Comment by natechols
7 hours ago
"The Shockwave Runner" has aged vastly better than "Stand on Zanzibar", which I found unreadable. The first book predicts an early-21st century society full of smartphone users, ubiquitous privacy violations, and governments run by criminal gangs; the other is like if Paul Ehrlich wrote a sci-fi novel. I don't think "The Shockwave Runner" is as well written as any of the other cyberpunk classics, but as a guess at what 40-50 years in the authors future would look like, it's almost freakily realistic. (Although it feels like reading Neal Stephenson's "Anathem" at times - familiar tech described with alien words.)
Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up, and Shockwave Rider all feel like variations on a theme. If you start with Shockwave and absolutely love it then you are in luck because there's more where that came from. But all of his books are worth reading imho.
> as a guess at what 40-50 years in the authors future would look like, it's almost freakily realistic.
Yeah, I should really revisit Future Shock. That book might have been a little ahead of its time.
> Although it feels like reading Neal Stephenson's "Anathem" at times - familiar tech described with alien words.
100% agree, and I think it's almost a bigger flaw here. I'm not saying "it gets better in the second season" but I wouldn't be surprised if some people bounce off the future slang.
Interestingly enough, Brunner might be one of the only white authors I've read who describes his characters by skin tone.