I know I've read this before, but didn't remember a thing. It's a little slow to begin, it jumps about confusingly, and it definitely seems a little dated (not as much as you might think for a book published in 1972, though). I could live without the lectures on the dangers of specific toxins like lead and PCBs. I'm pretty sure I knew all that stuff when I would have first read it. I think this is supposed to be set in the 1980s - though I can't find why I thought that - which is about the biggest error he's made. Brunner seems to have expected a much faster ecological collapse than has actually happened (I believe it's largely predicated on Silent Spring). Almost everything he's predicted has come true to a degree, though rarely on the scale of this novel. "Freon" cars are laughable (he wouldn't have known of the danger of Freon to the ozone layer) and steam cars as he's envisioned them are an odd way to get zero-emissions - but electric cars are finally coming along, and there's continual work on hydrogen as a fuel (which I personally doubt will ever come to anything). DDT has turned out to be much less of a problem than it could have been, as we pretty well caught it in time, but the importation of agriculturally dangerous pests may well be the thing that causes our apocalypse. I loved the opening, as Decimus Jones is "hunted by wild animals". It really wasn't until "...it wasn’t any of these that got him, but a stingray" that I finally figured out what sort of animals were hunting him. Some things just didn't make sense to me: “Similarly it’s a short mental step from the notion of killing plants or insects to the notion of killing animals and people.” No, really it isn't. Or, when Felice and Peg pick up Hugh on their way to the wat in "the tiny back seat of the Hailey, a mere shelf intended to save a couple with a kid from having to change to a bigger car." The campaign for seatbelts was well under way when he wrote this. I realize this is unrelated to the point of the novel, but it just dates the novel badly to suggest that this would be an approved means of transport in the future. I'm not at all sure how I feel about the inclusion of a USS Wounded Knee. I'm sure there couldn't be a ship with that name today, but I guess it fits with the general tenor of the story. The first time we see Petronella Page, she's interviewing Lucas Quarrey, and says "because not as much attention is paid to scientific matters these days as perhaps ought to be...". That's certainly true today. The next time we see her, she's interviewing Bamberley, and asking him about his adopted sons, when her director tells her “don’t lean on the queer bit too hard.” Shades of Michael Jackson! (Which is NOT to say that I believe Jackson was homosexual or a pedophile, but there were certainly all kinds of insinuation about homosexuality and pedophilia in the media.) When the journalist Peg meets Austin Train, the lone voice in the wilderness warning about the ecological dangers we face, she has to ask his astrological sign. “Aries, aren’t you?” “Yes, provided you’re asking as a joke.” God, yes! That was the most tedious thing to come out of the 70s. Everybody wanted to know everybody's sign, and barely any of them had a clue about astrology in the first place. Yeah, it's dated, but it's still funny. When General Kaika accuses Americans of deliberately poisoning the people of Noshri, it sounds like the accusations that have come up repeatedly for at least the last decade that various public health programs (particularly polio innoculation, but most recently ebola treatment) have been covers for CIA sterilization programs. But, maybe, in this case, he's right. I'm a little disappointed that Brunner was able to so vividly extrapolate our environmental future, but not nearly so much the treatment of racism and sexism. I'm not trying to suggest that racism has disappeared, but it's not acceptable by the state any more, and it's not as openly acceptable as Brunner portrays it. Similarly, while a number of women are empowered, there are just as many who still seem to be 50s housewives. On the positive side, his portrayal of homosexuality and bisexuality as being of practically no importance, just insignificant personal preferences, is downright modern. On the whole, I loved the story, had trouble with its structure, enjoyed the characters and plot, and despised the pathetic job done by Open Road Media in producing the e-book.
The Sheep Look Up is a prime example of Science Fiction at its scariestly prescient (like that word, "scariestly"?:-). John Brunner portrays a world where the United States is run by a president who is eerily reminscent of George W. Bush -- a complete idiot, a figurehead run by his cabinet and given to fighting many small wars. The world is in the middle of an ecodisaster brought about by inexorable population pressure and the systematic abuse of chemicals. Antibiotic resistant diseases are in full bloom, insects have evolved significant resistance to insecticides and are starting to overwhelm the huge industrial farmers, organized crime runs nearly everything as a "shadow government" looking out only for itself. I mean, it is really spooky.On top of this general background, a load of food (produced as one would imagine by an industrialist with political connections who makes a bundle on the deal) is delivered to a small village in war-torn Africa. Upon eating it, the villagers go mad -- they die, kill one another horribly, have strange hallucinations. The government blames the United States, of course, which blandly denies it and the book moves on to a stunning conclusion (with all SORTS of plot that I'm going to omit).When you first start to read this book it feels a bit odd. Brunner uses a very strange literary style, one that he more or less invented and used (as far as I know) only in two novels -- Stand on Zanzibar (where it didn't work, at least for me) and The Sheep Look Up, where it is pretty amazing. His story consists of a staccato burst of short chapters presented as anything from straight prose to journalistic blurbs. The chapters at first seem inchoate, scattered, disconnected, but as the story evolves they are gradually, smoothly, wound together until they form a completely coherent whole and the book moves through to its inevitable conclusion.Given that our world of today corresponds with Brunner's vision to an absolutely terrifying extent, all readers should pay careful attention to that conclusion. Evolution in action indeed (although that's a line from another excellent SF novel I'll review at another time and place...;-). rgb
What do You think about The Sheep Look Up (2003)?
This is a classic dying-environment near-future novel from the early 70s. The Mediterranean Sea is deader than the Great Salt Lake, most of Africa is defoliated. What few crops that still grow, despite insane levels of pollution from wars and corporate greed, are being eaten at the root by insecticide-resistant pests. Filter masks are the only thing standing between Americans and miserable lung diseases. Dose after dose of antibiotics are necessary to cure minor infections and rampant STDs. All
—Hank
I always get a grim sort of joy out of reading apocalypse novels. //The Sheep Look Up// is neither of the Divine, zombie, or nasty-unwanted-thing-from-outer-space variety, but rather, an apocalypse brought about by humanity's inability to keep from "soiling his own nest." Although originally published in the early 70s, the novel feels eerily current. The novel takes place in the "near future" United States, where there is ever-increasing industrialization and consumption unchecked by environmental regulations calls to mind images of Pittsburgh in the mid-70s. The effects of poor air and water are felt everywhere in the novel, even by the presence of an ELF-like resistance group called "Trainites." The gap between haves and have-nots has increased, and the government is embroiled in a series of foreign wars. When an international relief organization delivers a shipment of GMFs to a famished African nation with disastrous results, the lives of the novel's various characters converge in twelve chapters starting with "January" and ending with "December." I should also mention that this was my entertainment reading while trying to finish Jared Diamond's Collapse, which only intensified the sense of disaster portrayed in this novel.
—Jerome
This novel is scary.Rarely has a novel actually made me concerned about what is happening in our society. In the book, the world is basically going to shit, people cannot breathe the air, basic infections are rampant, old pollutions are killing people but the government/corporations are covering it up. The only people who can live healthily are the rich.The story has is ominously correct on topics such as organic farmer, vegetables making individuals sick, corporations profiting from healthy alternatives, and even the ELF...
—Amber
