John Brunner - worth reading?

[Caliban]

hi

Long time lurker first time poster here.

I have a mate who recommended I read John Brunner based on my liking Michael Bishop and PKD. But he also said that Brunner wrote about 5 masterpieces and loads of rubbish ones.

Which books of his do you guys recommend seeing as I don't really want to have to plot through loads of rubbish to get to a few good books.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Brunner wrote about 5 masterpieces and loads of rubbish ones.

This is a really funny question to me. The books mentioned all the time are Stand on Zanzibar and Jagged Orbit. I tried both of them and did not get 1/3rd into either one of them, so I gave up on him. I knew about Shockwave Rider for a long, long time but ignored it.

That was a mistake. I think it is way better than Neuromancer, another book we hear mentioned all of the time.

psik

 

[Ogma]

I really enjoyed Stand on Zanzibar. The Sheep Look Up is a book I intend to read at some stage.

 

[hardsciencefanagain]

John Brunner learned his craft hacking it(more or less).He wrote a fair amount of enjoyable space opera,some pseudonymously("Keith Woodcott").
I liked him in that phase.

 

[J-Sun]

This is a really funny question to me. The books mentioned all the time are Stand on Zanzibar and Jagged Orbit. I tried both of them and did not get 1/3rd into either one of them, so I gave up on him. I knew about Shockwave Rider for a long, long time but ignored it.

That was a mistake. I think it is way better than Neuromancer, another book we hear mentioned all of the time.

psik

Good to hear - I somewhat similarly read Stand on Zanzibar and didn't like it (though I did manage to finish it) but did want to try Shockwave Rider before I gave up. Then I came across one of the very few of the second set of Ballantine/Del Rey "The Best of"s of Brunner, so picked that up as well. If I don't like those, then I give up. And, naturally, to the OP, I'd say those are the two I'm trying. But, yeah, despite SoZ not working for me, consensus historical opinion seems to say that's one of his big ones as well.

 

[Lew Rockwell Fan]

FWIW, I only read Jagged Orbit, or part of it actually. It stank badly enough I never gave him another chance. Kind of like my reaction to Frank Herbert (I gave him more chances in deference to his rep) - I'm leftly vaguely astonished by his popularity.