The Sheep Look Up

by
John Brunner

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The Sheep Look Up

by John Brunner

4.03 of 5 stars 4.03 · rating details · 1,604 ratings · 123 reviews

An enduring classic, this book offers a dramatic and prophetic look at the potential consequences of the escalating destruction of Earth. In this nightmare society, air pollution is so bad that gas masks are commonplace. Infant mortality is up, and everyone seems to suffer from some form of ailment. The water is polluted, and only the poor drink from the tap. The governmen

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Mass Market Paperback, 0 pages

Published April 12th 1976 by Ballantine Books (first published 1972)

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Feb 11, 2009 Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Human beings alive in 2009. Every one of them.

Shelves: black-comedy, literature-disguised-as-science-fic

Stop you’re killing me!
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David ”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...more

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Oct 25, 2007 rgb rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anybody

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...more 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 full bloom, insects have evolved significant resistance to insecticides and are starting to overwhelm the huge industrial farmers, organized crime runs nearly everything as a "shadow government" looking out only for itself. I mean, it is really spooky.

On top of this general background, a load of food (produced as one would imagine by an industrialist with political connections who makes a bundle on the deal) is delivered to a small village in war-torn Africa. Upon eating it, the villagers go mad -- they die, kill one another horribly, have strange hallucinations. The government blames the United States, of course, which blandly denies it and the book moves on to a stunning conclusion (with all SORTS of plot that I'm going to omit).

When you first start to read this book it feels a bit odd. Brunner uses a very strange literary style, one that he more or less invented and used (as far as I know) only in two novels -- Stand on Zanzibar (where it didn't work, at least for me) and The Sheep Look Up, where it is pretty amazing. His story consists of a staccato burst of short chapters presented as anything from straight prose to journalistic blurbs. The chapters at first seem inchoate, scattered, disconnected, but as the story evolves they are gradually, smoothly, wound together until they form a completely coherent whole and the book moves through to its inevitable conclusion.

Given that our world of today corresponds with Brunner's vision to an absolutely terrifying extent, all readers should pay careful attention to that conclusion. Evolution in action indeed (although that's a line from another excellent SF novel I'll review at another time and place...;-).

rgb(less)

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Dec 10, 2007 Amber rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Yes

This novel is scary.
Rarely has a novel actually made me concerned about what is happening in our society.

In the book, the world is basically going to shit, people cannot breathe the air, basic infections are rampant, old pollutions are killing people but the government/corporations are covering it up. The only people who can live healthily are the rich.

The story has is ominously correct on topics such as organic farmer, vegetables making individuals sick, corporations profiting from healthy alt...more

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Jan 04, 2008 Eric rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Eric by: The Bearded Triffid

Thus far, a brilliant, harrowing read. Brunner's 1972 novel portrays a dystopia in which pollution is almost certainly pitching an oblivious humanity towards extinction. Filter masks are ubiquitous for those who brave the outdoors. "Do Not Drink Days" discourage the use of tapwater. Crop shortages caused by pesticide-immune pests threaten global famine. Superbugs tear through the population, resistant to every antibiotic thrown at them.

For every single "prediction" Brunner gets wrong, there's so...more

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Nov 26, 2007 Doug L rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone who can read depressing stuff without blowing their brains out

Shelves: books-i-ve-read

Was written in 1972, but reads like everything that scares you about 2007 -- from pointless U.S. wars in far-off countries to poisoned air and water to overpriced "health" food -- right down to the increasingly authoritarian U.S government with a smirking dimbulb for a President. I'm only halfway through it and it's already giving me nightmares.

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Aug 22, 2011 Alex Sarll added it · review of another edition

John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up was released in 1972, and is the story of a near-future humanity sleepwalking into ecological collapse. You can see where I'm going with this, can't you? And yet, if the only problem with his Stand on Zanzibar was that its dystopian vision of circa now was actually too optimistic*, then here he's a little too far the other way. Yes, we can all recognise this world:
"The government couldn't go on forever bailing out mismanaged giant corporations , even though it wa...more

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Mar 05, 2009 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2007, fiction, sci-fi

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Apr 13, 2013 Nancy Oakes rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy

"We're divorced from reality, in the same way as the Romans went on thinking of themselves as invulnerable and unchallengeable long after it ceased to be true. The most awful warnings are staring us in the face..." (207)

As usual, you can stick with the condensed version or click here for the longer one.

Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with a work of didactic fiction if it's done well and has other things going for it. In that sense, The Sheep Look Up is one of the best works o...more "We're divorced from reality, in the same way as the Romans went on thinking of themselves as invulnerable and unchallengeable long after it ceased to be true. The most awful warnings are staring us in the face..." (207)

As usual, you can stick with the condensed version or click here for the longer one.

Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with a work of didactic fiction if it's done well and has other things going for it. In that sense, The Sheep Look Up is one of the best works of environmentally-based fiction I've ever read.

With only a few pockets of exception, the United States is a veritable cesspool. The seas are polluted beyond repair, acid rain in New York eats holes in people's clothing, the air is so bad that filtermasks (sold in vending machines) are required just to be outside, and "Don't Drink" the water alerts are common. Trash lays out, uncollected, spawning rats and other pests; exterminators are way too busy to come to one's home at short notice. Health problems are widespread, stds and other diseases normally treated by drugs have developed antibiotic-resistant strains, and parents whose children are born with only minor ailments or physical problems are considered extremely fortunate. The American government is run by a leader known as "Prexy," whose policy is one of blatant denial and blaming all of America's ills on terrorists. One man, Austin Train, knows the truth -- and he is public enemy number one where the government is concerned so is forced to go underground. Train is a committed environmentalist whose works have been studied and followed by others who have settled in commune-like places called wats where they put into practice what we'd call today "going green." Train is a peaceful person but many who have taken up his cause for a cleaner America are not. The "Trainites," as they call themselves, believe in more violent means of trying to "fix" things, something Austin Train would never condone.

The story in this novel is related via a number of varying plotlines and narratives that seem choppy at first but actually have a rhythm and a purpose, all melding together beautifully as the novel progresses. It begins with the bizarre death of Decimus Jones, a friend of Austin Train, on an LA freeway. His strange death becomes an event that will eventually draw together the stories of every character in this novel in a roundabout way, all of whom are caught up in the country's growing state of emergency in their own fashion. Punctuating their ongoing stories are bits of speeches, news reports, poems, songs, television-show transcripts and scenes from outside the country, where the army is at war with its current enemy in Latin America. While this strange format may seem a bit disconcerting and jarring, once into the story, you are stuck as you eagerly flip pages to see how things are going to end.

Old this book may be, published some 40+ years ago, but it is still very much worth the read. The author has this way of thoroughly unsettling and disorienting his readers while keeping things moving at a fast pace, all the while making his point about what our future might look like in the not too-distant future. Pooh-pooh the didacticism if you so choose, which many people do, but imho, this is a novel that everyone who cares about and doesn't just give lip service to a better future might want to read. Don't forget the afterword -- the nonfiction, which should scare you even more than the novel did. Highly recommended. (less)

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Mar 14, 2012 Jess rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

http://lightningtreelive.wordpress.co...

Are you willing to be led out of your comfort zone? If so, how far out?? A relevant question, I assure you, because John Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up is a book that wrenches you so far out of that zone you won’t even remember what comfortable felt like. And then it beats you up. THE DESCENT INTO HELL, reads one of its chapter subtitles, but it may as well be the subtitle of the entire novel.

Reading Brunner’s book is like plunging oneself into a cesspool – a...more

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Mar 04, 2012 Remo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novela, ciencia-ficcion, 2008

El rebaño ciego está escrita en 1972, y eso hay que tenerlo presente a lo largo de la novela, muchas veces, porque parece una novela escrita el año pasado. John Brunner (1934–1995) construye aquí un vasto mosaico de lo que puede llegar a ser el mundo si se sigue abusando de la contaminación desaforada.

Entendámonos. No llega del todo a ser un libro catastrofista al estilo “arrepentíos pecadores”, y al mismo tiempo nos muestra el peor panorama posible para la raza humana en un mundo gris, contamin...more El rebaño ciego está escrita en 1972, y eso hay que tenerlo presente a lo largo de la novela, muchas veces, porque parece una novela escrita el año pasado. John Brunner (1934–1995) construye aquí un vasto mosaico de lo que puede llegar a ser el mundo si se sigue abusando de la contaminación desaforada.

Entendámonos. No llega del todo a ser un libro catastrofista al estilo “arrepentíos pecadores”, y al mismo tiempo nos muestra el peor panorama posible para la raza humana en un mundo gris, contaminado, tóxico y dañino. La novela narra las vidas de unas decenas de personajes que intentan básicamente sobrevivir en unos EE.UU. (el autor es británico) donde hace mucho tiempo que no se puede ir a la playa, donde hace demasiado tiempo que no se puede salir a la calle sin mascarilla, donde las plagas son inmunes a la inmensa mayoría de los insecticidas, que de tanto usarse mal las han inmunizado. Un mundo horrible, muy bien descrito, sin sentimentalismos, son simples descripciones de cómo son (serían, según el autor) las cosas.

La novela gira en torno a Austin Train, sin llegar a él, pues aparece muy poco. Austin Train es un ecologista al que la sociedad ha puesto en el ojo del huracán sin que él mismo estuviera muy por la labor. Miles de personas se autodenominan los trainitas y emprenden acciones de guerrilla urbana por todo el país, para intentar que la gente deje de usar coches que contaminan, o que dejen de usar productos en cuya elaboración se contamina más de la cuenta.

Uno de los pasajes tragicómicos de la novela tiene lugar cuando un grupo de trainitas secuestra al hijo de una multinacional y como único castigo le dan a beber agua del grifo. Esto equivale casi a condenarlo a muerte.

El único fallo “clamoroso”, a pesar de tratarse de una novela, es que el autor habla de que de un tiempo a esta parte cada vez hay más terremotos en Denver, dejando caer que se debe a la mano del hombre. Ni siquiera en una obra de ciencia ficción soft queda bien.

Por lo demás, cuesta a veces seguir la vertiginosa historia, que salta con enorme vitalidad entre personajes que al principio nada tienen que ver entre ellos. Pero está muy bien escrita y el autor da multitud de argumentos –sin darlos explícitamente, sino describiendo sus efectos en un futuro cercano– para poner cuidado en el uso que hacemos de los recursos naturales. Es un libro ecologista escrito cuando Greenpeace estaba aún en pañales.

Mejor aún, viendo el estupendo estilo de esta novela, a uno le entran muchas ganas de leer otros libros del mismo autor como Todos sobre Zanzíbar, sobre la superpoblación mundial, y El jinete de la Onda de choque (1969), en el que se profetiza, cosa muy poco común, la aparición del ordenador personal y se habla de “hiperenlaces” y “multimedia”. Recuerden, 1969.(less)

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Oct 22, 2011 Ken added it · review of another edition

This is a very fine novel which features a dystopian ecological view of the world in the near future. Brunner's projection is of an earth where the seas are so filled with trash and pollution that they are covered with a thin sheet of dirty plastic substance, the air quality is so bad that filter masks are required, and everyone suffers from various ailments and allergic reactions tied to the ecological nightmare. The structure of the book is a bit unwieldy, however this allows one to skim throu...more

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Apr 20, 2009 Hank rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: apocalypse, unexpectedly-awesome, dystopian

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is a classic dying-environment near-future novel from the early 70s. The Mediterranean Sea is deader than the Great Salt Lake, most of Africa is defoliated. What few crops that still grow, despite insane levels of pollution from wars and corporate greed, are being eaten at the root by insecticide-resistant pests. Filter masks are the only thing standing between Americans and miserable lung diseases. Dose after dose of antibiotics are necessary to cure minor infections and rampant STDs. All...more This is a classic dying-environment near-future novel from the early 70s. The Mediterranean Sea is deader than the Great Salt Lake, most of Africa is defoliated. What few crops that still grow, despite insane levels of pollution from wars and corporate greed, are being eaten at the root by insecticide-resistant pests. Filter masks are the only thing standing between Americans and miserable lung diseases. Dose after dose of antibiotics are necessary to cure minor infections and rampant STDs. All children born in the US have something wrong with them, from minor asthma to terrible deformity. You can't drink the water. You can't eat the food. Hundreds of years of not giving a fuck is coming back around to bite the us in our collective asses.

We're not there yet. Our water's actually doing a little better than it was in 1972. But you want personal air filters? Smell it. You want antibiotic resistant pathogens? Howdy, Mr. Staph Infection. Government brutality, corporate sins, Brunner knew what he was talking about, and it scares the crap out of me.

But without a story, it's all just Future Shock. And damned if he didn't tell the story brilliantly. He used a cut and paste style, short chunks of a dozen people's lives, moving across the world to show the damage and our response to it. The Trainites (predating and foretelling the coming of the Earth Liberation Front) riot and smash in the name of the environment. The rich ignore the damage they cause, even to their own sons and daughters. The middle class just try to stay afloat with water filters and dreams. Starving Africans are poisoned into madness by the food sent from the US to keep them alive. Brunner wasn't afraid to kill off his main characters, either. Nobody's safe when you've got too many rats and not enough maze.

"Leading" the USA is a president known only as Prexy. I hear he was modeled after then-Gov Reagan, but the media quotes from him sprinkled throughout the text sure sound like another leader known for going by a nickname.

On foreign war orphans being adopted by Americans: "I guess if they can't break down the front door they have to sneak around the back."
On a scientific report showing rising IQs in third world countries and falling IQs in the US due to pollution and lack of nutrious foods in developed nations: "Well, if they're so smart why aren't they clever?"
On Hondorans fighting against American invasion: "If you bite the hand that feeds you, you're apt to get a mouthful of fist." And so on.

final thoughts: If you match Gibson's ideas about current and coming technology with Brunner's image of what corporate and national greed and overpopulation can do to the world itself, you've pretty much got my biggest nightmare. How likely is it? Too likely. (less)

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Mar 08, 2012 Natasha Hurley-Walker rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

By turns insightful and terrifying, this book was impossible to put down. Every time I (quite literally) came up for air, I looked at the world around me and thought, "At least it's not that bad here... yet." Combining real and fictional newspaper articles, ancient hymns and poems, and a series of interlocking character narratives not unlike Infinite Jest (minus the hyperbolic prose and enjoyable tangents), 'Sheep' mourns the the selfishness of mankind and the insufferable greed that drives us,...more

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Jan 04, 2008 Rodney rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Brunner is not a great writer, but he had a big and very prescient imagination. Three or four decades before climate change and global warming were the general public's mental maps, Brunner grimly fantasized a grossly polluted, resource-exhausted world that is not only killing the earth but whatever's left of humanity's soul as well. Would that this book had been read massively and influentially as a wake-up call when it was first published. Is it too late now?

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Jan 11, 2012 Dave Lefevre rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classic-sf

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...more

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Jun 18, 2011 Brs36 rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was actually closer to a 3.75 but definitely not a 3, so I gave it a four. The writing itself isn't all that great. The sentences are awkward at times and some bits of British English creep in to what supposed to be American characters. I actually enjoyed the dated 70s language (cat, fuzz) I also didn't care for the flat characters. There is the rich, pompous business mogul, the radical youth trying to change the world, the female investigative journalist, the now-I-see-the-light character,...more

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Feb 27, 2010 Jerome rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: disaster junkies and the eco-conscious

Shelves: library

I always get a grim sort of joy out of reading apocalypse novels. //The Sheep Look Up// is neither of the Divine, zombie, or nasty-unwanted-thing-from-outer-space variety, but rather, an apocalypse brought about by humanity's inability to keep from "soiling his own nest." Although originally published in the early 70s, the novel feels eerily current. The novel takes place in the "near future" United States, where there is ever-increasing industrialization and consumption unchecked by environment...more

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Mar 29, 2013 Mmyoung rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As much as I wanted to appreciate or even admire this book I ultimately found it to be disappointing. Two things in particular stand out to me: first, the ability of the author to imagine almost any changes in American society except that of women moving out of the home and the few professions already open to them in the early 1970s and the second was his crude stereotyping of both the 'heroes' and the 'villains.' There are no motivations other than stupidity and greed provided for the behaviour...more

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May 26, 2012 Sara rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: futuristic-fiction, love-it-hate-it, dystopian

Gah, dystopian fiction is so depressing; yet when it's done well, it is such a good read. This is one such book. It came up on my Goodreads recommendations, and I'm surprised I hadn't encountered it before, since I've been reading a lot of science fiction & futuristic fiction in the past few years. I hadn't read or heard anything about the author before, which usually makes me a little wary. However, once I started this book, I didn't want to put it down.

In the novel, a company called Bamber...more Gah, dystopian fiction is so depressing; yet when it's done well, it is such a good read. This is one such book. It came up on my Goodreads recommendations, and I'm surprised I hadn't encountered it before, since I've been reading a lot of science fiction & futuristic fiction in the past few years. I hadn't read or heard anything about the author before, which usually makes me a little wary. However, once I started this book, I didn't want to put it down.

In the novel, a company called Bamberly Hydroponics has created and is distributing a food product called Nutripon. Several batches of it are sent overseas as humanitarian aid; shortly thereafter, terrible sickness and mental illness strikes those countries. Meanwhile, the pollution and contamination are growing stateside; the water supply, being diverted from rural areas into the city, is recycled without proper sanitation and perpetuates a cycle of sickness that is deadly for the very young, very old, and poor; acid rain, crop failures, and transmissible disease compound the problems. Still, the wealthy business owners, such as Mr. Bamberly and his officers deny any implication of wrongdoing in the nationwide problems.

This book chronicles one year in an ambiguously future America; technology is not described at length, but the economy is faltering, food supplies are either contaminated or prohibitively expensive, air quality is so poor that you cannot be outside without a filtermask for more than a few minutes, the rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer. It all seems so conspiracy theoretic, but on second glance, it's not too hard to see our own situation growing into this chaotic state -- the "Puritan" health food craze, the use of military force in developing countries, the manipulation of food and water supplies, the corporate zeal for profit at the expense of humanity.

This is one of those books akin to "1984" -- you shake your head and think, "That will never happen here," -- yet it is happening all around you.(less)

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Jul 17, 2008 Kim rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In the past few years, this book has come to my mind more often than not. The destruction we have slowly, and more and more quickly, have brought to this planet and our blind acceptance of it and the results of our neglect are all written here. Too true to be fiction.

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Jan 12, 2011 Maria rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What a depressing book. Have you ever read a book where everyone's life is just so horrible that you hope everybody dies? This is one of those books.

That being said, the story starts getting better when people do start dying. There are a lot of characters because a lot of people need to die in a lot of ways.

But the book is important. Its predictions for the environment, the green movement, healthcare issues, and politics are eerily close to how things are going in the real world. If everything h...more

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Feb 04, 2013 Marc Goldstein rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Another dire warning from Brunner. Sheep is grimmer than Stand on Zanzibar. Set in a future much closer to our own time than the scenario painted in Stand on Zanzibar, the world described in Sheep is less fantastic and more familiar. The story is bitterly satirical, but the goal of the satire isn’t humor, it’s shock. Brunner’s portrait of a corrupt, polluted world on the verge of ecological implosion is startlingly plausible and terrifyingly recognizable. You can feel the walls closing in as you...more

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Jul 27, 2009 julia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Brunner somehow manages rising and falling tension while simultaneously denying even a moment of relief for the characters from their nightmare existence. He uses clipped but descriptive snapshots to reveal a not particularly distant future that is a living hell, of our own making. Brunner's world is devastated by pollution and waste, white supremacist imperialism, homophobia and sexism.

Loved the book, my main complaint is his portrayal of women (ie: describing their hyper-sexualized attire with...more

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Feb 25, 2009 Gil rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Brunner's bleak look at a future that never happened is a curio. Set in America but obviously written by a Brit, its quaint attempts at tough American talk are completely undercut by the writer's native tongue. So many things are wrong with this book, so much is dated (and was the day it was published in 1972) that sometimes it's hard to see what's right about it. The results of indifferent pollution are well done, but basically this is just a setup for his lectures on what we've done to the pla...more

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May 06, 2012 Saul rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

I really liked what Brunner was trying to do here. Awareness of the environment and the problems caused by the overuse of chemicals is even today a very important topic. However, the author breaks a lot of rules and pushes the reader to keep track of things far beyond what is normally seen in books. Don't get me wrong, Brunner is using cutting edge literary devices (or so it could be argued) which are quite interesting to some degree. But in the end, I found it very hard to read. Too many charac...more

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Feb 15, 2013 Trey Howard rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A hauntingly prescient tale of environmental destruction in the US. John Brunner does a fantastic job at examining multiple aspects of a world in which the environment is so degraded that the seas are dead, and filter masks are a necessary part of life in California.

This book is very much a product of its time, with an emphasis on racial tensions, countercultural movements, the ghosts of war in Asia, and insurgencies throughout Latin America. Interestingly, through the character of Prexy, Brunne...more

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Mar 18, 2012 Robert rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I couldn't recommend this book more highly. It took me a bit at first to be drawn in to the character's; there are a lot of them. But what first pulled me in was how prophetic this book is! Published in 1972!! Global climate change, finacial greed leads to meltdown, an ineffectual and corupt government, a media that is both apathetic, and subserviant. Don't want to give too much away...it's a great read even if you're only looking for entertainment....the flow and pace of the story, the quick ed...more

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Apr 23, 2013 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, alternative-future, dystopia, favorites, horror, sci-fi, survival

The sheep look up is a prophetic environmental disaster novel based on the human compulsion to advance at all costs. Brunner’s vision is bleak, the water is undrinkable, the air is thick with harmful gasses, disease is rife and political tensions are high.

Written with a very individual style, the story is delivered through short, sharp, snippets from various viewpoints which are woven between other forms of media such as news reports, in a way in which deeply immerses the reader in his creation....more

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Dec 06, 2012 Andrea Bampi rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

"Una ventata di ottimismo" :)
Astenersi dalla lettura se si è un pò depressi ed in particolare se si hanno sensazioni negative sullo stato di salute del nostro pianeta...
Brunner non è certo noto per la leggerezza e spensieratezza delle sue opere, è un esponente duro e puro della Scuola Sociologica, per di più britannica; ma qui si porta decisamente ai suoi estremi.
Per i miei gusti, anche troppo: la narrativa "di protesta" è un'arte difficile da padroneggiare, perchè rischia sempre di cadere schia...more

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Aug 06, 2012 Mary rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: have-ebook, read-since-joining-goodreads

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...more 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 1972, before some of the gains of the sexual revolution and civil rights had been realized and when the population of the United States was about 100 million less, some of the words and attitudes seem a bit out of date, i.e. use of fuzz or pig for police; the remarks Peg, as a female reporter, has to endure just because she is good-looking; what is considered wealthy, the price of things and the scale of the economy, etc. Kind of like Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies who, because he is transported to the future from the 60s, puts a pinky to his mouth and demands a ransom of One Million Dollars! to save the world from destruction (and everyone giggles).

The events that take place, though, don’t seem out of place at all with current times. They seem eerily prescient. Any one of the increasingly common news items and disasters in the story could happen, and do, happen every day now in 2012.....pollution, boil water notices, accidental poisonings, acid rain, ruined rivers, streams and oceans, birth defects linked to medications, antibiotic-resistant diseases, endless wars, riots, crop disasters, increasing rate of earthquakes, deforestation, extinction of species, rise of corporate controlled government and total collapse of the environment. The whole world is rotting and the core of that rot is the United States with its population of proud, polluting, entitled, careless, clueless millions with their attitudes of we are the best, our way is the only right way, everything was put on this earth just for us, etc. Or so says the author.

The book is written in chapters of varying length, some just a few words, a poem, a sign or a press release. A little disconcerting at first but it all adds up to a concise picture and the inevitable conclusion from Austin Train and others that the only way to cure the Earth’s ills is (view spoiler). Great book.

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About John Brunner

The late John Brunner was perhaps as well known for much of his career in the US as in the UK. A leftwing activist, with particular connections to the peace movement, much of his best and most mature fiction is involved in a complex analysis of social trends and where they will take us--novels like Stand on Zanzibar which deals with overpopulation, among other things, and The Sheep Look Up, which...more

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“We are told that "the meek shall inherit the earth." It follows that the meek are chosen of God. I shall try to be meek, not because I want the earth - you can keep it, after the way you've fucked it around it's not worth having - but because I too should like to be chosen of God. QED.

Besides, I like animals better than you bastards.” — 3 people liked it

“Next, the stalled cars had their windows opaqued with a cheap commercial compound used for etching glass, and slogans were painted on their doors. Some were long: THIS VEHICLE IS A DANGER TO LIFE AND LIMB. Many were short: IT STINKS! But the commonest of all was the universally known catchphrase: STOP, YOU'RE KILLING ME!” — 1 person liked it

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