6 ms·

A 1969 New Wave Sci-Fi Novel That Made Correct Predictions

78 points by gasull 12y ago

twic 12y ago
I saw the title, and said to myself "i bet this is The Shockwave Rider". So close! Brunner published that in 1975, six years after Stand On Zanzibar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider
- fernly 12y ago
  Right right right. Shockwave Rider (as the wiki page notes) describes a world of ubiquitous networked computers -- its publication date, 1975, was also the year that Darpanet went operational -- and introduced the idea of a self-propagating program called a "worm".
- ebiester 12y ago
  if you take his dystopias together (shockwave rider, Zanzibar, sheep look up) you can put together a compelling vision of the future. I think what a Brunner saw is that even if technology changes, people don't. In many ways, that's what science fiction has always held as its mirror, from the morality tales of its origin and forward. It is where Star Trek was at both its weakest and strongest.
- zem 12y ago
  that was my first thought too.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
I've read a number of Brunner's books, one that stuck with me was "The Sheep Look Up" [1] which was pretty much a composition of everything bad that can happen all happening and none of the potentially good things actually coming to pass. Of course as an author you choose the things that move the story along and create tension. Not necessarily the boring things which keep things stable :-). Sometimes though, having read a lot of SF in my life, I really do feel like I am "in the future" now as opposed to say in 1995 when folks were explaining what the Internet was on TV, and perhaps that is the source of the author of this article's observation. A lot of things that science fiction has imagined over the last 50 years have come to pass. That is pretty amazing. [1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Sheep-Look-John-Brunner/dp/1932100016 http://www.amazon.com/The-Sheep-Look-John-Brunner/dp/1932100...
- mmastrac 12y ago
  We can start looking towards some of the more modern-day sci-fi for inspiration for the next 20 years: Neal Stephenson's matter replicators and immersive realities, Alastair Reynolds' conjoiners and AI, Kim Stanley Robinson's life-extension and colonization, and (hopefully) Iain M Banks' carefree culture. I just hope medical technology advances fast enough that we can all live long enough to experience all of this.
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    Is there any other author that creates such a happy, positive, future like the Culture? Everytime I read one, I just feel better. The Culture is pretty much exactly what I imagine, assuming friendly AI and scarcity are dealt with. It really enables "the meaning of life is whatever you want it to be".
    - PhasmaFelis 12y ago
      Huh. I only read the first book and a half of the Culture, but I didn't find it enormously positive. The basic message seemed to be "You can fix every one of humanity's problems, and people will just invent new and exciting ways to be horrible to each other."
      - tjradcliffe 12y ago
        Agreed. Banks was basically writing fantasy-horror, and while beautifully written the Culture novels I've read are one long litany of awfullness, despite the essentially utopian setting.
      - MichaelGG 12y ago
        Only if you focus too much at the edges. The first book is almost completely outside the Culture. Much of the other books deal with "Special Circumstances". But the underlying society is one that sounds rather blissful. Do anything, anytime. Become anything as you wish. A hyperintelligent AI at your call every minute. I imagine stories of endless parties, people switching genders, getting high and playing a myriad of amazing games, pursuing arts of any form, screwing aliens or AI avatars -- it just wouldn't make terribly interesting reading, for the most part. Hence you've gotta add tension and some nastiness to make it a fun space opera, despite such things happening to less than a billionth of your citizens. Sorta like ST:TNG - sure a lot of the universe sucks, but for the most part, life seems pretty rosy if you're not the subject of an episode. TNG also provided that positive feeling in me, apart from hating the Prime Directive.
dalke 12y ago
It's hard to say if something is a valid prediction without establishing a baseline comparison. It could also be that he's predicting things wouldn't change from the 1960s. > (1) Random acts of violence by crazy individuals, often taking place at schools, plague society in Stand on Zanzibar. In 1966 Charles Joseph Whitman went to a tower on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin and murdered 16 people and wounded 32 others. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States#1960s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the... lists many acts of violence that took place at schools in the 1960s. In terms of a prediction, the amount of 'random' violence has gone down since the 1960s. > (7) Although some people still get married, many in the younger generation now prefer short-term hookups without long-term commitment. The book was written in the 1960s, in the free love era between effective treatments for VD and AIDS. Compare with the movie "Alice's Restaurant", from the same year as "Stand on Zanzibar", Arlo Guthrie (played by himself) is asked by a teenybopper he just met if he want to have sex with her. He turns her down, ostensibly because he doesn't want to catch her cold. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=c0jfwlWDgto#t=1271 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=c0... . In terms of a prediction, has the amount of short-term hookups increased since the 1960s? Or stayed the same or decreased? I don't know. But I'm willing to assert that the author of this piece (which was repeated on many sites) doesn't know either. > (10) Motor vehicles increasingly run on electric fuel cells. Really? I thought they increasingly run on batteries, not fuel cells. Wikipedia says: > As of early 2014, there is limited hydrogen infrastructure, with 10 hydrogen fueling stations for automobiles publicly available in the U.S., I haven't read Stand on Zanzibar for a long time and it's not in my collection, so I can't investigate the other claims in any detail.
- MrJagil 12y ago
  Once in a while you stumble on an artist who leads you down a different road from your usual tastes. Harry Chapin did that for me, with his rendition of the UTA shooting. Quite powerful stuff (as was Chapin's own death, actually). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWKpblxejWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWKpblxejWE
zeroonetwothree 12y ago
I read it a few years ago, but IIRC it had many wrong predictions. For example it predicts massive overpopulation and food shortages, when in fact we have the most food per capita in human history.
jonny_eh 12y ago
If you make enough predictions, some will come true. Many psychics do this annually, and then at the end of the year gloat about their hits but don't mention the misses.
csdrane 12y ago
Forgetting the predictions for a moment (I think it is unfortunate and belies the book's real value that this is what everyone is focusing on), Stand on Zanzibar is great SF novel and is still worth reading IMO.
Tloewald 12y ago
I need to go back and read Stand on Zanzibar. Back when I was in 8th grade, I read Brunner's The Stone that Never Came Down which I thought at the time was the best SF novel I'd ever read (it held my top spot for some considerable time). I never found a copy of Stand at the time.
notahacker 12y ago
Stand on Zanzibar was a great book because of its bold styling and because assumed that in a few decades' time humanity would be fighting each other in a still desperately poor developing world rather than conquering the galaxy. On that level it's fantastic, and the bits about ghost town Detroit and its music scene is eerily accurate. But on a grand scale, once you've got past it not being space opera, its core premise is basically its worst prediction: overpopulation is the most pressing issue in the US despite draconian eugenic policies. A large part of the plot concerns black ops in s socialist southeast Asian archipelago. It is very successful at anticipating how sexual liberation, civil rights for black people and widespread televisual media might pan out, but that's not especially unusual in New Wave literature Most jarringly of all for hackers, the world of Stand on Zanzibar relies on a single hard AI supercomputer equipped with a personality and near deus-ex-machina predictive power, which involves human-computer interaction of the type parodied in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

78 points by gasull 12y ago

twic 12y ago

I saw the title, and said to myself "i bet this is The Shockwave Rider". So close! Brunner published that in 1975, six years after Stand On Zanzibar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider

fernly 12y ago
Right right right. Shockwave Rider (as the wiki page notes) describes a world of ubiquitous networked computers -- its publication date, 1975, was also the year that Darpanet went operational -- and introduced the idea of a self-propagating program called a "worm".
ebiester 12y ago
if you take his dystopias together (shockwave rider, Zanzibar, sheep look up) you can put together a compelling vision of the future. I think what a Brunner saw is that even if technology changes, people don't. In many ways, that's what science fiction has always held as its mirror, from the morality tales of its origin and forward. It is where Star Trek was at both its weakest and strongest.
zem 12y ago
that was my first thought too.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

I've read a number of Brunner's books, one that stuck with me was "The Sheep Look Up" [1] which was pretty much a composition of everything bad that can happen all happening and none of the potentially good things actually coming to pass. Of course as an author you choose the things that move the story along and create tension. Not necessarily the boring things which keep things stable :-). Sometimes though, having read a lot of SF in my life, I really do feel like I am "in the future" now as opposed to say in 1995 when folks were explaining what the Internet was on TV, and perhaps that is the source of the author of this article's observation. A lot of things that science fiction has imagined over the last 50 years have come to pass. That is pretty amazing. [1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Sheep-Look-John-Brunner/dp/1932100016 http://www.amazon.com/The-Sheep-Look-John-Brunner/dp/1932100...

mmastrac 12y ago
We can start looking towards some of the more modern-day sci-fi for inspiration for the next 20 years: Neal Stephenson's matter replicators and immersive realities, Alastair Reynolds' conjoiners and AI, Kim Stanley Robinson's life-extension and colonization, and (hopefully) Iain M Banks' carefree culture. I just hope medical technology advances fast enough that we can all live long enough to experience all of this.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  Is there any other author that creates such a happy, positive, future like the Culture? Everytime I read one, I just feel better. The Culture is pretty much exactly what I imagine, assuming friendly AI and scarcity are dealt with. It really enables "the meaning of life is whatever you want it to be".
  - PhasmaFelis 12y ago
    Huh. I only read the first book and a half of the Culture, but I didn't find it enormously positive. The basic message seemed to be "You can fix every one of humanity's problems, and people will just invent new and exciting ways to be horrible to each other."
    - tjradcliffe 12y ago
      Agreed. Banks was basically writing fantasy-horror, and while beautifully written the Culture novels I've read are one long litany of awfullness, despite the essentially utopian setting.
    - MichaelGG 12y ago
      Only if you focus too much at the edges. The first book is almost completely outside the Culture. Much of the other books deal with "Special Circumstances". But the underlying society is one that sounds rather blissful. Do anything, anytime. Become anything as you wish. A hyperintelligent AI at your call every minute. I imagine stories of endless parties, people switching genders, getting high and playing a myriad of amazing games, pursuing arts of any form, screwing aliens or AI avatars -- it just wouldn't make terribly interesting reading, for the most part. Hence you've gotta add tension and some nastiness to make it a fun space opera, despite such things happening to less than a billionth of your citizens. Sorta like ST:TNG - sure a lot of the universe sucks, but for the most part, life seems pretty rosy if you're not the subject of an episode. TNG also provided that positive feeling in me, apart from hating the Prime Directive.

dalke 12y ago

It's hard to say if something is a valid prediction without establishing a baseline comparison. It could also be that he's predicting things wouldn't change from the 1960s. > (1) Random acts of violence by crazy individuals, often taking place at schools, plague society in Stand on Zanzibar. In 1966 Charles Joseph Whitman went to a tower on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin and murdered 16 people and wounded 32 others. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States#1960s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the... lists many acts of violence that took place at schools in the 1960s. In terms of a prediction, the amount of 'random' violence has gone down since the 1960s. > (7) Although some people still get married, many in the younger generation now prefer short-term hookups without long-term commitment. The book was written in the 1960s, in the free love era between effective treatments for VD and AIDS. Compare with the movie "Alice's Restaurant", from the same year as "Stand on Zanzibar", Arlo Guthrie (played by himself) is asked by a teenybopper he just met if he want to have sex with her. He turns her down, ostensibly because he doesn't want to catch her cold. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=c0jfwlWDgto#t=1271 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=c0... . In terms of a prediction, has the amount of short-term hookups increased since the 1960s? Or stayed the same or decreased? I don't know. But I'm willing to assert that the author of this piece (which was repeated on many sites) doesn't know either. > (10) Motor vehicles increasingly run on electric fuel cells. Really? I thought they increasingly run on batteries, not fuel cells. Wikipedia says: > As of early 2014, there is limited hydrogen infrastructure, with 10 hydrogen fueling stations for automobiles publicly available in the U.S., I haven't read Stand on Zanzibar for a long time and it's not in my collection, so I can't investigate the other claims in any detail.

MrJagil 12y ago
Once in a while you stumble on an artist who leads you down a different road from your usual tastes. Harry Chapin did that for me, with his rendition of the UTA shooting. Quite powerful stuff (as was Chapin's own death, actually). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWKpblxejWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWKpblxejWE

zeroonetwothree 12y ago

I read it a few years ago, but IIRC it had many wrong predictions. For example it predicts massive overpopulation and food shortages, when in fact we have the most food per capita in human history.

jonny_eh 12y ago

If you make enough predictions, some will come true. Many psychics do this annually, and then at the end of the year gloat about their hits but don't mention the misses.

csdrane 12y ago

Forgetting the predictions for a moment (I think it is unfortunate and belies the book's real value that this is what everyone is focusing on), Stand on Zanzibar is great SF novel and is still worth reading IMO.

Tloewald 12y ago

I need to go back and read Stand on Zanzibar. Back when I was in 8th grade, I read Brunner's The Stone that Never Came Down which I thought at the time was the best SF novel I'd ever read (it held my top spot for some considerable time). I never found a copy of Stand at the time.

notahacker 12y ago

Stand on Zanzibar was a great book because of its bold styling and because assumed that in a few decades' time humanity would be fighting each other in a still desperately poor developing world rather than conquering the galaxy. On that level it's fantastic, and the bits about ghost town Detroit and its music scene is eerily accurate. But on a grand scale, once you've got past it not being space opera, its core premise is basically its worst prediction: overpopulation is the most pressing issue in the US despite draconian eugenic policies. A large part of the plot concerns black ops in s socialist southeast Asian archipelago. It is very successful at anticipating how sexual liberation, civil rights for black people and widespread televisual media might pan out, but that's not especially unusual in New Wave literature Most jarringly of all for hackers, the world of Stand on Zanzibar relies on a single hard AI supercomputer equipped with a personality and near deus-ex-machina predictive power, which involves human-computer interaction of the type parodied in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy