a factory for disruptive young supergeniuses straight out of Dominic Cummings' wet dreams – but it does at least produce disruptive supergeniuses, instead of just corralling and empowering twatty edgelords. Most painful of all, despite being common to much of what was once considered paranoid fiction, there's that touching faith that exposing the truth about wrongdoing will make the least bit of difference. I genuinely winced at the line "Lots of things make people angry, but political graft and the notion of deliberately maltreating children are among the most powerful". Well, you say that, but it turns out that for the majority of the population, they don't make people nearly as angry as libs and the paramount importance of owning same. Estoy generosa: a lo mejor no se merece las 5 pero ¡qué coño!, me lo he pasado estupendamente leyéndolo y ya está.