John Brunner

First you use machines, then you wear machines, and then ...? Then you serve machines.

HIPCRIME   You committed one when you opened this book. Keep it up. It's our only hope.

John Kilian Houston Brunner (September 24, 1934 – August 26, 1995) was a science fiction author. His work in the new wave sub-genre is highly acclaimed and influential. His earlier (prolific, often pseudonymous) space operas are generally considered unremarkable.

Sourced

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

I know people who can't even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view.

Faust felt like this. The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, the devil will come and Faustus must be damned ...

We're aware of the scale of the planet, so we don't accept that our own circumscribed horizons constitute reality. Much more real is what's relayed to us by the TV.

You have many years to live — do things you will be proud to remember when you're old.

Christ, what an imagination I've got.

Now we're going to have the brain race. And, if we're lucky, the final stage will be the human race.

Winner of the Hugo Award for best novel of the year. Quotations from the "SF Masterworks" edition: Orion Publishing, London (1999) ISBN 1-85798-836-1

• SCANALYZER is the one single, the ONLY study of the news in depth that's processed by General Technics' famed computer Shalmaneser, who sees all, hears all, knows all save only that which YOU, Mr, and Mrs. Everywhere, wish to keep to yourselves.
  • the happening world (1) READ THE DIRECTIONS

• HIPCRIME   You committed one when you opened this book. Keep it up. It's our only hope.

— The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan

• the happening world (1) READ THE DIRECTIONS

• Like living creatures, automobiles expired when their environment became saturated with their own excreta. We ourselves are living creatures. We don't want the same to happen to us.
  • context (2) "Editorial Slot"

• I can't see heaven but I credit hell —
  I live in New York so I know it well.
  When they shut out heaven with the Fuller Dome
  God gave it up and He went home.
  • the happening world (6) "Street Seen"

• Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view.
  • context (9) "Guncrit"

• If you want to know what's shortly due for the guillotine look for the most obvious of all symptoms: extremism. It is an almost infallible sign — a kind of death-rattle — when a human institution is forced by its members into stressing those and only those factors which are identificatory, at the expense of others which it necessarily shares with competing institutions because human beings belong to all of them.
  • context (12) "The Sociological Counterpart of Cheyne-Stokes Respiration"

• Faust felt like this. The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, the devil will come and Faustus must be damned ... How long did he buy with the currency of his soul — ten years?
  • continuity (12) "It's Supposed To Be Automatic But Actually You Have To Press This Button"

• Any society which gives lip-service to the idea of equal opportunity is going to generate jealousy of others who are better off than you are, even if the thing that's in short supply can't be carved up and shared without destroying it.
  • continuity (13) "Multiply By A Million"

• First you use machines, then you wear machines, and then ...? Then you serve machines.
  • continuity (14) "The Right Man For The Job"

• Watching their sets in a kind of trance
  were people in Mexico, people in France.
  They don't chase Jonses but the dreams are the same —
  Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere, that's the right name!
  Herr und Frau Uberall or les Partout,
  A gadget on the set makes them look like you.

  When the Everywhere couple crack a joke
  It's laughed at by all right-thinking folk.
  When the Everywhere couple adopt a pose
  It's the with-it view as everyone knows.
  It may be a rumor or it may be true
  But a gadget on the set has it said by you!

  "What do you think about Yatakang?"
  "I think the same as the Everywhere gang."
  "What do you think of Beninia then?"
  "The Everywheres will tell me but I don't know when."
  Whatever my country and whatever my name
  A gadget on the set makes me think the same.

  • context (16) "Mr. & Mrs. Everywhere: Calypso (stanzas 2, 5, and 7)

• We're aware of the scale of the planet, so we don't accept that our own circumscribed horizons constitute reality. Much more real is what's relayed to us by the TV.
  • continuity (17) "Timescales"

• "They surely are condemned to Hell
  Who rule their lives by greed and lust
  And Satan waits for those as well
  Who in machines repose their trust."
  • tracking with closeups (17) "Brighter Than A Thousand Men"

• SHALMANESER   That real cool piece of hardware up at the GT tower. They say he's apt to evolve to true consciousness one day. Also they say he's as intelligent as a thousand of us put together, which isn't really saying much, because when you put a thousand of us together look how stupidly we behave.
  • tracking with closeups (17) "Brighter Than A Thousand Men"

• You have many years to live — do things you will be proud to remember when you're old.
  • continuity (27) "Manscape"

• Isn't it typical? We train one man — one ordinary, inoffensive, retiring little man — to be an efficient killing machine and he kills the one person who stood a chance of saving us from ourselves!
  • continuity (42) "And Say Which Seed Will Grow"

• What in God's name is it worth to be human, if we have to be saved from ourselves by a machine?
  • continuity (42) "And Say Which Seed Will Grow"

• Bathed in his currents of liquid helium, self-contained, immobile, vastly well informed by every mechanical sense: Shalmaneser.
  Every now and again there passes through his circuits a pulse which carries the cybernetic equivalent of the phrase, "Christ, what an imagination I've got."
  • tracking with closeups (32) - THE COOL AND DETACHED VIEW

The Shockwave Rider (1975)

If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing.

This novel anticipated and influenced the Cyberpunk genre, and coined the term computer worm. Quotations from the first paperback edition: Ballantine/Del Rey, New York, (1976) ISBN 0-345-27472-5

• First we had the legs race. Then we had the arms race. Now we're going to have the brain race. And, if we're lucky, the final stage will be the human race.
  • Bk. 1, Ch. "The Number You Have Reached"

• It's not because my mind is 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.
  • Bk. 1, Ch. "Paradox, Next Stop After the Boondocks

• "But I was never put on trial, never convicted!"
  "You are not entitled to a trial."
  "Anybody's entitled to a trial, damn you!"
  "That is absolutely true. But you see you are not anybody. You are nobody.
  • Bk. 1, Ch. "The Conviction of His Courage" (His record having been erased from government computers.)

• The theory was and always had been: this is the thing the solid citizen has no need to worry about. Important, later all-important question: what about the hollow citizen?
  • Bk. 2, Ch. "In the Beginning Was the Herd"

• One might as well claim that the tide which rubs pebbles smooth on a beach is doing the pebbles a service because being round is prettier than being jagged. It's of no concern to a pebble what shape it is. But it's very important to a person.
  • Bk. 2, Ch. "Let's All Be Different Same As Me"

• If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing.
  • Bk. 3, Ch. "Like They Say, It's Bounce Or Break"

External links

• John Brunner Archive at the University of Liverpool
• Obituary at Rudy's Books
• Heroes of Cyberspace:John Brunner by Charles A. Gimon
• Bibliography on SciFan
• John Brunner at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Science Fiction Inventions by John Brunner
• Audio review of The Crucible of Time at The Science Fiction Book Review Podcast