In the quest of a novel BTI (bio-technical identity) Beyond the ontology of the human person

The intuitions and imagination of human visionaries about the infinite possibilities of scientific research and technology are creatively haunting the quest of our species to expand knowledge in the micro-cosmos and the vast space. Since 19th century French writer Jules Verne (1828-1905) and English writer Mary Shelley (1797-1851) had already traced the path to our days and beyond.They were followed by an infinite series of great intuitionists, who were not mere futurists like H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, John Brunner and many more. Scientific endeavors and achievements transform the qualities of life and foster social institutions in various ways. The paper deals with a prevailing technological phenomenon, the scientific capacity of gene-editing, promoting thus the emergence of a virtual novel identity. The new achievements in sciences encourage the expression of human free-will allowing for physical and other enhancements or alterations, in reference to biological and technological features that may lead to a new bio-techno-identity (let us call it BTI). The paper reflects on the issue of “enhancing” the established concepts for defining a human being and a human person; it also puts forward the possibility of conducting a theoretical and field researchexamining -and evaluating- the issue and the mechanisms of BTI formation,reassessing all traditional qualities and novel characteristics attributed to humans by the applications of Biotechnology.The issue is eventually approached under the standpoints of Ethical Philosophy, Sociology, Biology, Orthodox Theology and Law. The analysis discusses intuitions in sci-fi literature and cinematography in comparison to reality i.e. the multitude of assisted reproduction technologies, embryonic and genetic labs, implants and even cloning in Western Societies.

Interview with John Brunner

This chapter presents the transcript of an interview with John Brunner conducted by Steven L. Goldstein. The interview covered topics such as where Brunner gets his ideas; how he goes about putting his ideas on paper; whether he believes that the future will be as bleak as he made it appear in The Sheep Look Up; whether he follows a set, daily pattern in his work; if he knew that his experimental novels such as Stand on Zanzibar and The Jagged Orbit would turn out the way they did; advice that he can give to aspiring writers; his views on the influence of mainstream writers on science fiction; and how he felt when he won the Hugo Award for Stand on Zanzibar.

Parallel Worlds

This introductory chapter discusses the metaphor of parallel worlds as it relates to the work of John Brunner. Brunner once observed that while we all inhabit the same world, we live in and among parallel worlds. He believed that a good science-fiction writer should cultivate awareness of parallel forms of experience and open up vistas onto the future that make readers more mindful of them. In keeping with this view, he developed plots with an eye toward the possible interplay of parallel worlds, imagining zones of contact as native to human experience as the tense friendship of the WASP and “Afram” roomies Donald Hogan and Norman House in Stand on Zanzibar (1968), and as foreign to it as the alternate ecology and symbiotic biotechnologies of The Crucible of Time (1983). Throughout his career, he made a practice of conducting idiosyncratic “thought experiments” in his fiction. These ranged from mirroring the moves of a famous 1892 Steinitz-Chigorin chess game in the plot of The Squares of the City (1965) to exploring the ethical quandaries of artificial intelligence through the grafted consciousness of a sentient spaceship in A Maze of Stars (1991). Time and again, Brunner proved himself an idea merchant of the first and best order. His narrative ventures often brought together parallel genres just as dynamically as parallel worlds, and he enjoyed a lasting reputation for handling even conventional storylines and concepts with an alluring difference that made them distinct—and distinctly his.

Brunner’s Legacy

This chapter focuses on the legacy of John Brunner. A wave of memorials followed in the wake of his sudden death. His novel Stand on Zanzibar was classed as his greatest achievement and, along with The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Rider, were portrayed as the foundation of his reputation. However, speculation about when and why his career faltered was rife. Attention was also focused on his complex personality, relegating important aspects of his literary legacy to the background. Perhaps this outcome was inevitable, given Brunner's lack of commercial success and reputation as a crusty defeatist toward the end of his career.

Raising the Noise Level, 1951–66

This chapter details the early life of John Brunner. Brunner had first meaningful encounter with science fiction (SF) when grandfather's rare 1898 Heinemann edition of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (1898) ended up misshelved in his playroom. At six and a half years old, Brunner read it, adorned its endpapers with Martian fighting-machines, and that was that. By nine, Brunner was a full-fledged SF addict. During his final term at Cheltenham College in the fall of 1951, Brunner's first printed story appeared alongside fiction by A. Bertram Chandler, Kenneth Bulmer, and Manly Banister in Walt Willis' celebrated fanzine Slant. Though only a page long, “The Watchers” (1951) leaves little doubt that the seventeen-year-old Brunner began his career as a devoted idealist. In April 1966, Brunner became the first recipient of the British Science Fiction Association's Fantasy Award.

At the Wrong End of Time, 1976–95

This chapter details events in the life of John Brunner from 1976 to 1995. At the height of his career, Brunner retreated from the science fiction (SF) world partly because of his health. Not long after finishing The Shockwave Rider, he began to have excruciating headaches due to acute hypertension. He started taking a drug known in the UK as Aldomet, from which he suffered serious side effects, including the loss of his creativity. Brunner also experienced a mid-career crisis. On the one hand, he felt ambivalent about the direction of the field, especially as the market swung back toward space opera, and Hollywood followed suit. On the other hand, with many of his original ambitions as a SF author now realized, he felt uncertain about his own goals. It was not until 1981 that Brunner began working on his next major SF project, The Crucible of Time (1983). On August 25, 1995, a month shy of his sixty-first birthday, Brunner died of a massive stroke at the Intersection WorldCon in Glasgow.

Przyszłość nauki, przyszłość uniwersytetu. Fantastycznonaukowe prognozy zaniku wiedzy naukowej

The predictions of science fiction play an important part in the cultural landscape of contemporary western culture, being integral to the popular culture (novels, movies, TV series, graphic novels). Science fiction narratives predict the future of society, technology, culture but also – the science itself and a university as a scientific institution. The aim of this work is to shed light on the depiction of the future of science, knowledge, and university in the science fiction works, predicting the ineluctable societal collapse. The essay focuses on the use of the scientific discourse and scientific knowledge in the chosen science fiction narratives by Stanisław Lem, Walter M. Miller jr., John Brunner, and Paolo Bacigalupi.

John Brunner

Under his own name and numerous pseudonyms, John Brunner (1934–1995) was one of the most prolific and influential science fiction authors of the late twentieth century. During his exemplary career, the British author wrote with a stamina matched by only a few other great science fiction writers and with a literary quality of even fewer, importing modernist techniques into his novels and stories and probing every major theme of his generation: robotics, racism, drugs, space exploration, technological warfare, and ecology. This book, an intensive review of Brunner's life and works, demonstrates how Brunner's much-neglected early fiction laid the foundation for his classic Stand on Zanzibar and other major works such as The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Rider. Making extensive use of Brunner's letters, columns, speeches, and interviews published in fanzines, the book approaches Brunner in the context of markets and trends that affected many writers of the time, including his uneasy association with the “New Wave” of science fiction in the 1960s and 1970s. This book shows how Brunner's attempts to cross-fertilize the American pulp tradition with British scientific romance complicated the distinctions between genre and mainstream fiction, and between hard and soft science fiction, and helped carve out space for emerging modes such as cyberpunk, slipstream, and biopunk.