<\/p>\n
\nBecause I’m easily influenced, when I saw James Nicoll’s review<\/a> of this, I went digging through my shelves of Yellow(ing) DAW paperbacks to see if I had it. Which indeed I did. As I had a two hour long commute the next day, I thought this slim, 176 page could be easily finished during it. Alas, I spent too long doom scrolling first so irritatingly the very last story had to be finished on the way back.\n<\/p>\n \nJohn Brunner is not a writer I’ve read many sort stories of and certainly not any I can remember of the top of my head. From me he’s always been a novelist first and foremost, mainly thanks to his quartet of dystopian novels he wrote in the late sixties to mid-seventies: Stand on Zanzibar<\/cite> (1968), The Jagged Orbit<\/cite> (1969), The Sheep Look Up<\/cite> (1972) and The Shockwave Rider<\/cite> (1975). Each of those tackled a different fashionable doom, from overpopulation and pollution to the threat of computer hackers. Before that, Brunner had been mostly writing decent but unremarable pulp sf, making the same sort of career change as Robert Silverberg did in the US when the New Wave struck.\n<\/p>\n \nIt’s not just that Brunner tackled serious topics in a pessimistic manner, running counter to the strapping can-do attitude of Campbellian science fiction, but that he actually used literary techniques no self respecting Analog<\/cite> writer would wish to be associated with. Stand on Zanzibar<\/cite> especially benefited from Brunner adopting John Dos Passos’ fragmented story telling techniques Passos had developed for his U.S.A.<\/cite> trilogy, dragging science fiction kicking an screaming into the cutting edge of 1930s literature.\n<\/p>\n \nNot that any of this is noticeable from this particular collection, spanning stories published from 1955 to 1972. None of the literary sparkle of those four novels is present here. These are straight forwardly told tales, of a type that any science fiction writer of the period could’ve written. These are all classic O’Henry-esque twist stories, something an Asimov could’ve also written. The only difference perhaps being the faint pessimism most are infused with. It’s instructive to see where these stories were first published, from New Worlds<<\/cite> and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science fction<\/cite> to Analog<\/cite> and Galaxy<\/cite>, running the entire spectrum of sf magazines.\n<\/p>\n \nThis is the sort of science fiction story I grew up on and reading these felt like coming home. If none of them were particularly memorable, at least they were entertaining. If you’re new to Brunner this isn’t the best book to pick up. You’re better off trying one of the Doomsday Quartet novels I mentioned above. From This Day Forward<\/cite> contains the following, as taken from the ISFDB<\/a>:\n<\/p>\n \n [1] \u2022 A “From This Day Foreword”, As It Were \u2022 (1972) \u2022 essay by John Brunner From This Day Forward John Brunner 176 pages published in 1972 Because I’m easily influenced, when I saw James Nicoll’s review of this, I went digging through my shelves of Yellow(ing) DAW paperbacks to see if I had it. Which indeed I did. As I had a two hour long commute the next day, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,728],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fiction","category-short-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/books2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/books2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/books2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/books2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/books2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4594"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/books2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4597,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/books2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4594\/revisions\/4597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/books2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/books2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/books2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFrom This Day Forward
\nJohn Brunner
\n176 pages
\npublished in 1972
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n [2] \u2022 \u2002From This Day Forward (frontispiece) \u2022 interior artwork by Jack Gaughan
\n 7 \u2022 The Biggest Game \u2022 (1956) \u2022 short story by John Brunner
\n 18 \u2022 The Trouble I See \u2022 (1959) \u2022 short story by John Brunner
\n 28 \u2022 An Elixir for the Emperor \u2022 (1964) \u2022 novelette by John Brunner
\n 48 \u2022 Wasted on the Young \u2022 (1965) \u2022 short story by John Brunner
\n 60 \u2022 Even Chance \u2022 (1965) \u2022 short story by John Brunner
\n 72 \u2022 Planetfall \u2022 (1965) \u2022 short story by John Brunner
\n 89 \u2022 Judas \u2022 (1967) \u2022 short story by John Brunner
\n 96 \u2022 The Vitanuls \u2022 (1967) \u2022 short story by John Brunner
\n 115 \u2022 Factsheet Six \u2022 (1968) \u2022 novelette by John Brunner
\n 141 \u2022 Fifth Commandment \u2022 (1970) \u2022 short story by John Brunner
\n 157 \u2022 Fairy Tale \u2022 (1970) \u2022 short story by John Brunner
\n 169 \u2022 The Inception of the Epoch of Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid \u2022 (1971) \u2022 short story by John Brunner
\n 175 \u2022 The Oldest Glass \u2022 (1972) \u2022 poem by John Brunner\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"