John Brunner

Stand on Zanzibar

Kelsey Lynn

(15/63+) In my Hugo Read-Through
      Stand on Zanzibar was written by James Brunner in 1968, and won the 1969 Hugo Award for best novel. Described as a “non-novel” due to its world building mechanics that interweave multiple plots, media snippets, book excerpts, and random interactions from background characters, Brunner presents a unique take on the Science fiction novel. This experimental take on the novel has led it to be considered not only Dystopian Science Fiction but part of New Wave Science Fiction. The book is very dense (my 1991 edition was 650 pages) and jumps around between four different chapter types. However, even with this set-up Brunner manages to create a very real, coherent, and surprisingly easy to read story about an overpopulated future and people’s place within it. Even though it’s written in 1968, and the novels present is now our past (2010), the book did not feel dated to me. Even though he overshot a little on the worlds overpopulation, his portrayal of a media and tech gadget crazy society that doesn’t truly interact with people anymore hits eerily close to home. 
      The novel is broken into four chapter types.
  Context: Chapters that set up the world, snippets from the media, quotes, music videos, scientific studies. 
  The Happening World: Short snippets all collaged together. Very busy with things interrupting and overlapping each other to show the busy “happening world”
  Tracking with Close-ups These follow the side stories, we follow multiple minor characters and see the state of the world through their eyes and experiences. 
  Continuity: The main plot of the story.
My edition of this book had the table of contents actually divided into these sections, so I want to return to this book someday and read them in their respective groupings, and see how it affects the story. 
 Context/ The Happening World/ Tracking with Closeups
Brunner sets up an overpopulated future with stick eugenics laws and an extremely media and consumer driven society. Even with the world being terribly over populated, people hardly actually interacts with each other anymore. Marriages are rare, dating is extremely casual, and some women are essentially professional daters, having homes with whoever they’re dating at the time. Eugenics laws have made it so many are sterilized or are unable to carry babies to term. People who have too many babies are ostracized and people who are capable of having children but don’t are also looked down on. More and more people disappear into technology in lieu of actual connections with other people, and with the rise of super computers, many look to them for all the answers. Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere are born, avatars on peoples tv’s that can have their voices and faces (or what they want their voices and faces to be) going on trips, and seeing the world instead of the actually person experiencing it. But they think they are experiencing it. Media and news are sold through Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere as well, because what better salesman than your own face and voice.
Continuity
 The main plot of this story follows two room-mates; Donald Hogan and Norman House. Though having lived together for quite some time, like most of the population they barely know each other and barely interact. Donald is a bookworm/ research/ sleeper spy, and Norman is a young African VP of one of the largest corporations, GT. Norman partially has this position from his own abilities, and partially because they see his skin color as a bonus. Their lives change very drastically when the Yatakang announces that they are now able to create perfect children. This would mean anyone can have their genes manipulated and children born to them, ending eugenics laws. Around the same time the president of Beninia is dying, and GT is being brought on to purchase the country and help finance it and accelerate it from third to first world. Norman is brought on to head the Beninia projects, and Donald is activated as a sleeper agent to investigate the claim in the Yatakang, and if needed neutralize it. These two plots have the potential of affecting the future in very different ways, and eventually they do converge. Donald following man being made better from science, and if it means anything with inferior people to raise them, and Norman following a path of bettering people through unity, education, and support. 

      It’s a lot, I know, and I totally butchered it I’m sorry. But what makes this book so good, is that it never seems overwhelming. It’s an overload of information but it’s presented in a comprehensible way that led me to rarely get lost. As a reader I understood this world, how ours can become it, the struggle of the characters and the everyday functioning of the people of it. It’s impressive the level of world building in this book, I felt as though I’ve lived there. Brunner uses his experimental style coupled with engaging writing to make it come alive. His future is a very prophetic one, focusing on a media driven society, which is a subject we’re seeing explored more in modern science fiction than books from the 60s. Not only was it written 48 years ago, but it’s present , for us, is 6 years ago, yet this book is still amazingly relevant. It feels like a future we can still have, one that is still completely plausible. Short the way race is handled at times in the book (everyone seems slightly racist against everyone), Stand on Zanzibar doesn’t feel dated. 
      My only real complaint with the book is almost just the nature with the book. It was A LOT, and I loved it, and 9 times out of 10 it was comprehensible. But sometimes I had to reread parts to make sure I understood the point it was making, or understand what was going on. At times parts were just a little too long winded or over explained, making chapters far longer than they needed to be. Often there were long gaps between the side stories, and I found myself flipping back so I could remember who the character was or double check that it was a new character. I think the book warrants a re-read in the order the table of content shows (so all of ‘The Happening world’ at once, all of ‘Context’ at once) just to see if that adds or detracts from the novel. It’d be worth a re-read just because it was so interesting and there was so much to this world.
      This book was a roller coaster, an information overload but with clear path. The book had profound moments and at times over explained, but on the whole it was a fun ride. I feel like I lived in this world, I’ve felt what they’ve felt and I have been fully engrossed in Brunner’s future. It was a unique way of developing a world; I look forward to re-reading it and experiencing it again.
TLDR
I really enjoyed this book. Its story was extremely relevant and a must read for science fiction fans. It was a unique information overload, written in such an interesting style. Extremely prophetic but at times long winded, definitely deserving of the Hugo win.

”’What do you think about Yatakang?’
‘I think the same as the Everwhere gang.’
‘What do you think of Beninia then?’
‘The Everywheres will tell me but I don’t know when.’
Whatever my country and whatever my name
A gadget on the set makes me think the same,”

"Originally published in 1968, Stand on Zanzibar was a breakthrough in science fiction storytelling technique, and a prophetic look at a dystopian 2010 that remains compelling today. Corporations have usurped democracy, ubiquitous information technology mediates human relationships, mass-marketed psychosomatic drugs keep billions docile, and genetic engineering is routine. Universal in reach, the world-system is out of control, and we are all its victims...and its creator"--Cover p. [4].

Fraser Simons

Structurally, there’s four different kinds of chapters: 
-context, which is what it sounds like, worldbuilding provided through ads and conversations overheard or smells, sights, sounds. Continuity is the actual plot, alternating between two viewpoints. 
-the happening world
This seems like mostly informational context, just as it sounds, stuff that’s happening in the world
-tracking with closeups
Basically side character stories unfolding 

Taken together the compartmentalizations worked well and seamlessly for me. This wasn’t novel to me so it wasn’t confusing as it was for others, and I have no complaints. I think I prefer worldbuilding built into the prose rather than this arrangement, but as a proto-cyberpunk work, it feels very ahead of it’s time and fascinating.

The actual plot was a bit convoluted. It’s more feminist and inclusive than I expected by far, ironically less fetishistic of minorities than the prime cyberpunk works, really. It does a great job showing the moral and ethical value of a citizenry to not allow itself to mollified. It’s very punk in it’s values and interweaves multiple kinds of espionage with rise of the corporate America. It’s commendable that it’s so accurate in its predictions.

However, speculation before contemporary times is not something I put much value in. What do I benefit now from nodding along now seeing how he was right or wrong? The craft is what matters, and the worldbuilding isn’t totally convincing despite the predictive qualities it is imbued with. Street vernacular is terrible. Dialogue is uneven. Benefits of hindsight make some things ludicrous, such as overpopulation issue solutions and what not—even if the feeling and malaise is captured very well.

It’s sometimes quite plodding, but the prose is more than strong enough to propel me, despite, as mentioned, some wildly bad dialogue at times. We might be beyond its relevance in many ways. Speculative fiction now obviously is more in tune with things and the style is better. It’s a book for older generations (and that’s fine).

This almost was a four star read but the problem is that it is so ambitious in its structure as well as the overall message, worldbuilding, and speculation… that it just succeeds and does not exceed the expectations it sets for the reader

Bryan Alexander

I first read this in the 1980s, and reread it for a local science fiction book club.

If you haven't come across it before, Stand on Zanzibar is a science fiction classic and a blast to read. The style is manic, an attempt to recreate an emerging media environment in prose. So the book twists language in many ways (neologisms, media production, sound effects), jumping around rapidly between plot lines and observations. It does so to both build up an elaborate and convincing world while also driving many stories and characters. It feels much like a 19th-century social novel rebooted for the 21st century, yet written in the late 1960s.

The plot is complex, and all strands ultimately revolve around the problem of overpopulation. A US spy tries to suss out a new technology from a rising Southeast Asian nation. An American company gets involved in trying to gobble up an African nation. A fugitive sociologist snarks at the human race.

There's actually a lot of interesting literary history baked into Stand on Zanzibar. It's a powerful antecedent for cyberpunk fiction, with its aggressive style, deep world-building, internationalism, focus on technology, and vision of humanity as messed up nigh unto dystopia yet also being augmented. Brunner drew on contemporary media criticism - Macluhan, and Innis is named on the first page. He also looked to some of John dos Passos' modernist experimentation.

Reading it in 2019 is... interesting. As with reading most 20th-century sf, it's easy to poke holes in what the novel got wrong about the 21st century. Overpopulation has occurred, but is reversing - in part because of fears expressed at the time of the novel's creation. Computers have evolved towards AI, but not in the centralizing, Great Brain style Brunner saw here (compare with his other classic, Shockwave Rider. Crime and human violence are topics of great concern, but have actually declined drastically since the 1990s, despite our stupid, tv-fueled ignorance of this fact. Our media landscape is close to the novel, if more unsprung and disintegrated. Eugenic policies have not proceeded, generally, aside from China's one-child regime, recently abated. Information overload is indeed a concern today, although I prefer Clay Shirky's response (it's about filter failure). 

I wonder how contemporary readers would view the African and Southeast Asian plots. How many would view the description of colonialist and racist, especially the Beninia one? What do today's readers make of Norman House's career? Is the depiction of same-sex desire being far more mainstream than it was in 1968 appealing? Is Chad Mulligan a horrifying proto-incel, with his misanthropy and emphasis on biology?

Alongside Zanzibar Brunner wrote two other classics, Shockwave Rider and The Sheep Look Up. I've been meaning to reread them, and wonder how they hold up in the 21st.

Stand on Zanzibar

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