The Stardroppers

The Stardroppers is a science fiction novel by British writer John Brunner. It was originally published at novella-length in 1962 as Listen, the Stars, in Analog and then as part of an Ace Double in 1963; in 1972 the revised, novel-length form was published by DAW Books.

The Stardroppers
Cover of first edition (paperback)
AuthorJohn Brunner
Cover artistJack Gaughan
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
GenreScience fiction
PublisherDAW Books
Publication date
1972
Media typePrint (Paperback)

Plot introduction

The Stardroppers is about an undercover United Nations agent investigating a new fad, "stardropping", whereby physics-violating equipment is used to listen to sounds believed to be alien or paranormal signals. Superficially a harmless but expensive hobby, stardropping reigns in a fanaticism resembling addiction, where some users assemble in semi-social communes and spend all of their money on increasingly improved equipment. The fad gains an additional aspect of risk when users begin disappearing into thin air, in cases of increasing profile and witnessing.

Reception

Lester del Rey characterized the novel as "a good adventure story [but] not of one Brunner's stronger literary efforts."[1]

gollark: I don't know if the people designing electoral systems actually did think of voting systems which are popular now and discard them, but it's not *that* much of a reason to not adopt new ones.
gollark: There are plenty of things in, say, maths, which could have been thought up ages ago, and seem stupidly obvious now, but weren't. Such as modern place value notation.
gollark: Obvious things now may just not have been then.
gollark: Hindsight bias exists.
gollark: As I said, a REALLY bad one would be allocating the vote randomly. This satisfies almost nobody, which makes it a "good compromise" by your definition, but it does that because it has tons of flaws.

References
  1. "Reading Room", If, April 1973, p.167


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