I'd much rather post under my real name (Laurence Finston) and I asked how to change this but I never got an answer and I haven't bothered to pursue this further. I've never read "Piers Plowman".

I thought thread drift was part of the "folk process", but I'm happy to move, if you prefer.

John Brunner wrote three long, ambitious novels in a kind of "collage" style, Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up and "The Jagged Orbit". They were influenced by the Club of Rome report warning of the effects of overpopulation. They may seem a bit dated now, but still worth reading.

The Stone that Never Came Down was probably one of the first adult books I read. I discovered it by chance at the Evanston Public Library and was intrigued by the title. It is one of his good ones, as is The Shockwave Rider, which I bought and read several times.

J.G. Ballard wrote a very good short story about a dead giant who washes up on a beach and what happens to the corpse and another one about a couple of people who find a hidden room in a society where people don't have much space. People sometimes use the term "Ballardesque" to describe situations like ones in his stories.