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The Sheep Look Up is fantastic. It's a very dark novel, but at the same time it has a great sense of irony. In particular, it keeps setting up characters and th
by atombender 8y ago
The Sheep Look Up is fantastic. It's a very dark novel, but at the same time it has a great sense of irony. In particular, it keeps setting up characters and then throwing them to the wolves faster than you can say "Game of Thrones". For example, the plot is ostensibly about a legendary environmental activist who is about to come out of hiding — he's sought for inciting his followers to violence — at a pivotal time as the world is being thrown into a series of political wars/crises caused, indirectly, by environmental disasters (think Syria) and squabbling for resources, but the moment the hero emerges for his triumphant appeal to the American people, everything blows up in his face.
The article doesn't mention The Jagged Orbit, which Brunner considered to form a trilogy together with Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up. Anyone read it?
- arduanika 8y ago(tangent) What environmental disaster caused the Syrian conflict?
- DanBC 8y agoDrought may have caused conflict. https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2009/02/22/drought-blamed-food-scarcity https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2009/02/22/drought-b... https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/report/90442/syria-drought-pushing-millions-poverty https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/report/90442/syria-drough... https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/report/88139/syria-over-million-people-affected-drought https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/report/88139/syria-over-m... https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/feature/2009/09/02/drought-driving-farmers-cities https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/feature/2009/09/02/drough...
- no_not_really 8y agoDrought, in no way, had anything to do with any of it. If that's what you're trying to push, you're operating an agenda. It's directly connected to Iraq's destabilization and a wave of unrest fomented as proxy wars by external powers at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring
- shearskill 8y agoNo but I plan to after this great review. Reminded me of Judi Bari of Earth First who was arrested by the FBI in 1990 for blowing up her own car.
- repsilat 8y agoI read it a long long time ago. Got it from a garage sale as a kid. Strangely most of what I can remember is "future slang" and not plot or tech or themes or characters. One chapter started with a definition of a word, which was "not derog. unless abbr.", which I thought was lovely. A guy puts his beard on in the morning with a "rozar". Not a helpful review, I'm afraid. I loved it at the time, but couldn't convince any friends to read it.
- rienbdj 8y agoThere is a fourth called The Shockwave Rider
- zem 8y agoyes, and it's excellent! I consider those three, and "the shockwave rider" to be Brunner's four "major" novels. he's also written lots of books that are entertaining enough but nothing really outstanding, and one other, "the squares of the city" that is not on par with the big four but which is inventive and well written enough that I'd recommend it to any fans of his.
- dsr_ 8y agoThe Jagged Orbit is about paperclip-maximizing corporations (except that the biggest one, Gottschalk, is selling weapons, not paperclips) manipulating social attitudes and legislation to increase their profits. People are encouraged to fear based on skin color, social class, wealth inequality, gender, and age. The Gottschalk corp is descended from a legitimization of the Mafia, and has competing divisions locked into an internal war. Executives change their last names to that of the company, a device later used in Max Barry's _Jennifer Government_.
- 8bitsrule 8y agoAnyone read it? William Gibson: "No one except possibly the late John Brunner, in his brilliant novel "The Sheep Look Up," has ever described anything in science fiction that is remotely like the reality of 2007 as we know it. " (2007 interview) https://web.archive.org/web/20110730132259/http://www.salon.com:80/books/int/2007/08/11/william_gibson/ https://web.archive.org/web/20110730132259/http://www.salon....
- atombender 8y agoThanks. I was actually asking about The Jagged Orbit, though.