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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

“Who should know better than a cosmetician that human beings are less than rational creatures?”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

tracking with closeups (4) “Masker Aid”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“Very well, the starting point would be that claim of Professor Quarrey’s, which had been in the news at the beginning of the year, that the country’s greatest export was noxious gas. And who would like to stir up the fuss again? Obviously, the Canadians, cramped into a narrow band to the north of their more powerful neighbors, growing daily angrier about the dirt that drifted to them on the wind, spoiling crops, causing chest diseases and soiling laundry hung out to dry. So she’d called the magazine Hemisphere in Toronto, and the editor had immediately offered ten thousand dollars for three articles.
Very conscious that all calls out of the country were apt to be monitored, she’d put the proposition to him in highly general terms: the risk of the Baltic going the same way as the Mediterranean, the danger of further dust-bowl like the Mekong Desert, the effects of bringing about climactic change. That was back in the news—the Russians had revised their plan to reverse the Yenisei and Ob. Moreover, there was the Danube problem, worse than the Rhine had ever been, and Welsh nationalists were sabotaging pipelines meant to carry “their” water into England, and the border war in West Pakistan had been dragging on so long most people seemed to have forgotten that it concerned a river.
And so on.
Almost as soon as she started digging, though, she thought she might never be able to stop. It was out of the question to cover the entire planet. Her pledged total of twelve thousand words would be exhausted by North American material alone.”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

June “A PLACE TO STAND”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

““I haven’t changed my mind, if that’s what you’re getting at,” he said at length. The stench and crackle of burning boats was vivid to him.”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

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

“Are we not natural creatures? Are we not evolved, too? Surely all the lessons we’ve learned in the past century come to a single point: we have to stop thinking of ourselves as somehow apart from nature, and recognise that we’re inseparable from it.”

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John Brunner libro The Stone That Never Came Down

Fuente: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 17 (p. 132)

“HIPCRIME You committed one when you opened this book. Keep it up. It's our only hope.
::: — The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

the happening world (1) “Read the Directions“
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“That’s behind me. Same as with everything else in my life, though, I approached what I learned with eyes and ears half-closed. It’s only now I realise how dangerous and destructive Christian culture has become. If there was ever any love in it, it’s been bled out. Three major religions preach Holy War: Shintoism, Islam, and Christianity. Christianity is the only one hypocritical enough simultaneously to enjoin its followers to turn the other cheek and suffer fools gladly and the rest of it. Look at the record. Germany was a Christian country almost exactly one hundred times as long as it was Nazi. Did the Nazis undo in twelve years all the church had done in twelve centuries? No, they built on it. Hitler was a baptised Catholic and never excommunicated. When he was enlisting the support of the bishops in 1933 he promised to do nothing to the Jews that the church had not already, and kept his promise.”

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John Brunner libro The Stone That Never Came Down

Fuente: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 16 (p. 124)

“They’d have me out and shoot me the first day they took charge. Anyone like me is intolerably subversive to an authoritarian régime, because I’m not interested in imposing my ideas by force on other people.”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

tracking with closeups (8) “Ill Wind”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“Fifteen minutes out of Mexico City for Tokyo a passenger aboard a 747 screamed that he was being eaten by red-hot ants, and managed to open the emergency door at 23,000 feet. He had been to the washroom and drunk from the faucet there before takeoff.
It was, after all, labeled DRINKING WATER.”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

July “BLOWBACK”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“Governments don’t change things,” she said. “Only time does that.”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

continuity (24) “This Scene Not Shifted”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“UNFAIR Term applied to advantages enjoyed by other people which we tried to cheat them out of and didn’t manage.”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

the happening world (12) “The General Feeling”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“I can at least comfort myself with the idea that whatever I’ve done I’ve helped to nail a lie, and I’m coming to think that lying is among the worst of all human failings. Next to actual killing. And experience has made us almost equally good at both of them.”
“I have killed many people and seen many more killed on my orders,” Jogajong said. “It is what must be paid to buy what we want.”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

“What we’ve been told we want, by liars more skilled than ourselves.”
continuity (37) “Storage”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“It's natural for a man to defend what’s dear to him: his own life, his home, his family. But in order to make him fight on behalf of his rulers, the rich and powerful who are too cunning to fight their own battles—in short to defend not himself but people whom he’s never met and moreover would not care to be in the same room with him—you have to condition him into loving violence not for the benefits it bestows on him but for its own sake. Result: the society has to defend itself from its defenders, because what’s admirable in wartime is termed psychopathic in peace. It’s easier to wreck a man than to repair him. Ask any psychotherapist. And take a look at the crime figures among veterans.”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

September “MINE ENEMIES ARE DELIVERED INTO MY HAND”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“Latro, California: “Terrible diarrhea, Doctor, and I feel so weak!”/”Take these pills and come back in three days if you’re not better.”
Parkington, Texas: “Terrible diarrhea….”/”Take these pills…”
Hainesport, Louisiana: “Terrible…” “Take…”
Baker Bay, Florida…
Washington, DC….
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania…
New York, New York…
Boston, Massachusetts…
Chicago, Illinois: “Doctor, I know it’s Sunday, but the kid’s in such a terrible state—you’ve got to help me!”/”Give him some junior aspirin and bring him to my office tomorrow. Goodbye.”

EVERYWHERE, USA: a sudden upswing in orders for very small coffins, the right size to take a baby dead from acute infantile enteritis.”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

April “THE TRIAL RUNS”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“Yes, for most people nowadays television is their only contact with the world beyond their work.”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

September “MINE ENEMIES ARE DELIVERED INTO MY HAND”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“Unto the third and fourth generation, General Motors, you have visited your greed on the children. Unto the twentieth, AEC, you have twisted their limbs and closed their eyes. Unto the last dawn of man you have cursed us, O Father. Our Father. Our Father Which art in Washington, give us this day our daily calcium propionate, sodium diacetate monoglyceride, potassium bromate, calcium phosphate, monobasic chloramine T, aluminium potassium sulphate, sodium benzoate, butylated hydroxyanisole, mono-iso-propyl citrate, axerophthol and calciferol. Include with it a little flour and salt.
Amen.”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

January “EARTHMOVER”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“The plane droned on through the black sky, above the clouds masking the Atlantic. It suddenly occurred to Michael that he ought to look at the moon. He hadn’t seen it all the time he was in Paris, nor the stars.
He slid up the blind of his window and peered out. There was no moon visible. When he consulted his diary he discovered that it had set, a tiny sliver, at exactly the time the plane had taken off from London.”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

March “RAVELED SLEEVE”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“Next, the stalled cars had their windows opaqued with a cheap commercial compound used for etching glass, and slogans were painted on their doors. Some were long: THIS VEHICLE IS A DANGER TO LIFE AND LIMB. Many were short: IT STINKS! But the commonest of all was the universally known catchphrase: STOP, YOU’RE KILLING ME!”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

December “A ROOST FOR CHICKENS”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“When the politicians claim that the public isn’t interested any longer in environmental conservation, they’re half right. People are actually afraid to be interested, because they suspect—I think rightly—that we’ll find if we dig deep enough that we’ve gone so far beyond the limits of what the planet will tolerate that only a major catastrophe which cuts back both our population and our ability to interfere with the natural biocycle would offer a chance of survival.”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

August “CHECK AND BALANCE”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“COINCIDENCE You weren’t paying attention to the other half of what was going on.”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

context (3) “You Have to Push Him Over”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“No faith can possibly suffice. It’s always undermined by ignorance.”

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John Brunner libro The Tides of Time

Fuente: The Tides of Time (1984), Chapter 12 (p. 218)

““Ah, go to hell!”
“That’s a remarkably Christian attitude, Donald. Both meaningless and barbaric.””

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

the happening world (3) “Domestica”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“I just haven’t been conditioned into thinking that the right answer can’t be a simple one. When I told you you’d been contaminated I meant by that attitude, which is wider-spread than the common cold and just as undermining. Did nobody ever point out to you that the only liberty implied by free will is the opportunity to be wrong?”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

continuity (38) “Not For Sale But Can Be Had On Application”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“THIS BEACH NOT SAFE FOR SWIMMING
NOT Drinking Water
UNFIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION
Now Wash Your Hands
(Penalty for noncompliance $50)
FILTERMASK DISPENSER
Use product once only—maximum 1 hour
OXYGEN
25¢”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

December “SIGNS OF THE TIMES“
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“.. include prima facie but not ipso facto the following: (a) Homosexuality or gross indecency with another male person; (b) Possession of or trading in an illegal narcotic or other drug; (c) Living upon the earnings of prostitution; (d) Membership in the Communist Party or one of its front organizations (see schedule attached); (e) “Trainism”; (f) Advocating the violent overthrow of the government; (g) Slandering the President of the United States; (h)...”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

.
October “THE ROUGH DRAFT”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“SHALMANESER That real cool piece of hardware up at the GT tower. They say he's apt to evolve to true consciousness one day. Also they say he's as intelligent as a thousand of us put together, which isn't really saying much, because when you put a thousand of us together look how stupidly we behave.”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

tracking with closeups (17) "Brighter Than A Thousand Men"
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“And then, all of a sudden, it was as though through those dark eyes an electrical circuit had been struck. She sat fascinated. Snake-and-bird fascinated. Afterwards she could not recall the details of what he had said. She remembered only that she had been absorbed, rapt, lost, for over ten minutes by the clock. She had perceived images conjured up from the dead past: a hand trailed in clear river water, deliciously cool, while the sun smiled and a shoal of tiny fishes darted between her fingers; the crisp flesh of a ripe apple straight from the tree, so juicy it ran down her chin; grass between her bare toes, the turf like springs so that she seemed not to bear the whole of her weight on her soles but to be floating, dreamlike, in slow motion, instantly transported to the moon; the western sky painted with vast heart-tearing slapdash streaks of red below the bright steel-blue of clouds, and stars coming snap-snap into view against the eastern dark; wind gentle in her hair and on her cheeks, bearing flower perfumes, dusting her with petals; snow cold to the palm as it was shaped into a ball; laughter echoing from a dark lane where only lovers walked, not thieves and muggers; butter like an ingot of soft gold; ocean spray sharp and clean as the edge of an axe; with the same sense of safe, provided rightly used; round pebbles polychrome beside a pool; rain to which a thirsty mouth could open, distilling the taste of a continent of air... And under, and through, and in, and around all this, a conviction: “Something can be done to get that back!”
She was crying. Small tears like ants had itched their paths down her cheeks. She said, when she realized he had fallen silent, “But I never knew that! None of it! I was born and raised right here in New York!””

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

”But don’t you think you should have known it?” Austin Train inquired gently.
September “MINE ENEMIES ARE DELIVERED INTO MY HAND”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“Special this week at your Puritan Health Supermarket!
Okinawa squash, reg. $0.89 $0.75!
Penguin eggs (low on DDT, PCB), reg. $6.35 doz. $6.05!
Pacific potatoes (unwashed), reg. $0.89 lb. $0.69!
Butter from sunny New Zealand, reg. $1.35 qrt. $1.15!
YOU TOO CAN AFFORD GOOD HEALTH AT PURITAN!”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

February “EAT IT IN GOOD HEALTH”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“The theory was and always had been: this is the thing the solid citizen has no need to worry about. Important, later all-important question: what about the hollow citizen?”

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John Brunner The Shockwave Rider

Bk. 2, Ch. "In the Beginning Was the Herd"
The Shockwave Rider (1975)

“People didn’t fly the Atlantic any more if they could help it, except from bravado. Even if your plane wasn’t sabotaged or hijacked, it was certain to be behind schedule.
Not that there was much to be said for ocean travel either, since the sinking of the Paolo Rizzi last summer and the drowning of thirteen hundred passengers in a sea made foul by a hundred and eighty thousand tons of oil from the tanker she’d collided with.
Moral, definitely: stay home.”

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John Brunner libro The Sheep Look Up

March “RAVELED SLEEVE”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“If the evidence says you’re wrong, you don’t have the right theory. You change the theory, not the evidence.”

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John Brunner libro Stand on Zanzibar

continuity (38) “Not For Sale But Can Be Had On Application”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

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