.jpg) Cover of first edition (hardcover) | |
| Author | John Brunner |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | S. A. Summit, Inc. |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction,dystopian |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
Publication date | 1968 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Hardback & paperback |
| Pages | 582 |
| ISBN | 0-09-919110-5 |
Stand on Zanzibar is adystopianNew Wave science fiction novel written byJohn Brunner and first in part published inNEW WORLDS in 1967 and in book form in 1968. The book won aHugo Award for Best Novel at the 27thWorld Science Fiction Convention in 1969, as well as the 1969BSFA Award and the 1973Prix Tour-Apollo Award.
The novel is aboutoverpopulation and its projected consequences.[1] The story is set in 2010, mostly in the United States. The narrative follows the lives of a large cast of characters, chosen to give a broad cross-section of the future world. Some of these interact directly with the central narrative, while others add depth to Brunner's world. Brunner appropriated this narrative technique from theU.S.A. trilogy, byJohn Dos Passos.[2][1][3]
The main story is about twoNew York men, Donald Hogan and Norman Niblock House, who share an apartment.[1] House is a rising executive at General Technics, one of the powerful corporations. Using his "Afram" (African American) heritage to advance his position, he has risen to vice-president at age twenty-six.
The two plots concern the fictional African state of Beninia making a deal with General Technics to take over the management of their country, to speed updevelopment fromThird World toFirst World status. A second plot is a breakthrough ingenetic engineering in the fictionalSoutheast Asian nation of Yatakang (an island nation and a formerDutchcolony, likeIndonesia), to which Hogan is soon sent by the United States government to investigate. The two plots cross, bringing potential implications for the world.
The titleStand on Zanzibar is[citation needed] an allusion to athought experiment in which it was calculated that all the human beings in the world[when?] could fit shoulder to shoulder on theIsle of Wight; given population growth, Brunner expanded this to the island ofZanzibar.
Algis Budrys declared thatStand on Zanzibar "takes your breath away", saying that the novel "put[s] itself together seemingly without effort [and] paints a picture of the immediate future as it will, Brunner convinces you, certainly be".[4]James Blish said "I disliked everybody in it and I was constantly impeded by the suspicion that Brunner was not writing for himself but for a Prize. ...A man of Brunner's gifts should have seenab initio thatU.S.A. was a stillbirth even in its originator's hands".[5]
Thirty years after its publication,Greg Bear praisedStand on Zanzibar as a science fiction novel that, unusually, has not become dated. "It's not quite the future we imagined it to be, but it still reads as fresh as it did back in 1968, and that's an amazing accomplishment!"[6] In a retrospective review forThe Guardian in 2010,Sam Jordison found the novel a "skilfully realised future dystopia", writing that it allowed Brunner "to express his most interesting ideas regarding corporate ethics, free will, the question of whether scientific progress is always good for humanity and the conflict between the individual and the state".[7]Ursula K. Heise declared that "Stand on Zanzibar, to some extent, sets the tone for literary texts from the 1980s and 1990s that re-engage the issue of population growth against the background of a multitude of interacting political, social, economic, ecological, and technological problems".[8]
In his 2021 bookDoom: The Politics of Catastrophe, historianNiall Ferguson laudsStand on Zanzibar for foreseeing the future better than more popular novels such asFahrenheit 451,The Handmaid's Tale andAnthem.[9]
Yet, on further reflection, none of these authors truly foresaw all the peculiarities of our networked world, which has puzzlingly combined a rising speed and penetration of consumer information technology with a slackening of progress in other areas, such as nuclear energy, and a woefuldegeneration of governance. The real prophets turn out, on closer inspection, to be less familiar figures—for example, John Brunner, whoseStand on Zanzibar (1968) is set in 2010, at a time when population pressure has led to widening social divisions and political extremism. Despite the threat of terrorism, U.S. corporations like General Technics are booming, thanks to a supercomputer named Shalmaneser. China is America's new rival. Europe has united. Brunner also foresees affirmative action, genetic engineering, Viagra, Detroit's collapse, satellite TV, in-flight video, gay marriage, laser printing, electric cars, the de-criminalization of marijuana, and the decline of tobacco. There is even a progressive president (albeit of Beninia, not America) named "Obomi".[10]
In a 2021 article regarding the prognostic ability of novelists,The Guardian pointed out thatStand on Zanzibar had also accurately predicted the fall of theDetroit auto industry.[11]
Jonathan Nolan was partially inspired byStand on Zanzibar in developing the content for thethird season of the television showWestworld.[12]
Bibliography