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Frases de John Brunner
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John Brunner, , escritor británico de ciencia ficción perteneciente al movimiento llamado Nueva Ola.

Sus obras suelen versar sobre un futuro inmediato narrado a través de múltiples personajes, centrando su interés más en la descripción de la sociedad imaginada que en las peripecias o aventuras de sus personajes. O más bien, lo que le ocurre a sus personajes siempre está enmarcado en un punto de vista sociológico.

Es este peculiar enfoque, ausente de elementos épicos o de una trama central evidente, el que le ha impedido convertirse en un autor de éxito. Sin embargo las historias de John Brunner siempre tienen un final que las dota de pleno sentido narrativo.

Sus mejores obras corresponden a la llamada "Trilogía del Desastre", especialmente Todos sobre Zanzíbar y El rebaño ciego, y a la novela El jinete de la onda de shock, una de las obras precursoras de la corriente cyberpunk, que se inspiró en el ensayo de Alvin Toffler El shock del futuro. Las obras posteriores se suelen considerar menores.

El jinete de la onda de shock, aparte de ser una de sus obras más conocidas, es un ejemplo perfecto de obra profética olvidada. Escrita en 1975, en ella se describe una sociedad construida alrededor de internet en la que existen gusanos y virus informáticos, tarjetas de crédito virtuales, técnicas de cifrado y anonimato y otros elementos novedosos que caracterizarán ya no sólo el cyberpunk, sino los tiempos actuales.

Por este y otros relatos se puede considerar a Brunner uno de los visionarios más profundos y acertados de la ciencia ficción de la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Wikipedia  

✵ 24. septiembre 1934 – 25. agosto 1995
John Brunner: 147   frases 0   Me gusta

John Brunner: Frases en inglés

“All this time, though, this feeling that the world was ‘’bound’’ to go to hell! Okay, so it’s true these mothers have turned prairies into dustbowls and used the sea for a giant sewer and laid concrete where there used to be forests. So stop them! Don’t just let them walk over you, crush you face-down into the dirt!
Crush them first!”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

April “REHEARSAL”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“Nothing short of religion could persuade a normal girl to make herself look so awful.”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

tracking with closeups (2) “Yonderboy”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“One might as well claim that the tide which rubs pebbles smooth on a beach is doing the pebbles a service because being round is prettier than being jagged. It's of no concern to a pebble what shape it is. But it's very important to a person.”

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John Brunner The Shockwave Rider

Bk. 2, Ch. "Let's All Be Different Same As Me"
The Shockwave Rider (1975)

“How do you get away with it? Above all, how do you persuade people to risk their lives in order to kill total strangers whom they know almost literally nothing about? Why, the answer’s simple. You lie to them!”

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John Brunner libro The Stone That Never Came Down

Fuente: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 17 (p. 135)

“NEGRO Member of a subgroup of the human race who hails, or whose ancestors hailed, from a chunk of land nicknamed—not by its residents—Africa. Superior to the Caucasian in that negroes did not invent nuclear weapons, the automobile, Christianity, nerve gas, the concentration camp, military epidemics, or the megalopolis.”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

context (6) “One Comes Out Where...”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“Get me a drink of water, please, and something to quiet my belly. It’s rumbling so much I can’t hear myself think.”

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John Brunner libro The Tides of Time

Fuente: The Tides of Time (1984), Chapter 3 (p. 48)

“How do you whip up resentment against absentee landlords and pocketers of bribes when the highest ambition of the people is either to become the former or be in a position to receive the latter?”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

context (8) “Isolation”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“Of course, lately he has been very upset about the state of the world. But isn’t everybody who bothers to pay attention?”

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John Brunner libro The Stone That Never Came Down

Fuente: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 3 (p. 27)

“It's not because my mind is made up that I don't want you to confuse me with any more facts. It's because my mind isn't made up. I already have more facts than I can cope with.”

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John Brunner The Shockwave Rider

Bk. 1, Ch. "Paradox, Next Stop After the Boondocks
The Shockwave Rider (1975)

“Joel groaned softly. “I-ah-I don’t think I was altogether myself,” he excused.
“Are you ever?” Bertrand countered.
“What?”
“I am always my self, even when my objurgatory circuits are cut in by some frustration-inducing outside event. But you’re invariably either drunk or suffering indigestion or still half-asleep or so excited as to be manic or so downcast as to be suicidal or—”
Loftily Joel broke in: “That’s part of the marvel and wonder of the subjective human experience, not susceptible machine analysis.” He gulped the last of his brandy and set the glass aside. “And we are a fantastic species really, aren’t we? For all our shortcomings! I mean, well—here I am talking to a machine, for pity’s sake, a machine, a manufactured article! So cleverly designed, it’s impossible to tell that its responses are programmed in, not the result of intelligence.””

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John Brunner

“I resent that,” Bertrand said, but Joel ignored the comment.
Section 6 (pp. 135-136)
You’ll Take the High Road (1973)

“I can't see heaven but I credit hell —
I live in New York so I know it well.
When they shut out heaven with the Fuller Dome
God gave it up and He went home.”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

the happening world (6) "Street Seen"
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“I think,” Chad grunted, “that if he [Shalmaneser, the computer] really is intelligent nobody will recognise the fact. Because we aren’t.”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

continuity (13) “Multiply by a Million”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“Gilt-tooled on yard-square panels of green leather—imitation, of course—the zodiacal signs looked down from the walls of the executive lunch-room. The air was full of the chatter of voices and the clink of ice-cubes. Waiting to be attacked when the president of the company joined them (he had promised to show at one sharp) was a table laden with expensive food: hard-boiled eggs, shells intact so that it could be seen they were brown, free-range, rich in carotene; lettuces whose outer leaves had been rasped by slugs; apples and pears wearing their maggot-marks like dueling scars, in this case presumably genuine ones though it had been known for fruit growers to fake them with red-hot wires in areas where insects were no longer found; whole hams, very lean, proud of their immunity from antibiotics and copper sulphate; scrawny chickens; bread as coarse as sandstone, dark as mud and nubbled with wheat grains...”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

December “HOUSE TO HOUSE”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“I can make a guess. There’s going to be trouble. Come to think of it, that’s a safe catch-all prophecy. Whatever happens in present circumstances there’s going to be trouble.”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

continuity (13) “Multiply by a Million”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“So not only the world, but he himself, was different from what he had imagined.”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

continuity (13) “Multiply by a Million”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“I don’t believe in God,” said the captain. “I wouldn’t care to believe in anyone who could make such a stinking lousy species as the one you belong to.”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

continuity (10) “Due Process”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

““So what do you think will happen?” Sawyer asked the barman who was drawing his mid-morning pint.
“Dunno,” the man grunted. “Except one thing. I know we’ve been led by fools and rogues, but this is the first time we’ve ever been led by a criminal!””

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John Brunner libro The Stone That Never Came Down

Fuente: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 23 (p. 177)

“Your country, mine, every other country in the world, has the same cause and what it does is, it takes people who don’t give a pint of whaledreck for it and sends them off to kill women and children. Yes, it’s the cause of every country on earth! And you know what I call that cause? I call it naked stinking greed.”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

continuity (37) “Storage”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“.. and Dr. Isaiah Williams, whose body was recovered from a ravine near San Pablo. Inquiries are being hampered by what an Army spokesman termed the obstinate attitude of the local people. “They won’t admit they know their left hands from their right,” he asserted. Here at home Senator Richard Howell (Rep., Col.) today launched a fierce attack on the quote chlorophyll addicts unquote who, he claims, are hamstringing American business, already staggering under the load of high unemployment and recession, by insisting that our manufacturers comply with regulations ignored by foreign competition. In Southern Italy rioting continues in many small towns formerly dependent on fishing. Meantime, dust storms in the Camargue...”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

.
January “AND IT GOES ON”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

““I was brought up as a Christian,” Cissy said. “Spelt K-I-L-L-J-O-Y. My mam still is one. When I said I was going to quit the church because of what I’d learned from Val about the history of slavery, I thought she was going to kill me!” She laughed nervously. But obviously that was not a joke.”

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John Brunner libro The Stone That Never Came Down

Fuente: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 24 (p. 187)

“He said—let me get this right—he said that among the chief reasons we can’t cope with the consequence of our own ingenuity is that whenever a genuinely open-minded teacher tries to pass that attitude on to his pupils, the entrenched authorities grow frightened and shut his mouth.”

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John Brunner libro The Stone That Never Came Down

Fuente: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 10 (p. 77)

““What are you going to do for a career?”
Diverted from his orbit, Donald binked. “Well, something which uses up a minimum of my time, I imagine. So I can use the rest to mortar up the gaps in my education.””

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

continuity (3) “After One Decade”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“Yes?... Oh, I’m very sorry to hear that. Please convey him our best wishes for a speedy recovery. But the president did ask me to pass this message informally as soon as possible; I may say he feels very strongly about the matter. Of course, not knowing if the rumor is well founded, we didn’t want to handle it on an official level... Yes, I would be obliged if you could make sure the ambassador is told at the earliest opportunity. Tell him, please, that any attempt to nominate Austin Train for the Nobel Peace Prize would be regarded as a grave and—I quote the president’s actual word—calculated affront to the United States.”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

July “SCRATCHED”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“He had decided it was better to be a volcano than a man; at least one set no store by what one’s acts destroyed.”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

continuity (39) “Better To Be a Volcano”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“Bathed in his currents of liquid helium, self-contained, immobile, vastly well informed by every mechanical sense: Shalmaneser.
Every now and again there passes through his circuits a pulse which carries the cybernetic equivalent of the phrase, “Christ, what an imagination I’ve got.“”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

tracking with closeups (32) “The Cool and Detached View“
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“Not that a car would have been much faster anyway, what with the police posts at state lines, the searches, the restricted zones not merely in cities—one expected that during August—but right out in the country, in agricultural areas. Because of hijackers after food trucks, of course.”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

August “THE END OF A LONG DARK TUNNEL”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

““The whole of modern so-called civilised existence is an attempt to deny reality insofar as it exists. When did Don last look at the stars, when did Norman last get soaked in a rainstorm? The stars as far as these people are concerned are the Manhattan-pattern!” He jerked his thumb at a window beyond which the city’s treasure-house of coloured light glimmered gaudily.”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

continuity (13) “Multiply by a Million”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“At the big Georgia paper mill the saboteur was obviously a chemist. Some kind of catalyst was substituted for a drum of regular sizing solution and vast billowing waves of corrosive fumes ruined the plant. Anonymous calls to a local TV station claimed it had been done to preserve trees.
The same day, in northern California, signs were posted on a stand of redwoods that the governor had authorized for lumbering: about two hundred of the last six hundred in the state. The signs said: FOR EVERY TREE YOU KILL ONE OF YOU WILL DIE TOO.
The promise was carried out with Schmiesser machine-pistols. The actual score was eighteen people for seventeen trees.
Close enough.”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

July “BLOWBACK”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“We are agreed that before we kill each other we should better serve mankind by killing those who order us to kill each other.”

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John Brunner libro The Stone That Never Came Down

Fuente: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 23 (p. 180)

“... published today as a United Nations Special Report. The alleged rise of intelligence in so-called backward countries is ascribed by the scientists who conducted the three-year investigation to improved diet and sanitation, while the as-yet unconfirmed decline in advanced nations is attributed to intensified pollution. Asked to comment on the report just prior to leaving for Hollywood, where he is tonight slated to open his annual retrospective, Prexy said, quote, Well, if they’re so smart why aren’t they clever? End quote. At a press conference in Tegucigalpa the disappearance of Leonard Ross, field agent for Globe Relief, and Dr. Isaiah Williams, the British medico who’s also unaccounted for, was officially ascribed today to terrorism. Troops are searching the area intensively, but so far have reported no success. Following the shock resignation of the former president of the “Save the Med” fund, Dottore Giovanni Crespinolo, the Italian government has flatly denied his charge that the vast sums donated by corporations and individuals in forty-eight countries in the hope of saving the doomed landlocked sea have been embezzled. Reports from Rome, however...”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

January “NO BIGGER THAN A MAN’S HAND”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

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