Interstellar Empire (1976) Omnibus by John Brunner
Requirements: ePUB reader, 0.9mb
Overview: John Brunner (John Kilian Houston Brunner) (1934 – 1995)
aka K H Brunner, Henry Crosstrees Jr, Gill Hunt, John Loxmith, Trevor Staines, Keith Woodcott
was a British author of science fiction novels and stories. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, about an overpopulated world, won the 1969 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel, and the BSFA award the same year. The Jagged Orbit won the BSFA award in 1970.
At first writing conventional space opera, Brunner later began to experiment with the novel form. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar exploits the fragmented organizational style that American writer John Dos Passos created for his USA trilogy, but updates it in terms of the theory of media popularised by Canadian academic Marshall McLuhan, a major cultural figure of the period.
The Jagged Orbit (1969) is set in a United States dominated by weapons proliferation and interracial violence. Its 100 numbered chapters vary in length from a single syllable to several pages in length. The Sheep Look Up (1972) depicts ecological catastrophe in America.
Brunner is credited with coining the term "worm" (in computing) and predicting the emergence of computer viruses in his 1975 novel The Shockwave Rider, in which he used the term to describe software which reproduces itself across a computer network. Brunner’s work has also been credited for prefiguring modern developments such as genetic engineering, same-sex marriage, online encyclopedias, the legalization of cannabis, and the development of Viagra.
These four novels Stand on Zanzibar (1968), The Jagged Orbit (1969), The Sheep Look Up (1972) and The Shockwave Rider (1975), have been called the "Club of Rome Quartet", named after the Club of Rome, whose 1972 report The Limits to Growth warned of the dire effects of overpopulation.[5]
In addition to his fiction, Brunner wrote poetry and published many unpaid articles in a variety of venues, particularly fanzines. He also published 13 letters to the New Scientist and an article about the educational relevance of science fiction in Physics Education. Brunner was an active member of the organisation Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and wrote the words to "The H-Bomb’s Thunder", which was sung on the Aldermaston Marches. He was a linguist, translator, and Guest of Honour at the first European Science Fiction Convention Eurocon-1 in Trieste in 1972
Genre: Sci-Fi
Interstellar Empire collects The Altar on Asconcel, The Man from the Big Dark, The Wanton of Argus/The Space-Time Juggler.
Interstellar Empire is a fixup of a novella & two short stories published in ’76. In his introduction, Brunner explains he wanted to write sword & spaceship stories. To do so, he had humanity find a huge cache of warehoused spaceships left behind by an earlier race. Thus they could have top-notch space travel without the technological development required to invent it. The stories are also set in the waning days of a vast interstellar empire that is crumbling badly, so that some planets are still firmly under imperial control, some are struggling to stay that way & others have gone their own way.
The novella, The Altar on Asconel, concerns three brothers who join forces to try to liberate their home planet after it’s been taken over by cultists from the far reaches of space. The 2nd story, The Man From the Big Dark, concerns the efforts of one man to warn a planet that they’re about to be invaded by space pirates. The 3rd story, The Wanton of Argus, involves a struggle over who shall become regent for a young king after his father’s death. It has a surprising twist at the end involving a time traveler who wants to make sure things turn out right.
Revived by Jim
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