The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner

The Sheep Look Up

I actually finished this one last Sunday, but I wanted to mull it over a little before writing about it. 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.

America 2014 by Jonathan Greenberg writing as Dawn Blair

America 2014

Oh good Lord, that was terrible. I mean, truly truly bad. Oh sure, a few details gave me a chuckle (I especially liked renaming the US "God's United States"), but overall this wasn't worth the effort Greenberg put into writing it. And it sure as hell wasn't worth reading.

I mean, come on. Either go ahead and use the names of current politicians or don't, but things like George Blush, Dick Croney, and John Flashcroft only serve to kick us out of the already-thin plot. And what a plot it is, as tortured as the unfortunate characters themselves. As I mentioned in a previous post, the villeins are such broad puppets they might just as well have said "boogity boogity!", stuck their fingers in their ears, and waggled them at the hapless prisoners who are hauled off for "ultimate rehabilitation" or whatever silly euphemism Greenburg chose for his death camps.

The female characters only exist to rescue the "hero" or pop in and out of bed with him. The underground is entirely made up of thinly drawn cyberpunk hackers and neo-hippies, and every single one of them smokes weed like it's their jobs. The employees of the government are all rabid, grinning psychos who only come onto the page to torture, rape, and taunt the "good guys".

final thoughts:I understand that the author gave away free copies of America 2014 on college campuses when it came out in 2004 as a way to bring attention to the evils done by Bush's administration. I'm as left wing as they come, and I still think those college kids who actually read a free copy failed to get their money's worth.

judicial attitude

I'm in the middle of America 2014, which is honestly pretty cheesy. I mean, President George "Blush"? But I'll get to that when I post the full book blog in a day or two.

Right now, though, I want to discuss a bit that I find really unrealistic and lazy. The main character's been hauled into court through no real fault of his own (a common scene in dystopian fiction). He gets no lawyer, he barely gets to hear the charges, and things are clearly about to go very bad for Mr. Everyman - so far, I'm with the author, no problem. It's not that far a stroll from Guantanamo to kangaroo courts right here in the US of A.

It's when, upon receiving a plea of "not guilty" (something, we must assume, that happens constantly when the government is arresting people willy-nilly and throwing them in front of the court), the judge proceeds to call our protagonist "queerbait" and then lifts his skirts slightly, rises, and skips daintily around his chair like Homer Simpson making fun of an Englishman that I call shenanigans.

Look, Americans (and, indeed, people the world 'round, I assume) like to believe that we are doing the Right Thing, even when this is obviously not the case. A court that is nothing but a pretense to get rid of trouble makers and undesirables will appear MORE staid and officious. The less reasonable the judge's actions, the more reasonable he will want to appear. He won't want to come across as a bully or a puppet - he will convince himself that he's doing his best For God, For Country, and Against Terror.

Not only did that ring false, it's lazy writing. Our hero starts as a member in good standing of the Nationalist Party, willing to accept and parrot the party line. Despite a few misgivings, he accepts that his government is trying to help and protect him. At this point in the story, he should be questioning himself as well as the system. He should be thinking that the system could not be wrong, so he must be. But when the judge bullies him from the bench like an ignorant third grader, that takes all the guesswork out of it.

Reading these one after another really is sharpening my perception, I think. Or making me pickier. Not sure.