Stand on Zanzibar

I first read this book as a teenager, and liked it so much that I listed it as a top ten favorite novel for decades afterward. In honor of actually having the opportunity to stand on Zanzibar myself during a recent vacation, I thought I would re-read it to see how well it held up. Thankfully, it does, although if I ranked all the books in my top ten, it would be a little further down the list these days.

When I read it long ago, I remembered it being much more disjointed. It is in parts, but I was able to connect the disparate pieces in my mind better, perhaps due to a familiarity with the prose and concept, even after these many years. I also hadn't remembered one of the lead characters being a Muslim, and likely glossed over that as a youngster, having never encountered a follower of Islam at that time.

Bruce Sterling's well-done introduction to the edition I read this time highlights some of Brunner's prescience, but what I found interesting was the near misses in Brunner extrapolation, specifically the entire concept that at some point in the future, people who have too many children will be ostracized by society for their lack of self-control and selfishness. Even at this point, after the world has doubled its population (from approximately 3.5bn when this novel was written to around 7bn today), I don't see any indication of this change in opinion--sadly, many cultures are the exact opposite, believing that they need to increase their population for fear that their culture will be overrun by others. Perhaps this is the real lesson of Stand on Zanzibar, that people (read large, as in the earth's population) will never be able to control their reproduction and the game of life will eventually collapse through disease, war, or famine.

Recommended? Yes, I would still highly recommend this book. It was a grand achievement when it was published, and it remains a solid work of art today.

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.