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Dhow, Zanzibar, 2005
Brunner suggested that by 2010, if everybody in the world were to stand shoulder-to-shoulder they would take up an area the size of Zanzibar. Photograph: Remi Benali/Corbis
Brunner suggested that by 2010, if everybody in the world were to stand shoulder-to-shoulder they would take up an area the size of Zanzibar. Photograph: Remi Benali/Corbis

Back to the Hugos: Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner

This article is more than 14 years old
John Brunner's dystopian vision of 2010 may not be completely accurate – but his grungy world is brilliantly described

There are huge inequalities in wealth and resources between rich and poor nations. There are equally unfair distributions within those nations. Vaguely sinister corporations are making vast profits thanks to the algorithmic predictions of their computer systems and they have a turnover that dwarfs plenty of African states. Most people in the developed world are unhappy with their lot, but are kept under control thanks to a steady diet of tranquillising drugs and reality TV.

Sound familiar? If it does, a fair number of John Brunner's predictions for 2010 (the year in which he set his 1969 Hugo winner Stand on Zanzibar) can be counted correct. Of course, he didn't get everything right. In the novel, there's only one giant computer instead of a world wide web – a computer that is cooled by helium, "falls in the megabrain range" and prints out its findings on green and white computer paper. Rather than vacuous celebrities, the stars of the reality TV programmes are the viewers themselves, who have uploaded images of themselves that get beamed back to them doing exciting things in exotic locations. The title, meanwhile, refers to Brunner's dire – and thankfully not quite accurate – predictions about the population problem he thought we'd be suffering – and the drastic measures we'd have to take as a result.

Apparently when Brunner was young it was thought that if everybody in the world were to stand shoulder-to-shoulder they would take up an area the size of the Isle of Wight. Looking at population growth figures, Brunner postulated that by 2010 the same trick would necessitate an island the size of Zanzibar. Hence the title. He also suggests that the resultant over-crowding would necessitate severe eugenic controls – and all the social problems that you might expect when a large percentage of the population are forcibly prevented from breeding, everybody else is limited in the number of offspring they can produce and nobody can have a house of their own because there isn't enough room.

So it isn't that much like the real 2010 – but that shouldn't be taken as a failure of imagination. Brunner has created a convincingly grungy world, where (brilliantly described) riots can kick off for next to no reason, the state can program docile stoners to become lethal killers, and turning up to a party in the wrong costume can see you daubed in tomato ketchup, shaved bald and forced to crawl around the floor in front of other guests and then made to piss yourself. It's easy to see why the book is often cited as an early precursor to cyber punk.

What isn't so easy is wading through the thing. Brunner has to be admired for his experimental verve. He tries to present his story through a non-linear narrative based on multiple characters and viewpoints, inspired by John Dos Passos's USA trilogy. Sometimes this works well. There's a great moment when a bishop has a substance called Truth or Consequences smeared on his pulpit rail and starts revealing his true opinion about organised religion. More often, these sections drag heavily. There's little pleasure – or benefit – in overlong extracts from conversations, imaginary TV shows, radio reports and – most heinously – the collected works of a 2010 philosopher called Chad C Mulligan.

This Mulligan character also appears more often than is welcome in other sections of the book, where he reveals himself to be a bore of a type that I'm now coming to recognise as a 1960s SF trope: the iconoclastic, bombastic cross between Timothy Leary and L Ron Hubbard who isn't half as eloquent (or a quarter as wise) as he supposes and takes up great swaths of text in outlining the author's own philosophies.

Fortunately, when Mulligan isn't clogging them up, these sections are generally more engaging. In contrast to all the experimental strangeness, they are relatively straightforward pulp fiction narratives concerning an unwilling spy's attempts to get a geneticist capable of producing supermen out of his native country (a thinly disguised version of Indonesia that is locked in conflict with the US) and a corporation's attempt to take over an African state. They're gripping and allow Brunner to express his most interesting ideas regarding corporate ethics, freewill, the question of whether scientific progress is always good for humanity and the conflict between the individual and the state. Together with the skilfully realised future dystopia, they make sticking with this slab of a book a rewarding if not always pleasurable experience.

Certainly, I'd recommend reading it – and doing it in 2010, before Brunner's future recedes too far into the past.

Next time: The Left Hand Of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin. Excellent! 

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