John Kilian Houston Brunner Book order (chronological)

John Brunner's classic novel of ecological catastrophe, now more relevant than ever.

In a society populated by mass-marketed psychedelics and eugenics, where everyone was struggling for life, Donald Hogan was a mild-mannered student, a dilettante intellectual - at least that's what everybody was supposed to think. But he was really a spy.

Howson was een krieltje. Krom, lelijk en kreupel. Het soort mensen dat men liever niet ziet. Wanneer hij zich echter diep concentreerde, kon hij zijn gedachten duizenden mijlen diep de ruimte in projecteren en kon hij de menselijke geest tot de diepste duisternis peilen. Zijn telepathische vermogens reikten verder dan men ooit eerder in de geschiedenis had ervaren... en hij werd de grootste genezer van zijn tijd. Maar wanneer hij afdaalde in de menselijke geest, speurend naar hun nachtmerries, kon men dan van deze kriel verwachten dat hij de duistere machten kon hanteren?

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 3nd 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.--Gail O'Connor (edited)

In 2020, an international space team, exploring Sigma Draconis, 19 light years from earth, discovers the remains of a highly advanced society that has left behind as its most spectacular artifact the largest telescope imaginable, carved & polished from a natural moon crater. Successive space crews determine that the native culture evolved & disappeared mysteriously after a mere 3000 years of existence. It's now 2028. Another mission reaches the planet with just one goal--to discover why the civilization disappeared--& with just one hope--that this knowledge will prevent the same thing from happening on earth. Exhibiting that rare sense of sf mystery that distinguished Arthur C. Clarke's 2001, John Brunner weaves a haunting tale of how 30 people attack the nearly insuperable task of unriddling the mysteries of a long-buried culture. Was it a fatal virus, an internecine war, a religion of lunatic brutality or a deleterious mutation that destroyed an entire civilization? All remains hypothesis until Ian Macauley unravels the riddle. But does it provide a solution to human problems & will the answer reach earth in time?

from John Brunners estate 1st Dutch Born 1971 edition paperback vg+ In stock shipped from our UK warehouse

Une troupe d'acteurs est réunie par un metteur en scène dans une étrange demeure, sous prétexte de monter une pièce de théâtre. Mais chacun d'eux est amené à incarner son propre rôle dans la vie : alcoolique, dépressif, homosexuel... Devant quels spectateurs pervers venus du futur exposent-ils ainsi l'image de leurs faiblesses ?