Story: 3 / 10
Characters: 5
Setting: 6
Prose: 2

Tags: Overpopulation, drugs, Afram, religion, colonialism ( )

Dense. Complex. A uniquely structured novel that envelopes you in the (then) future world of 2010 as imagined by John Brunner. It's not an idealistic or even vaguely positive vision. But it is eerily accurate in some of it's predictions. Which makes the darker aspects of Brunner's past future hit closer to home. In a way this novel has a renewed and different sense of relevance now it's date of prediction has passed. Highly recommended and don't let the setting of a prediction of a future that has now passed put you off, in many ways this has made it more compelling to read in 2016 ( )

Where Brunner really excels is in weaving together a variety of different narratives to paint a vision of a future that is both familiar and nightmare in nature. After thirty years, Brunner's dystopia of the future still has a lot of resonance for readers today. It is wonderful in its multi-faceted presentation of a dystopian vision. Make a beeline for it if you haven't read it before. If you have, read it again because it holds up well over time. ( )

Another book, like "The Sheep Look Up," that proves Brunner is a time traveler. Published in 1968, How else could he know so many things about the future? A president named Obomi, who actually loves his people and wants the best for them, "domestic" computers to help you with your finances, the spread of hate and terrorism, the financial and technical advancement of the Chinese so that they have become our rivals. The only thing that he was ahead of himself with, are The Eugenics Board, The Eugenics Laws and their accompanying police. We know that's coming soon. ( )

Should SF be seen as prescient? Only in hindsight, which makes any "predictions" worthless. Unless the author in question develops a track record of being right (in which case I'd be interested in seeing what they wrote about Bitcoin). Given the millions of SF authors, bashing out billions of pages, it is no surprise that simply due to dumb luck, some of their guesses will come true: in some form. However, since these stories have to relate to readers living in the present if the authors make up stuff that is too "out there", they will lose their readers. So any predictions are generally just linear extrapolations from the present. It is notable that almost nobody predicted the rise of the personal computer or the internet. And those who did (John Brunner's "The Shockwave Rider" from 1975 being probably the closest) did not see it becoming what it is today (the novel in which computer viruses called 'tapeworms' were 'invented'. Remember 'Stuxnet'?). Authors should not be judged on what they got right. Lottery winners are not acclaimed "prescient". Instead they should be read because their stories are well written.

Novelists don't live in a bubble. They respond to things which are going on around them and process them into fiction. Atwood, in particular, rejects the idea that her work is science fiction and sees it as speculative explorations of how real world issues might play out to create dystopias. The Handmaid's Tale was inspired by the Iranian revolution and growing religiosity in US politics, and Oryx and Crake trilogy is an exploration of climate change and social breakdown. The possibility of a pandemic seems to have been on the radar of many people for a while now (with the obvious exception of our dear government, which truly does seem to live under a rock) so it isn't surprising that it has inspired writers - Louise Welsh and Minette Walters have both written excellent and hard hitting novels on post pandemic societies in recent years.

What does “Stand on Zanzibar” bring to the table? Well, it's worrying to see that the 1967 prediction Brunner used was a population of 7 billion in 2010, essentially spot on (6.9 billion in fact; I know, I looked it up…). “Stand on Zanzibar” always deserves a nod for what it got right (coming to think of it, so does "The Sheep Look Up”, and “The Jagged Orbit”).

I think it was Ursula Le Guin who said that there was no foresight in SF, only lies. Well, if the past and the present are anything to go by, the future is full of them.

Book Review SF = Speculative Fiction ( )