Minireview: The Sheep Look Up, by John Brunner
John Brunner was never exactly known for his shiny happy stories, most of his best-known books are quite grim affairs and often feature warnings of future doom. In the case of Stand on Zanzibar it was overpopulation (among other things), in The Sheep Look Up it’s ecological collapse. While a common theme nowadays, it was more of a prophetic warning when this book was written in 1972.
Though it does feature his trademark pitch-black humor in places, it’s a fairly grim book. The Earth’s ecosystem has broken down under strain from pollution, most animal species have died off, and things are spiraling out of control. The population routinely uses breathing masks to filter out the pollution (breathing unfiltered air is extremely unhealthy), drinking tap water is a sure way to catch any of a dozen dangerous diseases, and getting anything even remotely healthy to eat is becoming difficult. Even the rich are slowly feeling the strain, while the poor have been dying off from the poisons for a long while.
In this eco-disaster dystopia some voices of sanity have been heard now and then – one Austin Train tried to raise awareness of the impending disaster when he was younger, then watched as his call to arms was taken up by a new generation and slowly twisted. When the story begins, Train has disappeared underground and scores of “Trainites” practice near-terrorism, sometimes with limited understanding of why they are doing what they do. Austin himself has more or less given up.
It’s a book with an ensemble cast, and told in Brunner’s trademark style of stacatto switches in viewpoints. There is no protagonist as such and the story is somewhat confusing in the beginning – but as usual with Brunner, out of the seeming chaos emerges a very coherent story.
It’s not a shiny happy book, quite the opposite in fact. But it is very topical today and a reminder of where we don’t want to go. Even though some eco-fanatics can take things a bit too far nowadays, it’s good to keep in mind that their base cause is a good one. This book is a warning, and if anything more relevant now than when it was originally written.
Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:01 Posted in Books
Tags dystopia, ecology, john brunner
