One journey. Six stories. Mind-blowing fantasy from the Hugo Award winner, “one of the most important science fiction authors” (SF Site).
In The Compleat Traveller in Black, six linked tales, comprising one of Brunner’s rare ventures into fantasy, relate the legend of a man with many names, who travels the world with a staff made of light and performs his eternal duty by bringing order to a world filled with chaos. What he dispenses is always asked for but not always welcomed by the recipients. And the world becomes, step by slow step, a better place for those who remain.
For each generation, there is a writer meant to bend the rules of what we know. Hugo Award winner (Best Novel, Stand on Zanzibar) and British science fiction master John Brunner remains one of the most influential and respected authors of all time, and now many of his classic works are being reintroduced. For readers familiar with his vision, this is a chance to reexamine his thoughtful worlds and words, while for new readers, Brunner’s work proves itself the very definition of timeless.
John Brunner started his career as a productive writer of Ace Double Science Fiction novels, sometimes writing both sides of the same double. He produced a wide variety of entertaining and well-conceived science fiction adventures before testing his ambitions with more and more complex and stylistically sophisticated novels. Among his triumphs are Stand on Zanzibar (Hugo winner for Best Novel), The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, The Shockwave Rider, and A Maze of Stars. Although he wrote relatively little fantasy, he was widely acclaimed for a series of short stories collected as The Compleat Traveller in Black. Brunner also wrote mysteries, thrillers, and several well-regarded historical novels.