The hungry sheep look up and are not fed.
Hey everybody,
Greetings from the smoke-filled cozy apocalypse of the upper Midwest, where the sun rose orange and heavy this morning and Scott and I had an extraordinary dinner with friends, the kind of irresponsible once-every-five-years blowout that is basically impossible to justify but also profoundly good for the soul. (Hello, PNH and TNH. I hope your stomachs are recovering from the feast.)
Because we are traveling, I am typing this on a tiny Jellycomb folding keyboard and my tablet--not the best combo honestly--but it gets the job done. And because we are here for a tiny and well-beloved SFF convention (4th Street Fantasy) that we both (Scott and I, that is) help to run, of course the conversation turned to books and science fiction--and we got to talking about John Brunner, which led me to the topic for this newsletter.
Honestly I think Brunner is, like Octavia Butler, due a renaissance. (Other writers I'd like to see resurrected from the depths of history include but are not limited to Suzy McKee Charnas and Vonda McIntyre). One has to read through a certain amount of Social Mores Of The Time and phrasings that wouldn't make it past the sniff test today, but when a book is fifty or even thirty years old I give it some slack, frankly. Our own work is going to look dated soon too.
Anyway, people talk a lot about how prophetic Heinlein or Clarke or whatever are, but here's the thing: if you want a prophet... look at Brunner. Whatever apocalypse is currentl haunting your thoughts, he probably had something to say about it: sustainability, environmental degradation, AI taking your job, the streaming revolution, targeted advertising, spiking cancer rates, generational irresponsibility for a duty of care in the world we are leaving our children, corporate fascism, mass murder as a commonplace event, Whole Foods...
(I'm not kidding about Whole Foods, either.)
He was also doing proto-Cyberpunk in 1968, a book that won Best Novel—Stand on Zanzibar.
Set about… er… now.
Start with: Children of the Thunder, Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up.
Anyway, I need to go get some exercise after three days on the road, and it's looking a little nuclear outside so the hotel pool it is. Stay safe, don't breathe those particulates if you can help it, and keep on keeping on.
See you after the convention.
Best,
Bear