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John Brunner
The parallel worlds of a prolific science fiction master
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.
"University of Illinois Press plan forthcoming books on Gregory Benford, Alfred Bester, Ray Bradbury, Lois McMaster Bujold, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Greg Egan, William Gibson, Joe Haldeman, China Miéville, and Connie Willis. If they’re as good as Jad Smith’s John Brunner, I’ll be buying them all."--George Kelley
"Smith's biography shows how Brunner balanced craft and conscience in stories at once page turning and complex."--Shepherd Express
"Reading at times like a suspenseful career overview, this engagingly written and insightful account of John Brunner's publishing struggles and literary aspirations will appeal to general science fiction readers as well as scholars in the field."--Gary K. Wolfe, author of Evaporating Genres: Essays on Fantastic Literature
"Based on extensive research and filled with thoughtful commentary and insights, Jad Smith's book will stand alone as the one essential resource on John Brunner, an important science fiction writer who merits much more attention than he has so far received."--Gary Westfahl, editor of Science Fiction Quotations: From the Inner Mind to the Outer Limits
To order online:
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/96pne3gh9780252037337.html
To order by phone:
(800) 621-2736 (USA/Canada)
(773) 702-7000 (International)
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