The Squares of the City

Mentions per year

What Hacker News says

• namenumber · May 11, 2019 · Recommends

  …"Philip K Dicks novels turn into movies, John Brunners novels turn into reality". Stand on Zanzibar was a real trip the first time i read it, though in later years my favorite Brunner novel has been Squares of the City. Its not as scifi-ey as Zanzibar, but it is interesting for being built on a famous chess game and for exploring the nature of propaganda and its influence on the body politic. And honestly, deciding…

  on “John Brunner's “Stand on Zanzibar” spookily predicted today” ↗
• a34729t · Oct 4, 2026 · Recommends

  There is even a book mentioned here a number of years ago - a particulae favorite of mine - that features this as a plot point: Squares of the City by John Brunner

  on “Why don't more developers “use the platform”?” ↗
• zem · Apr 19, 2015 · Recommends

  …has written four outstanding classics: "Stand on Zanzibar", " The Shockwave Rider", "The Sheep Look Up" and "The Jagged Orbit", and one that was not quite in that league, but was great niche sf, " The Squares of the City". the rest is all what I term "minor sf" for want of a better term - I hesitate to call them potboilers, because some of them are very well written and entertaining, but they are the sort of book that…

  on “A 1969 New Wave Sci-Fi Novel That Made Correct Predictions” ↗
• zem · May 11, 2019 · Recommends

  …I consider those three, and "the shockwave rider" to be Brunner's four "major" novels. he's also written lots of books that are entertaining enough but nothing really outstanding, and one other, "the squares of the city" that is not on par with the big four but which is inventive and well written enough that I'd recommend it to any fans of his.

  on “John Brunner's “Stand on Zanzibar” spookily predicted today” ↗
• lobster_johnson · Apr 18, 2015 · Mentions

  …his work was not recognized to the extent that it deserved. Without knowing much about Brunner's life, it's possible to infer that he simply lost his passion. On the other hand, between the first (The Squares of the City) and the last (The Jagged Orbit) of the books in his "golden period", he wrote 11 books that nobody talks about. As far as I can tell, his signal-to-noise ratio was higher than contemporary novelists…

  on “A 1969 New Wave Sci-Fi Novel That Made Correct Predictions” ↗