Stand On Zanzibar (John Brunner, 1969)

Years ago, back in my public librarian days, I would walk past this book, one of the thickest in the SF
section and say to myself "someday I will read you". I duly placed it in my Goodreads queue and it percolated its way up the charts until, voila! it was sitting on deck, ready to go!

John Brunner was a prolific writer in the 1950's and early 1960's, cranking out volumes of fairly stock-sounding science fiction and space opera. In 1968 he made a very dramatic transition in both form and content with Stand On Zanzibar. The first in a quartet of dystopias, this novel deals with the cultural impacts of overpopulation in the far future year of 2010. It is written in a non-linear style, with the main plot line (Continuity) weaving among brief portraits of other characters (Tracking With Closeups) and fragments of the cultural world of 2010 (Context and The Happening World). Obviously this book's 2010 bears little resemblance in "past" events, politics and language to our world four years ago, but Brunner is actually not far off the mark as to where we are technologically and it is not unreasonable to think some of these things could come to pass in our own still-unwritten future.

It struck the right tone and the right time. The book would go on to win the Hugo Award in 1969 as well as a few other prestigious awards internationally, assuring its status as a classic. Brunner's health took a turn for the worse in the 1970's, so his output declined, but he continued to explore various dystopias in works such as The Sheep Look Up (pollution), The Jagged Orbit (racial discord) and The Shockwave Rider (computers in control). I would like to check these out in the future!