John Brunner

John Kilian Houston Brunner (24 September 1934 – 25 August 1995) was a British author of science fiction novels and stories. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, about an overpopulated world, won the 1969 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel and the BSFA Award the same year. The Jagged Orbit won the BSFA Award in 1970. His first novel, Galactic Storm, was written under the pen-name Gill Hunt when he was seventeen. He did not start writing full-time until 1958, some years after his military service.

Brunner had an uneasy relationship with British new wave writers, who often considered him too American in his settings and themes. He attempted to shift to a more mainstream readership in the early 1980s, without success. Before his death, most of his books had fallen out of print. Brunner accused publishers of a conspiracy against him, although he was known to be difficult to deal with. His wife, Marjorie Brunner, had handled his publishing relations before she died.

Brunner's health began to decline in the 1980s and worsened with the death of his wife in 1986. He remarried, to Li Yi Tan, on 27 September 1991. He died of a heart attack in Glasgow on 25 August 1995, while attending the World Science Fiction Convention there.

Brunner's pen names include K. H. Brunner (Kilian Houston Brunner), Gill Hunt, John Loxmith, Trevor Staines, Ellis Quick, Henry Crosstrees Jr., and Keith Woodcott. Brunner was an active member of the organisation Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and wrote the words to "The H-Bomb's Thunder", which was sung on the Aldermaston Marches. He was a linguist, translator, and Guest of Honour at the first European Science Fiction Convention Eurocon-1 in Trieste in 1972. A Plague on Both Your Causes, Hodder & Stoughton (1969). Also published as Backlash, Pyramid T-2107 (1969). Good Men Do Nothing, Hodder & Stoughton (1971), Pyramid T2443 (1971) Honky in the Woodpile, Constable (1971)

Collections No Future in It, Gollancz (1962). Doubleday (1964), Panther (1965), Curtis (1969). Times Without Number, Ace F-161 (1962); revised and expanded Ace (1969) Now Then!, Mayflower-Dell (1965). Also published as Now Then, Avon (1968). No Other Gods But Me, Compact F317 (1966) Out of My Mind, Ballantine (1967); abridged variant, NEL (1968) Not Before Time, NEL (1968) The Traveller in Black, Ace Special (1971); revised and expanded by one story as The Compleat Traveller in Black, Bluejay (1986) From This Day Forward, Doubleday (1972), DAW 72 (1973) Entry to Elsewhen, DAW 26 (1972) Time-Jump, Dell (1973) The Book of John Brunner, DAW 177 (1976) Interstellar Empire, DAW 208 (1976); a collection of a novella and two "Ace Double" halves: The Altar on Asconel, "The Man from the Big Dark" and The Space-Time Juggler (under the title of The Wanton of Argus) Foreign Constellations, Everest House (1980) The Best of John Brunner, Del Rey (1988) Victims of the Nova, Arrow (1989). Complete Zarathustra Refugee Planets series. Omnibus of Polymath, Secret Agent of Terra and The Repairmen of Cyclops The Man Who Was Secrett and Other Stories, Ramble House (2013)

Poetry Life in an Explosive Forming Press (1970) Trip: A Sequence of Poems Through the USA (1971) A Hastily Thrown Together Bit of Zork (1974) Tomorrow May Be Even Worse (1978) A New Settlement of Old Scores (1983)

Nongenre The Crutch of Memory, Barrie & Rockliff (1964). Conventional novel set in Greece. Black Is the Color, Pyramid (1969, republished in 2015). Horror fiction about the "swinging London" underground in the 1960s. The Devil's Work, W. W. Norton & Company (1970). Centres on a modern-day Hellfire Club. The Great Steamboat Race, Ballantine (1983). Historical fiction based on an actual event. The Days of March, Kerosina (1988). Novel about the early days of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Pornography The Incestuous Lovers (1969) (as Henry Crosstrees, Jr.). Original title Malcolm and Sarah. Ball in the Family (1973) (as Ellis Quick)

Translations The Overlords of War (1973). Translated from the French. Original title Les Seigneurs de la Guerre by Gérard Klein.