peteg's blog - noise - books - 2010 02 16 Brunner NoFutureInIt

John Brunner: No Future In It

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I read this one over many months, dipping into it when there was nothing better on offer. As a collection of short stories from the early 60s and late 50s it is not bad, but Brunner really only got going about a decade later. There are some cute ideas but nothing scintillating, and the prose is a bit workman-like, as if he's in it just to pay for those drugs.

Some of the stories are structurally similar to his later work -- mysteries with a late twist, narrative sliced up with extraneous noise.