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Review

From This Day Forward

John Brunner

1972

Doubleday






Review by Peter Young on Live Journal (September 2008).


Twelve short stories and a poem, diverse in theme and very varied in the approach Brunner took with each, from the flippant jests to the more hard-to-figure, clearly all depending on the target audience. It's a patchy collection but with a few stylistic highlights; of the best one is a Dangerous Vision (the slightly predictable robot story 'Judas'), two others are about Asia – the not completely successful alien encounter tale 'Even Chance' set in Burma and the far better Hindu story 'The Vitanuls' – though the most memorable by a long way is the Roman drama 'An Elixir for the Emperor', a very tidy and convincingly-told novelette indeed. Brunner could embed his stories in particular environments very well, though it's quite clear from this collection that just how well depended on how much his heart was in it.