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John Brunner

The Shockwave Rider Mass Market Paperback – October 12, 1984

by John Brunner (Author)

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A Science Fiction Book Club Selection

"When John Brunner first told me of his intention to write this book, I was fascinated -- but I wondered whether he, or anyone, could bring it off. Bring it off he has -- with cool brilliance. A hero with transient personalities, animals with souls, think tanks and survival communities fuse to form a future so plausibly alive it has twitched at me ever since."

-- Alvin Toffler

Author of Future Shock

He Was The Most Dangerous Fugitive Alive, But He Didn't Exist!

Nickie Haflinger had lived a score of lifetimes...but technically he didn't exist. He was a fugitive from Tarnover, the high-powered government think tank that had educated him. First he had broken his identity code -- then he escaped.

Now he had to find a way to restore sanity and personal freedom to the computerized masses and to save a world tottering on the brink of disaster.

He didn't care how he did it...but the government did. That's when his Tarnover teachers got him back in their labs...and Nickie Haflinger was set up for a whole new education!

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Del Rey Books
Publication date

October 12, 1984
Dimensions

4 x 0.75 x 6.5 inches
ISBN-10

0345324315
ISBN-13

978-0345324313
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This book has always been popular with the techy-geeky crowd, but, since it was first published in the '70s, it missed out on the cyberpunk revolution of the '80s. It's too bad, because this is a compelling story of a future world tied together by a universal data network, a world that could be our tomorrow. It's a tense place filled with information overload and corporate domination, and nearly everything is known about everybody. Except Nickie Haflinger, a prodigy whose talents allow him to switch identities with a phone call. Nickie plans to change the world, if only he can keep from getting caught.

From the Inside Flap

ction Book Club Selection "When John Brunner first told me of his intention to write this book, I was fascinated -- but I wondered whether he, or anyone, could bring it off. Bring it off he has -- with cool brilliance. A hero with transient personalities, animals with souls, think tanks and survival communities fuse to form a future so plausibly alive it has twitched at me ever since." -- Alvin Toffler Author of Future Shock He Was The Most Dangerous Fugitive Alive, But He Didn't Exist! Nickie Haflinger had lived a score of lifetimes...but technically he didn't exist. He was a fugitive from Tarnover, the high-powered government think tank that had educated him. First he had broken his identity code -- then he escaped. Now he had to find a way to restore sanity and personal freedom to the computerized masses and to save a world tottering on the brink of disaster. He didn't care how he did it...but the g

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Del Rey Books (October 12, 1984)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0345324315
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0345324313
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4 x 0.75 x 6.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,955,386 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #21,853 in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
187 ratings

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5 star		57%
4 star		23%
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1 star		2%

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Phil Gawen

The Prophet

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 15, 2021

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Brunner was one of the very few who was able to follow the logical evolution of technology to it's inevitable conclusion. Some of the very jargon that describes todays internet and supplementary tech came from his mind. He describes it's use and abuse and warns us of our utter dependance leading us toward ruin. It may be too late now, but thanks to him some of us were lucky enough to have been given a slow motion view of the longest lasting train wreck in history.

3 people found this helpful

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rgvandewalker

A Great Classic of SF

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 18, 2021

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After the Club of Rome published the famous book, "The Limits to Growth", John Brunner published four SF novels exploring the social problems that could result. They were set only 45 years in his future: 2020. This is one of them, and it's still worth reading. I've always loved these books, because each is hopeful, about realistic ways that human potential might break through the limits to growth. In this case, the central character is a person that can "surf" future shock as society exceeds a human ability to adapt.

2 people found this helpful

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Chris

Worth a second look

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 3, 2016

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John Brunner is arguably the innovator of the cyberpunk genre (think Neuromancer or Count Zero from William Gibson, or Neil Stephenson's Diamond Age or Snow Crash).

The Shockwave Rider tells a story of a dystopian future, where every aspect of daily life is controlled by corporations, humans are slaves to their station in life, and there's no hope or escape. One man has found a way to fight the system, to hide who he is by altering his identity, and makes multiple attempts to change the system for the better. His backstory is filled in as the book progresses, how he came to be who he is and why he is able to do the things he is able to do.

Some of the writing is a bit ham-handed (I don't think Brunner displays a deft hand when it comes to interpersonal relationships), but the more general over-arching themes of government-corporate partnership, social stratification, global surveillance, and cultural oppressiveness are well fleshed out carry the story. If you enjoy cyberpunk or dystopian future stories, it's worth a read.

22 people found this helpful

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Maire Howard

How could a book this good fall through the cracks of Sci Fi

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 19, 2018

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I will be honest - my actual review is 4 stars instead of 5. This amazing book has been so ignored by the Sci Fi community that I am bumping it up to 5 stars.

Near future Sci Fi is difficult to pull off because if the book stays around long enough the predictions will be disproved. Brunner managed to get a lot of his predictions right. "Tapeworms" and "phages" predicted computer worms and viruses. The hacking and lack of privacy looks correct. We are on the verge of the "genetic optimization" prediction. "Economic Obsolescence" looks correct. Social paranoia from lack of trust from unprecedented data flow looks a lot like the political climate we have today. Globalization also looks like the world of today. Even having organized criminals in government sounds like today. ;-) The hacking of "Delphi Pools" seem a lot like the hacking that is currently in financial markets. Even the over specialization seems correct.

So why is this book ignored? It doesn't even have an audible book yet. I get the impression that John Brunner was not liked by the Sci Fi community.

22 people found this helpful

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Jane Eyre

The Shockwave Rider

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 15, 2017

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I read this book before personal computers and smart phones. Basically, it's about having the ability to change one's digital identity, being of the anti-hero on the wrong side of oppresive law. I found it entertaining when I was young, and decided it was rather delightful to buy the digital version and download it to my Kindle as a kind of homage to Brunner's book. I am going to re-read it a half century later, and see how well he anticipated the present and not so far future. Brunner was a British author educated in the previous millennium, so this is written well. It is much lighter in tone than two of Brunner's other dystopian futures.

I recommend them as well, "The Sheep Look Up", and "Stand on Zanzibar". Bleak? You betcha! Dismally, some things Brunner 'imagined' are taking place in today's news. Bladerunner/"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" seem like a Disney romp by comparison.

13 people found this helpful

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Anthony

Prescient.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 29, 2020

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It’s hard to believe this novel was written in the seventies. It captures our dystopic times so well. Governments suborned by crime gangs manipulating and controlling everything. Russia and China obviously. Elsewhere ...?
An all pervasive and deceptive media. Computer networks. Mass data. Security. Penetration and subversion. Worms. Bruner might even have invented the term. A would be government grown and certified genius on the run, turning their own tools against them.
Beautifully written and instantly highly engaging. Packed full of important insights and questions.

4 people found this helpful

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Mook Dubious

One of Brunner's best!!!!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 18, 2018

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I have LOVED this book for at LEAST 20 years. Maybe longer. In fact, I think it's maybe 30 years. And, if you're not too picky about how it comes off a little "out of date" in the terms it uses, the book will not only seem relevant to present days but will seem eerily prescient. Of special note is his use of an orbital term to describe a metaphor about slowing down to speed up. The phrase "See you later, accelerator." will be forever etched in my mind.

P.S. It's pretty cheap on Kindle as well

7 people found this helpful

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Gene Stewart

Neglected Classic

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 2, 2014

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One of the necessary science-fiction novels for everyone to read. John Brunner used Alvin Toffler's book Future Shock as a jumping off point for this astounding look at the future we are currently becoming entangled in. He understood that digital identities could be switched even in a nano second, and, when the hero of this book finds it necessary to hide from an all pervasive, no privacy society, he begins cascading identities and moving through a world that is vividly imagined and persuasively presented. Nonstop action, jaw-dropping insights, and brilliant extrapolation make this book necessary. Considerate something of a primer on how to survive the very world where in now. To be further amazed, look when he wrote it.

5 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

G.C.

Proto-cyberpunk classic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 4, 2017

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I had this book on my list of to read materials as it was a proto-cyberpunk novel, and finally got past my inertia when technology journalist John Markoff recommended it.

Brunner was a British science fiction writer who did his best work in the 1960s and early 1970s in this book he reflects on a connected world not too far away from the one that we live in. Despite Brunner’s roots he manages to speak with a confident American voice in his writing; something that I don’t think is a bad thing, but caused friction with his contemporaries.

The main protagonist is a hacker who has used his skills to conjure new identities and ends up starting a revolution through the creation of computer viruses and worms. Brunner is credited with introducing the concept of the modern computer worm.

His work reflects a different society to our own where our identities can be broken (if you have the skill or the money) and a new one forged – a vision 180 degrees away from what governments, advertisers and social networks want. He is on to something with The Ear – a service that audiences can contact and will be listened to in privacy and without judgement. The secular confessional it represents feels like something the world needs as a counterweight to the cognitive dissonance and connectivity-as-social-value of social networks like Facebook and SnapChat.

3 people found this helpful

MWC62

Outstanding.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 5, 2013

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In terms of predictive, social sci-fi John Brunner is an author without peer. Everything else is in his shadow. This novel is one of the loose 'future shock' trilogy along with 'The Sheep Look Up' and 'Stand on Zanzibar'. Extrapolated fron Alvin Tofflers 'Future Shock' accademic treatise of the late 60's the trilogy is spookily accurate at predicting the world of now, the 2010's. 'Shockwave Rider's' primary focus is on the internet, hackers, viruses and governemt control and manipulation; and whilst the predicted technology and future here is a little different to what we have, it's certainly so close as to make no difference. But it's not predicting technology where Brunner stands out, it's predicting the culture and zeitgeist. Great sci-fi will expand your understanding of the world you live in and teach you something without being preachy or didactic and this book does that. I've read 'Zanzibar' which is in the SF masterworks series, and I'm just about to embark on an oversize large print version of 'Sheep' which is the only version available and what surprises me is that Brunners work is so hard to get hold of and is mostly out of print. This to my mind is a crime and a failing on the part of the publishing industry...perhaps his work is too seditious and too terrible and real for general consumption. Brunners work is REQUIRED READING!!!!!!

6 people found this helpful

Harriet

Future Finger Pointer

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 31, 2016

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Brunner's classic stands tall in the annals of sci-fi and experimental fiction. Alongside Philip K Dick, Brunner's Shockwave Rider ripped open the possible in terms of imagination and future finger pointing. Read it! You won't regret it.

S. McHugh

This is the book that invented the Internet.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 9, 2018

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This is the book that invented the Internet.

Amazon Customer

Excellent book, i was amazed it was written so ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 26, 2015

Verified Purchase

Excellent book, i was amazed it was written so long ago as the story is applicable to the present.

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The Shockwave Rider Mass Market Paperback – October 12, 1984

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