Stand on Zanzibar

Why oh Why are cynics, skeptics, pessimists and satirists such good oracles. I know things are nowhere near that bad, but there are a lot of good predictions there with a whole lot of counter culture sprinkled all over. And now John Brunner is correct about the Chinese being the first to start editing the human genome, we have the technology to create Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere (deep fakes) and us leaving more and more decisions for AIs. The books main cynic Chad C. Mulligan is even temporarily defeated and gives up and chooses to conform.

Firstly, the title and with it the main theme of the book. John Burnner has read a trivia article that calculated that you could put all the people of the world on one island, that island being Isle of Wight (384 km2). After reading that article he calculated where could one put the whole population of Earth in 2010 and he came up with Zanzibar (2,462 km2) and questioned what would that do to human psychology (based on the first paragraph of my review you can tell his answer was bleak).

So yeah, this book is basically the Bible for cynics with just enough hope to make you angry all wrapped in an experience which reminds me of channel surfing at 2 am with all the movies and commercials no one wants to broadcast in prime time. By this I mean the author described his world through news bulletins, commercials and personal stories of a large number of people. In this way you end up with a pretty complete picture of his world.

And still I love this book, I have no idea why.

... Oh and Shalmaneser (the supercomputer) still has the last laugh.