This omnibus volume contains three unrelated science fiction novels by Hugo winner John Brunner:

Children of the Thunder: A journalist and a social scientist get together to investigate the existence of a group of exceptionally bright children with powerful mind-control abilities and psychopathically amoral attitudes. The "evil mutant children among us" trope is an old and somewhat tired one, and while some of what Brunner does with it is interesting, it's a decidedly flawed effort. The story is a little too slight to really be worth 280 pages, for one thing, and even if you're willing to buy the basic kids-with-superpowers premise, a lot of the specifics of the plot seem vaguely ridiculous. Still, despite a few odd quirks -- including an unfortunate attempt at some made-up swear words -- Brunner's writing is quite readable. And his world-building is interesting. This was originally published in 1988, and its then-near-future setting reflects pretty much every issue that a late-80s Englishman would have found worrying: AIDS, holes in the ozone, racial tensions, Thatcherism, etc., etc., etc. Toward the end, he may be laying on the doomsday scenarios a little thick, but for the most part it feels like a perfectly plausible alternative to the world we actually got. Indeed, in a few disturbing respects, it's not all that different from the world we got. And ultimately I think it ends on a rather effective note, even if you do have to deal with a plot twist that's equal parts obvious and silly to get there.

The Tides of Time: Gene and Stacy, having returned from a journey, uh, somewhere and on the run from, well, someone, come to a small Greek island, where they enter a cave and sleep. Then, in each subsequent chapter, we see them living lives that are different from one another yet all essentially the same, each set at a time further back in the past. Constantly, they are visited by travelers from beyond the island, and occasionally there are hints that things, unsurprisingly, are not what they seem. And at the end of each chapter comes a story-within-a-story about people who found worlds that were just what they were looking for only to eventually become disillusioned with them. What does it all mean? That is a damned good question, and the answer, when it comes, is rich in metaphor, but short on logical sense. But despite that, and despite the repetitive nature of the story, which really seems like it should get old quickly, the novel does seem to work. It's odd -- very odd -- but also oddly compelling. I have no idea what to make of it in the end, but it certainly didn't bore me.

The Crucible of Time: The centuries-long, multi-generational story of an alien planet and its scientific and technological progress -- progress it badly needs, since it's headed slowly but surely for cosmic destruction, with a lot of smaller disasters to tide it over along the way. The idea of a species (ours or someone else's) desperately needing to develop a space program in order to avoid extinction is a venerable SF trope, and the "Hey, let's watch an alien civilization make the scientific breakthroughs we've already discovered" plot is also fairly familiar. (Although at least neither is remotely as much of a cliche as evil mutant children.) Brunner does a pretty good job with it, though, largely by avoiding the usual flaws found in these kinds of stories. For one thing, he doesn't go the implausible route of imagining some single alien genius who invents everything from the telescope to the interplanetary rocket, instead portraying science as the slow and faltering process it really is. And while this book does have the usual superstition vs. rationality theme, it's a bit more nuanced and less relentlessly heavy-handed with it than some other examples I've seen. And, most importantly, his aliens aren't just humans in ill-fitting alien costumes. They do have fairly humanlike thought processes and motivations, certainly enough to make them easily comprehensible, and some of their scientific discoveries parallel our own, mostly in ways that make sense, since the laws of physics are the same for all of us. But Brunner's put some real effort into giving them consistently alien biology, technology, and culture. He also manages to remember, as far too many works of science fiction fail to, that planets are big, and thus can be expected to be home to many different climates and cultures. Some of the science, or at least some of the biology, does seem a bit iffy to me, but he captures the spirit of scientific discovery pretty well. The end result of all this Doing It Right isn't exactly a wow-inducing page-turner or anything, but it is a solid, well-done example of the kind of thing it is. ( )