John Brunner
1968
Awards: Hugo
Nominations: Nebula
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ –
Stand on Zanzibar is
set in the 2010s which, in 1968, was the relatively near future. The
world has become severely overpopulated, which has serious effects on
everyday life.
Internal combustion engines are banned in most large
cities and have been replaced by fuel-cell and fly-wheel vehicles.
Almost everyone has to share housing, even the rich. In jails, prisoners
are tranquilized and stacked one on top of another on bunk beds which
can be pulled in and out of cells like drawers in a filing cabinet.
Rich
countries have enacted various forms of eugenic legislation to control
birth rates. In the US, for example, you are forbidden to have children
if you have genes for certain hereditary conditions like hemophilia,
diabetes, phenylketonuria, or color-blindness.
~~~~~~~
The book has two semi-intertwined main plots, each of which is centered on one of the two
somewhat asocial main characters, Donald Hogan and Norman House. Donald
and Norman are roommates and are also probably as close to being friends
as would be possible for either of them.
Norman is black,
Muslim, and a VP at General Technics, the world’s largest technology
firm. His company sends him to Beninia, a remote African country, to
work out a deal to allow GT to mine Beninia’s natural resources before
its neighboring countries can invade and do so. While there, Norman
finds that Beninians are very strange – no wars, no murders, not even
lost tempers – and he sets himself to learning why.
Donald is
white, Christian, and a spy for the US government. He gets sent to
Yatakang, a remote Asian country, which has announced that it is
developing the technology that will allow it to clone embryos, select out the ones with
undesirable traits, and then implant the best in any woman. This may
have disastrous capacity consequences for governments, as it will allow anyone to
get around eugenics laws and have a child. Donald’s mission is to either
expose their claim as a fraud or, if it is not a fraud, to make it not
come to pass.
~~~~~~~
Reading Stand on Zanzibar is a little like reading Shakespeare or A Clockwork Orange, in
that it is pretty hard to follow at first. Brunner creates a whole new
vocabulary for this future dystopia that you have to get used to. Some
of the new terms are abbreviations (“dicty” for “addict”); amalgamations
(“Afram” for “African-American”); free-associations (“codder,” from
“codpiece,” for “man”); or just plain slang (“shiggy” for “girl”).
But
if you persevere, by the time you’re halfway through the book, you can
read and understand a sentence like “Sheeting hole, Frank, I’ll never
forgive those bleeders!” without batting an eye.
Even the table of contents is wacky. Chapters are listed not in chronological order but by category, of which there are four:
“Continuity” (the main plot)
“Context” (explanations of the main plot)
“Tracking with Closeups” (side stories about minor characters)
“The Happening World” (jumbles of ads, gossip, conversations, and news)
The four types of chapters are interwoven throughout the book. It is a little chaotic, but that is part of what Zanzibar is
all about. The combination keeps the plot going, helps you understand
it, provides detail and color, and gives you an idea of the volume of
stimuli constantly bombarding the populace.
~~~~~~~
Stand on Zanzibar is also similar to Neuromancer in
many ways. It has a trippy style and a unique vocabulary. It has
advanced technology such as fuel-cell cars and internet-like, real-time
global media. It has widespread use of hard-core drugs. It has a massive
self-aware computer that controls many everyday operations for all of
humanity worldwide. And it even has a woman with metal eyes (in this
case, chromed contact lenses).
The main difference (aside from the fact that Zanzibar came
out 16 years earlier than Neuromancer) is that it is less about the self-aware central
computer and more about humans coping with each other in a crazy,
overcrowded world. Brunner is bitingly sarcastic and cynical and, at the
same time, handles complex issues with a lot of sensitivity and
understanding.
Brunner’s main focus is how the loss of privacy
and property affects us psychologically and sociologically. Humans are social animals able to deal with each other pretty well...until we get overcrowded, and then we turn on each other. The world of
Zanzibar is full of violence: individual killing sprees, terrorism,
riots, and war. Many people try to escape from it all with drugs, most of
which are legal or at least tacitly allowed: everything from marijuana
to powerful, laboratory-synthesized hallucinogens with names like
Triptine and Skulbustium.
Brunner shows that the pressure
created by overpopulation both exacerbates the gap between rich and poor and,
at the same, binds them more closely. His message (sent primarily
through the character of the popular, cynical sociologist/commentator
Chad Mulligan) is that even though you may think you are rich, you are
not, really, if the rest of the world is horribly poor. And many elements of his analysis have come depressingly true; Mulligan
(presciently) points out that water is eleven times more expensive than it was fifty years
ago; that all our foods are prefabricated in factories; and that the
fanciest new building being built in the world is a jail.
And
throughout the whole book runs another brave, touchy debate about reproduction.
In an overpopulated world, choosing to have a child is itself a
political statement. There are a
million different ways to have a child: donor eggs or sperm,
externally-fertilized ova, adoption, cloning. Each option brings anxiety
and pain. And when the Yatakangis announce their cloning program, it
brings up new questions about tailored babies. Is it right to breed for
certain traits and against others? And do parents really want children
who are more advanced than them?
And whether or not you want a child, you still have to
deal with complex emotional issues. Some couples desperately want to have
a baby but are not allowed to because one partner has a bad genotype.
Some have good genotypes but are infertile. Some people have excellent
genotypes but don’t want children, and are constantly questioned (and
constantly question themselves) why they don’t. Brunner handles all of this with perceptiveness and sensitivity, as well as humor.
An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Cheeze Blog.
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