Shockwave Rider by John Brunner
The Shockwave Rider – John Brunner
It’s an older text, but I purchased a fresh-pressed digital copy, maybe a year or two back.
Shockwave Rider, previously.
“It bore a message in firm clear handwriting, unusual now that most literate kids were taught to type at seven.”
Excerpt From: Brunner, John. “The Shockwave Rider.”
Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos, mentioned academically, in passing, with a nod towards Shockwave Rider – not sure of the connection. There was a stylistic — or other — connection.
Brief reverie, the first time I encountered The Shockwave Rider, early in pursuing a degree, I was floored, as there was an excited expectancy about the way the novel was stylized, in addition to the content. Easily a seminal work that showed its position as a precursor to the then-current crop of New Wave writers. Clearly paved the way for NeuroMantics.
For a classic text to be worth the effort, time, and energy to re-read? There has to be something special.
Maybe two or three years ago, I bought a digital copy Shockwave Rider. It was digitally dog-eared at maybe a quarter of the way in, so I opted to just start over. Unique in its exposition, with a shifting frame of reference, it holds up well, almost too well given current conditions in our “Modern World.”
I had two books in my original library by the same author, The Shockwave Rider and Stand on Zanzibar. Pretty sure both those books made to San Antonio, but must’ve been recycled into a Half Price Books. Or I have a too unorganized library.
“It’s rather as though this paradox has proved true: that while nobody knows what’s going on around here, everybody knows what’s going on around here.” Page 18.
A world, remarkably prescient for 1975, about world where data is on tap — all the time. Like these days.
Shockwave Rider
The Shockwave Rider – John Brunner
The Shockwave Rider
Manhattan Transfer: A Novel
One Man’s Initiation (via Gutenberg.org)
Books