John Brunner

Partial bibliography :

The four novels above, written in the late 1960s, explore near futures in which society and the world are worsening in different ways. Roughly, StandOnZanzibar? focuses on overpopulation, TheSheepLookUp? on pollution, TheShockwaveRider on "future shock", and TheJaggedOrbit? on fear of strangers (as manifested in social customs and the widespread adoption on personal weapons). Each is an "if this goes on" extrapolation, and some of them are disturbing.

TheShockwaveRider introduces the notion of computer worms (was "viruses", but strictly they are worms -- they autonomously move from host to host, rather than attaching their code to other programs) and has some interesting passages on SlowDownToSpeedUp.

TheShockwaveRider inspired some of the first theoretical work on worm programs at Xerox PARC in the early 1980s; unfortunately it also inspired Robert T. Morris to write his Internet worm program.

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