The Sheep Look Up

Once again Brunner proves himself the single most prescient of all Sci-Fi writers. The event at the very end of this book has, quite literally, just taken place in today's world in 2021 (however, no spoilers, so you'll have to read it!) It's not only world events that Brunner so eerily predicts; it's the fundamental way the world is presented to us. Without spoilers; this book is a bit hard to read (by design) because it is presented with 'social media' (but look at the original publication date), advertising, misinformation, etc. that continually distracts not only the characters (and the entire world) in the novel, but also we, the readers of The Sheep Look Up. One of the most powerful and creative works of literature, regardless of genre, that I've ever read.

I can't add much to the other reviews for this book other than to say that this really should be compulsory reading for high school and college students. It's eerily scary and brilliantly written in Brunner's latter-day chop-and-switch style; at first, it's almost impossible to follow, but as one gets further and further into the book, everything starts to hook together in the mind... in a way similar to that which one might experience when trying to assimilate the ideas of a newly-encountered culture. One leaves the book with the feeling that "things really must change" - Brunner certainly makes his point; the book is spare and unsettling, engendering feelings of foreboding and shame... quite unique.

I read this when it first came out and the images stuck in my mind like a recurring nightmare. I just found it in a box of my old books and re-read it. The fearful and depleted America, controlled by corporate interests, led by a callow president and populated by an uninformed and powerless citizenry, described in Brunner's classic is just as dark but much scarier because it is closer to the way it really is. Read it and weep.

Many people nowadays look back on the brief burst of environmental awareness (alarm) and criticism of corporate power which occurred in the 1970's as quaint,naive, slightly ridiculous. One prior reviewer of this work refers to the "hysteria" of the period.What strikes me most strongly about _The Sheep Look Up_, billed as a 'sequel' to his big hit _Stand on Zanzibar_, is not its quaintness but its frightening accuracy. While Brunner guessed wrong on a number of counts -- for example, we haven't *quite* killed all the whales yet! -- there were trends which he read astutely and forecast correctly.In particular he forecast increasing solipsism and isolationism in American politics and cultural life; he predicted a decline in the quality of political life, to the point where the American presidency would be occupied by a semi-literate figurehead whose job is to recite comforting and irrelevant platitudes into a microphone on his way from one glamorous gig to the next. His "Prexy" character seemed like a good fit for Reagan a while back, but the current Bush (the 2nd of that name) is an even closer match.Brunner forecast the dumbing down of media, the intrusion of advertising into the most intimate spaces of daily life. He forecast the sidelining of "healthy lifestyle" products and choices into a yuppie trend (organic food becoming a boutique item) and the demonisation of environmentalists as "terrorists" and criminals. He forecast a degradation of community life, the rise of private security forces, and an increasing gap between (very) rich and (powerless) poor people.He forecast the multiplication of resistant strains of pathogens, though he did not specifically call out the abuse of antibiotics in agriculture as a prime cause. He did not foresee the consequences of synthetic estrogens; and his view of genetic engineering is by and large more positive than it would have been if he had been writing today with the legal shenanigans of Monsanto, Syngenta and their ilk in view (Brunner would have loved the story of Percy Schmeiser -- he might almost have written it himself). He forecast the ubiquitous use of tranquilizers in daily life, but he did not foresee the current fad for pathologizing ordinary behaviours (particularly in childhood) and administering psychotropics to children. The rise to enormous power of the pharmaceutical companies was not on his radar (Mike McQuay, however, took notice of that trend in his own grimly dystopian future private-eye novels).When I first read _Zanzibar_ and _Sheep_ I was just a kid. Now, almost half a lifetime later, I find that the concerns, the anger and grief and bitterness that Brunner articulated so fluently in the 1970's are far from dated. If anything, his work seems fresher and more poignant now than it did then -- I have witnessed 30 additional years of the indiscriminate damage and vandalism we call "growth" in the interim.Many things "date" Brunner's work -- in particular his thoughtless, ste