John Brunner

There are seven billion-plus humans crowding the surface of 21st-century Earth. It is an age of intelligent computers, mass-market psychedelic drugs, politics conducted by assassination, and scientists who burn incense to appease volcanoes... all the hysteria of a dangerously overcrowded world, portrayed in a dazzlingly inventive style. Moving, sensory, impressionistic, and as jagged as the times it portrays, Stand On...

In a world drowning in data and information and choking on novelty and innovation, Nickie Haflinger—a most dangerous fugitive who doesn't even appear to exist—provides a window onto a global society falling apart in all directions, with madness run amok and personal freedom surrendered to computers and bureaucrats. Caught and about to be re-programmed, can he escape once again, defy...