The Sheep Look Up

John Brunner was a science fiction writer who, unfortunately, is pretty much forgotten by today's readers. Most active in the 1960's and 1970's, he died, appropriately enough, during the 53rd World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, Scotland (1995).

This publisher is coming out with a limited-edition hardcover and a trade paperback edition of one of his scariest books, The Sheep Look Up. TSLU is one of Brunner's dystopian novels. Other titles in this vein were Stand on Zanzibar, The Shockwave Rider, The Jagged Orbit, and, to a lesser extent, The Squares of the City.

TSLU takes place in a heavily stressed world. It's our world, down a slightly different path. While some of what Brunner wrote about in terms of pollution, population, etc., have not come to pass, we are living with many equivalent horrors. One scene in the book, involving a defective microwave oven, has haunted me ever since I read it. I applaud the publisher for taking the chance on bringing the book out again and hope that it's a success.

SOZ is interesting from both the story and the way it is written. For the time when it first came out, it was a very big book. For science fiction, it was fairly experimental in format. Despite the dystopian theme, the size, and the format, it won the Hugo Award in 1968. Recently the SF Masterworks Series (easier to find in the UK than here, but worth the effort) reissued the book. If you've never read it, try it.

When you do, let me know **how** you read it. Why do I ask that? Well, it seems to me that SOZ is actually one novel, a series of essays, and a series of short stories or profiles. So you can read the book from end-to-end, experiencing a bit of the novel, an essay, a stories, etc., all the way through the book. Or, you can read the novel in it's entirety, read the short stories, read the essays. I've done it both ways.

The story takes place in the future, but that future is a lot closer "now" than when the book was first written. Recently I heard the opinion expressed that the future of SOZ is better than where we are in this, our "real", future. What do you think?

The Shockwave Rider could be seen as a proto-cyberpunk story. Many elements of the story have been copied by subsequent authors. Heck, many of the elements have been used by programmers! The title comes from Alvin Toeffler's Future Shock. As with TSLU, Brunner missed on some things and hit square on the head of others.

From what I've read, however, the version of the story we have access to (and Del Rey claims to have it in print in the US) is somewhat butchered. Apparently things were changed, characters combined, etc. Perhaps someday we'll see a restored edition. Still worth searching for!

I must confess to not having read The Jagged Orbit. I do have a copy, though, worn but in good condition. It's on the pile to be read.

The Squares of the City is interesting if for no other reason than the fact that the story is a chess game.

Brunner produced many (many!) other works besides these. These are the titles that have stuck with me over the years. While summer might be the time for "beach blanket books", you'll find it worth your while to spend some time with these as well.

I added a comment to this posting on June 26, 2003...

Try this link for a computer science teacher's perspective on some of Brunner's works. Unfortunately, since it is from a computer user's perspective, he skips over SotC and TSLU, but does talk about TSR and SOZ (have you got all those down yet?).

There are also a few good links provided, including rules for the game "Fencing" (from TSR, no, not the ex-gaming company, the book!)

On September 9, 2003, Steve Hart added the following comments...

For an interesting comparison with Stand On Zanzibar, and an insight into what John Brunner was trying to achieve, go find a copy of the U.S.A. trilogy, written during the first half of the Depression by John Dos Passos. The three books—The 42nd Parallel, 1919 and The Big Money—are a combination of montage and tapestry, blending fictional characters with straight documentary material, stream-of-consciousness monologues, biographical sketches of figures like Henry Ford, and social comedy, attempting nothing less than to give a top-to-bottom picture of American life. The books are a deliberate jumble: maybe the first attempt in literary fiction to present the crazy quilt of American life as it was starting to go into media overdrive.

Dos Passos came to mind when I first read Stand On Zanzibar, and I gather Brunner used the same method in The Sheep Look Up. Always liked Brunner—he's a classic case of a big talent swallowed whole by a small category.