Just Finished Reading: The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner

21^st Century America - a hugely competitive, technologically obsessed nation. The price for a constantly accelerating pace of change is a severe and growing social disconnect, a feeling that everything is beyond control, it is a society living with Future Shock. In a effort to keep their countries competitive edge, the US government institute a series of institutions designed to create the managers and leaders of the future who can see patterns where others see chaos and who can successfully act on information others are barely aware of. Teenage misfit Nickie Haflinger is one such person, or at least potentially one, when he is inducted into the elite Tarnover Academy. It’s not long before he realises though that not all is as advertised. As he continues to out-think his supposed tutors he discovers the real purpose behind the government programmes – control and manipulation of the entire population for the benefit of the few chosen leaders. Escaping back into society Nickie becomes a chameleon, blending into multiple personalities always two steps ahead of his pursuers. Until that is he discovers another version of himself and a strange town called Precipice where he decides to change everything.

This is, in many ways, a rather odd SF Classic. Despite being based in the early to mid 21^st century it is clearly a product of its time. First published in 1975 it predates the computer age and therefore fails to predict most of the day-to-day ‘miracles’ we take for granted. Yet at the same time the author manages to predict some of the more commonplace headlines of today that would surely have astounded anyone picked up from that time and plonked down in front of a widescreen TV anywhere in the ‘developed’ world. The book had an almost quaint nostalgic feel to it but at the same time highlighted just how much the world has changed in the last 35 odd years when compared with the ‘future’ envisioned between its pages. It was almost at times like watching several versions of a movie superimposed over to top of each other – a sort of landscape with things how they where, things how they are and things how it was imagined they would be all mixed in together. This book is, I think, above all else a very political book. It is a work deeply critical of modern technological society and what it does to the people – who are essentially still the same apes that trooped across the African Savannah millennia ago – forced to cope with change upon change without any opportunity to influence or effect what is being asked of them. Holding this book up to the 21^st century as is – rather than the one imagined – shows how much has changed technologically and yet how little has changed in human nature. The majority of people do seem to be able to cope with the pace of change experienced today (which is honestly far higher than that portrayed in this book – rather unsurprisingly) but how long this human adaptability can continue to absorb the continual shocks is anyone’s guess.

I did struggle a bit with this because of the way it was written – but that might just be a purely personal failing. I think it quite clearly deserves to be called a Classic but it does (IMO) require some more effort than I’ve been finding with other books in this genre lately.