Protean cyberpunk from an author tragically ahead of his time.
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Although shorter than the epic Stand on Zanzibar, and similar in some ways to the mighty Sheep Look Up, Shockwave Rider is an overlooked classic of sci-fi. Like much genre fiction it suffers from weak characterisation, but draws comparison with Huxley's Brave New World, other 70s new wave, and of course the later cyber sci-fi of the 80s. That we are all riding the shockwave of technological change is now more obvious than then, and Alvin Toffler's non-fiction 'Futureshock', mentioned in the preface, is the most important context to understand this book. Predicting in the early 70s a worldwide web of information accessed via phonelines is prescient. But as an unstoppable force for freedom of information and human rights, the book's conclusion captures the radicalism inherent in the internet. The brief visit to an ecologically sustainable community, in contrast to the technocratic mainstream society, is another factor of a 1970s perspective that has a strong reflection in present day thinking. Although these locations are not developed in enough detail to be hugely informative. If anything, Brunner's shocking pronouncements of a technolgical society going wrong are now so common-place in the news today as to seem glib. Brunner also suffered from trying to create futuristic idioms of language that date his work as badly as science fiction from the 1940s. Nonetheless when I read this aged 15, I thought it was pretty cool. To pick a single Brunner it has to be Zanzibar, and today I'd say Ken Macleod's Sky Road is a better value read, but in the history of sci-fi this is not insignificant.
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Future Shock class
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The book describes a surreal and frightening future world with an omnipresent internet, and an all-powerful government which oversees the movement of all its citizens. The nations of the world are in a 'brain race', the logical successor of the arms race, and it's just as illogical and ruthless. The people show all symptoms of hyper-stress, and society is crumbling. The world depicted is around year 2010, and considering that the book was written in 1975, does credit to the powers of realistic imagination of the author. The book primarily follows the life of Nick Haflinger, an elite hacker who quit a government facility where high intelligence children were "trained" and created through genetic modification, and used all his skills first to evade arrest for six years, and finally meeting people like himself in a low-tech, beautiful, natural village, turns his knowledge to use against the government and its minions.
Powerful and gripping narrative style, keeps jumping across time-frames, irritating at first, but becomes enjoyable after a few pages. Great blend of science-fiction and philosophy.
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Fascinating ideas, but poor plot and characters
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Brunner has tried to pack to much into a short novel. Written in the mid-70s his vision of a 'datanet' which can be accessed from any phone is remarkable. However, there are to many lengthy political asides and the characters are to flimsy to sustain interest. By the end I was skimming rapidly to finish the book - the ending by the way is particularly poor. Brunner can do much better than this - if you have the stamina for it try Stand on Zanzibar, a much better novel.
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Amazingly precient book. The writing style is very 70's.
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This book is one of several John Brunner books that are frighteningly good predictions of today and the future. The writing style may put some people off. It isn't as deliberately choppy as 'The Sheep Look Up' but it is still fairly jumpy.
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Fuure Shock brought to life.
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"Future Shock" was way ahead of its time but heavy going. This is ahead of its time and very readable. Its another one of those books you can read and play spot the spin off with. The "pretender" TV series is probably the closest thing most people have seen to this. If you liked that series, buy the book.
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