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Children of the Thunder Kindle Edition
In Children of the Thunder, Brunner creates another near-contemporary vision of a world gone awry and proposes a peculiarly disturbing and frightening solution. Starting separately, a small number of very smart and uniquely talented children, none more than fourteen years old, create lucrative designer drugs, kill a Marine commando in unarmed combat, run a sex-ring of chilling depravity. None of them are even punished for their crimes. Combine powers of mental control and irresistible suggestion with creative and completely amoral intelligence and you have the recipe for a super-race of world-savers—or for the subjugation of all humanity to a new form of collective evil.
“One of the most important science fiction authors. Brunner held a mirror up to reflect our foibles because he wanted to save us from ourselves.” —SF Site
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherOpen Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
- Publication dateApril 1, 2014
- File size3315 KB
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Product details
- ASIN : B00J5X5OPE
- Publisher : Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy (April 1, 2014)
- Publication date : April 1, 2014
- Language : English
- File size : 3315 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 592 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #300,819 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
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There were some plot developments this time that seemed a little obvious, but while I admit my memory sucks, I’m still pretty sure that’s just because I’ve read it before.
The characters in this book are quite good. They aren’t always likable. They stumble around trying to figure out what’s going on and often get it wrong. It is the case that the young women in this group of children lose some of their knack for influence during their periods. I thought that was actually a rather brilliant move on evolution’s part–it strongly encourages reproduction by allowing them to retain their abilities for nine months simply by having babies. Meanwhile, the children have to figure out how ‘best’ to manage their abilities, and each one is very different from the others. Some had simply stayed with their families; some ran criminal rackets; and almost all of them were in control of their ‘parents’. Only David is willing to take on the task of hunting down and bringing in his siblings, planning to use them to ‘save’ the world from itself. Another thing I like about these kids is that most if not all of them come across as narcissistic sociopaths–they have to watch the people around them in order to learn proper emotional responses.
Just to make things a little crazier for Peter, his own daughter Ellen, who has never met him, is forced on him due to the death of her mother. He has no interest in being a parent, but the two of them grow together and help each other in many ways.
On an almost irrelevant note, Peter at some point learns that there’s a crisis because an approved pesticide is now killing all the bees. I guess Brunner had a touch of prescience there.
I liked this book almost as much as I did as a child, and would love to see more of this world.
Two decades later I came across the same title, this time in a secondhand book store. Having cultivated an awareness and appreciation for speculative fiction since then, it was a must-read and I purchased it immediately. Children of the Thunder is imaginative with a bold writing style used to treat Brunner’s two favorite topics head on: technology, the bedrock of all emerging societies of the future; and white supremacy, or more specifically, it's refinement and propagation. The primary difference here is that this story relates the exploits of irreverent white youth on their trek into adolescence and onto young adulthood; These hellspawn collect their due, usually at the cost of non-white victims via threat of violence or cunning.
Other than its notoriety, this book is significant for its prophesy: 1 The burgeoning biotech firms of the future (Already Here); 2 The DIY activity of a young rebellious technocratic community usually descendant from the wealthy aristocratic elite class; 3 the proliferation of highly addictive designer drugs to secure hefty profits; and 4, angry mobs of usually non-white youths easily duped into protesting on behalf of big industry pharmaceutical drug companies against their own best interests.
One of the most telling quotes in the book was the following:
...he may hate being nice to others, but recognize it as a cost he has to incur if he is the more effectively to do them in later, and he may very accurately calculate the optimal concessions he must make to niceness for the sake of nastiness...
All of which gives special urgency to the uber-kinder who'll have to live in that mess. They're sick of it, quite literally, and ready to take the reins. Although their means can be as brutal as the current regime's, I say give it to them - they can't do any worse.
-- wiredweird
The story is original and the setting for this dismal UK "future" is quite disturbing. Obviously not everyone's cup of tea but I'm finding it a bloody good read!