In the alt-universe of 'The Sheep Look Up' by John Brunner remarkable times call for remarkable action. America responds with its usual can-do character!The air is no longer quite breathable. The water is poisoned with chemicals from farming, food product additives, pharmaceuticals, plastics, sewage and defoliants. The oceans are dead. No one can remember when they last saw a bird. Even flies are rare. When sunlight breaks through the dust-laden air, it is announced on the television by an affab...

If you visit American city,You will find it very pretty.Just two things of which you must beware:Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air!*"How often do I have to tell you? You never go outside without your mask!"Brunner's book, published in the early seventies, has to be one of the earlier ecopocalypse novels. His descriptions are stunningly prescient. Take a look at his portrait of the Pacific Ocean:The water looked more like oil. It was dark gray and barely moved to the breeze. Along t...

The Sheep Look Up is a prime example of Science Fiction at its scariestly prescient (like that word, "scariestly"?:-). John Brunner portrays a world where the United States is run by a president who is eerily reminscent of George W. Bush -- a complete idiot, a figurehead run by his cabinet and given to fighting many small wars. The world is in the middle of an ecodisaster brought about by inexorable population pressure and the systematic abuse of chemicals. Antibiotic resistant diseases are in f...

Re-read.So, it turns out this 1972 book that was "too edgy, too dystopic, too environmentally pessimistic" for its time turned out to be just about on-target for about 15 years ago. All the pathogens, fungus, chemical pollutants, all seemed to hit the ACTUAL dystopic levels. And worse, the political ramifications, even though they appear different, sure seem right on target for today. Lies, lies, corruption, greed, lies, and a little obsfucution. Add in the racism angle, amp it up to realistic p...

See the halibut and the sturgeonsBeing wiped out by detergentsFish gotta swim and birds gotta flyBut they don’t last long if they tryPollution, pollution, wear a gas mask and a veilThen you can breath as long as you don’t inhaleSang Tom Lehrer, and seven years later John Brunner wrote the book of the song. I love that rhyme – sturgeons/detergents – and I have to admit it’s way more fun to listen to two minutes of Tom than it is to plough through this jeremiad of a novel from 1972. It’s like one

The title of the novel is a quotation from the poem Lycidas by Paradise Lost author John Milton:The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,But swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw,Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ...This is an important book, with a capital “I”. It is a shame everyone doesn’t read it, and even more of a shame that many who would read it would dismiss it as silly liberal propaganda as they have dismissed all discussions on climate change. Because it was written in

I have so much to say. I’m trying to think it through. How can I speak without alienating most of you?

Why are all the dystopian novels I read in my teens coming true? I have to keep reminding myself that this is science fiction from the 70s, not real life here and now. • “Don’t Drink” notices warn people when the tap water isn’t safe to drink. • The less fortunate are given synthetic food to eat, while the well-to-do pay top-dollar at an organic food market. • The President’s dictum regarding the press is: “If the papers know what’s good for them they’ll print what’s good for America” (...

Stop you’re killing me!0XDavid ”The Postman” Brin says in the intro that John Brunner scared the crap out of people in the 60’s , well he scares the crap out of me today. The label “Science Fiction” could be safely removed from this book as it is sadly becoming a realistic portrait of our very own moment in history. A primal scream treatment for anyone who survived the dread and anxiety of the Bush years (written 30 years before it occurred) and a dreadful prophecy of the environmental grave we

This has to be one of the most frightening books I have ever read. My favorite science fiction author is Phillip K. Dick, whose sense of extrapolation was amazing. However the extrapolations that Brunner has made in this book leaves most PKD novels in the dust, and that's one of the reasons this books is so unsettling.While I was reading I couldn't resist to urge to write down some of the speculations that Brunner made in this novel that are uncomfortably like the world we see right now. Here is...

This book was published in 1972 but could easily have been written today. It is terrifyingly realistic and feels closer than ever to becoming true. I had nightmares after reading this...

I think I might DNF this one. Honestly, I feel like I'm reading the newspaper and the Sierra Club's journal on a particularly bad day. Knowing that this was written forty years ago makes it even worse; you mean we knew these problems were coming and still didn't fix them? We start with gas masks in L.A. (hello, China), pesticide resistant bugs eating modified crops (hello, Monsanto and Round-Up), water unsafe for swimming or drinking (hello, red algae blooms and oil spills)walled enclaves and...

Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up were two of my favourite books at university, and the covers even appear in my Master's Thesis.Brunner wrote a few truly awful sci-fi books, and then "something happened" and he wrote these two masterpieces. Truly Awesome books!The cover when I read it in the 1970sFull size image here

I can't say I enjoyed the majority of this book. The style is very broken, telling many stories at once with very little indication of how they're related. It's a bleak world where the climate is broken and polluted, the government is controlling and full of platitudes and outright lies, food and water is scarce, you need filtered masks to breath outside in the cities, and poverty is rampant. The story follows the lives of a number of people and how they survive in the world as it now stands. It...

DNF at 50%.Why? Because to me the book reads like this:Boring character (3 paragraphs)Random horrible eventFlat character (4 paragraphs)Main horrible eventBoring character (wait, did he/she appear before? I could not remember)Random horrible eventUninteresting character (3 paragraphs)Snippet about main/random horrible eventDull character (4 paragraphs)Random horrible event....ad infinitum.I think I will appreciate the book better if 1) it's better written/edited (the sentences are so sloppy/chop...

A writer, director, publicist and producer sit in a trendy Hollywood restaurant, discussing plans to make a film about John Brunner’s 1972 novel The Sheep Look Up.Writer (looking at his Rolex): Let’s get this started, I’ve got a one o’clock hot yoga class.Producer: It’s dark, I mean really dark, everyone is diseased, there’s rampant crime, corrupt industry is polluting the world, corrupt and ineffective governments perpetuating the decline of western civilization.Director (sipping a Martini): Br...

“I am as guilty as you, and you are as guilty as me. We can repent together, or we can die together; it must be our joint decision.”Urg. I need a new Goodreads shelf that I will call “Please, please, please make this fiction again”. “The Sheep Look Up” will go on it, next to “The Handmaid’s Tale”, “Brave New World” and “It Can’t Happen Here”.This book is set in a world where careless and entitled human attitudes have destroyed the environment to the point where you need to wear a gas mask when y...

4.5 stars. A brilliant novel. Not as good as Stands on Zanzibar, but that is not much of a criticism given that Zanzibar is one of the best novels ever written IMHO. This is a novel that explores the effect of unchecked out of control pollution and environmental collapse. Recommended. Nominee: Nebula Award Best NovelNominee:(6th place) Locus Award Best Science Fiction Novel

Looks like I am writing a review for one of John Brunner's books. Let's just quickly copy and paste this bit from the previous one:"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." So, what is Sheep look up about? ... Oh, just about the complete ecological, economic and social collapse of the world with special focus on Americ...

“The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,But swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw,Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread”--Lycidas, MiltonLucky thing no one in power has ever taken seriously the warnings of science fiction writers such as John Brunner and those anti-business, anti-“progress” commies and hippies and scientists that claim the world’s air and water is being poisoned and its resources rapaciously plundered. Glad we are getting rid of all those pesky scientific fake-news