Crisis!

Crisis! is a novel published in 1986 by the American science-fiction writer James Gunn, founder of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas. The book consists of a "Prelude: The Man in the Cage" and six independent yet interconnected "episodes." The protagonist, Bill Johnson, is born into a future world and sent back to contemporary society with the task of helping people recognize and defuse crises that are building toward eruption. He has neither superhuman powers nor omniscient genius; he relies only on an instinctive sense of the future and occasional visionary glimpses. He intervenes successively in a superpower nuclear confrontation on the brink of eruption, a family conflict verging on collapse as parents fight over a child, and a crisis in which terrorists hijack a plane, take hostages, and vanish into a desolate region. He does not personally solve every problem but acts as a catalyst, making those involved realize the necessity of cooperation and thus find their own way out. Gunn has said he deliberately adopted a calm, almost camera-like objective narrative style and placed a dramatic lead-in before each episode, seeking a structure that feels both like a serialized novel and a television series. The six chapters are titled in a uniform "noun + of phrase" format, a design largely preserved in this Chinese translation. (Compiled from the 1986 TOR English edition and the 1999 Hebei Science and Technology Press Chinese translation.)