The Sheep Look Up

Rating:
Summary: Cautionary Tales for Today, Written Yesterday
Review: The world that Brunner wrote about in this and its two companion volumes (Stand On Zanzibar and The Shockwave Rider) may not be pretty, but it's here. Check out the AMA stats about Lupus. The cyberpunk guys only wish that they could write like this, and frankly, so do I. Austin Train has been stuck in my head since I first encountered him, like Donald Hogan Mk II and Nicky Halflinger. I just don't understand why all three of these books are out of print. Maybe there are too many Star Trek/Star Wars novelizations on the bookshelves instead of real writing.

Rating:
Summary: same idea over and over again
Review: Though John Brunner displays his considerable ability with prose, and through his talents leaves the reader with a sense of the dangers to come from environmental ambivalence, that is all this novel does. Brunner spends four hundred pages depicting a really nasty, pessimistic view of the future. He does so by jumping around in the lives of close to a dozen characters. Yet despite having a variety of individuals to work with, Brunner never develops them beyond what is necessary to express his strong environmental views. These carbon characters are almost constantly involved in little else than either discussions or situations that have do with the highly screwed up world of the future. So much so that the reader feels very little emotional attachment to the characters.
In addition, I believe that Brunner let a little to much of his Marxist thinking seep in to this novel. His book seems to take the view that the world is ruled by a business/government elite, and that these are largely to blame for environmental problems. I think most people are starting to realize that you can't blame any one single group of people for environmental problems. It is a much larger social issue, and though it may be easier and simpler to think that rising up and overthrowing one particular group will be a cure, I don't think it is a effective one.
Also I really do not like the way that Brunner portrays industrial society. Brunner spends the entire novel finding more and more creative environmental disasters. He starts out with the simple stuff like acid rain and air poluution, but before you know he is on to anti-biotic resistant bacteria, earthquakes caused by chemical waste dumping, and a variety of diseases even a medical doctor would regard as obscure. All of these he blames upon industrialized society. But, he never even attempts to discuss the positive aspects of industrialization, nor the reasons why civilization adopted it in the first place, to improve the standard of living.
John Brunner certainly can write. The images he creates in his novel of a dying planet are certainly a way to alert people of a future that is not horribly unrealistic. However, it would have been nice if Brunner had added more depth to his novel.

Rating:
Summary: Frighteningly relevant 30 years later
Review: To me, this book is simply too great to be classfied within any genre (especially sci-fiction). It will always remain, simply a literary masterpiece, even as the bad taste of truth remains with me.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoy progress?
Review: To me, this book is simply too great to be classfied within any genre (especially sci-fiction). It will always remain, simply a literary masterpiece, even as the bad taste of truth remains with me.