Conference noted::sf

315.0. "Interstellar Empire" by JEREMY::REDFORD (John Redford) Thu Mar 20 1986 10:02

By John Brunner.  This is the first book I've seen from Brunner in 
quite a while, and it's all reprints from mid-sixties (and earlier) stories.
There's a reason why we haven't seen them before; they're terrible.
They are all set in a future galactic empire, an empire that 
was built on alien spaceships that no one understood.  Now it has
decayed into barbarism, but the ships still work.  The stories are 
pretty standard pulp stuff, not at all what we had come to expect from 
Brunner in the seventies.  "Brunner Fact & Fiction Ltd." must have 
mined out the main lode and is now re-working the tailings.  He even 
reprints a letter he sent to a fanzine twenty years ago.  The letter 
supposedly describes the setting of this empire, but is so full of 
references to previous letters in the fanzine that it is nearly 
incomprehensible.  Does anyone know if Brunner has severe writer's block?
I don't know why he would reprint this juvenilia unless he's hard up 
for rent.
/jlr