Stand on Zanzibar
"Originally published in 1968, Stand on Zanzibar was a breakthrough in science fiction storytelling technique, and a prophetic look at a dystopian 2010 that remains compelling today. Corporations have usurped democracy, ubiquitous information technology mediates human relationships, mass-marketed psychosomatic drugs keep billions docile, and genetic engineering is routine. Universal in reach, the world-system is out of control, and we are all its victims...and its creator"--Cover p. [4].
Stats for nerds
38recommend
92mentions
76people
2008–2026years
51% recommend45% neutral4% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- 20 years ago I read a The Guardian article about the "top geek novels". I immediately read a bunch of those.
Recently I managed to find the list again, and it's been endless pleasure:
- American Gods -- Neil Gaiman
- Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley
- The Colour of Magic -- Terry Pratchett
- Consider Phlebas -- Iain M Banks
- Cryptonomicon -- Neal Stephenson
- Cloud Atlas -- David Mitchell
- The Diamond Age -- Neal Stephenson
- The Dispossessed -- Ursula K Le Guin
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- Philip Dick
- Dune -- Frank Herbert
- Foundation -- Isaac Asimov
- Giles Goat-Boy -- John Barth
- Gravity's Rainbow -- Thomas Pynchon
- The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams
- I, Robot -- Isaac Asimov
- The Illuminatus! Trilogy -- Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
- The Left Hand of Darkness -- Ursula K Le Guin
- The Man in the High Castle -- Philip K Dick
- Microserfs -- Douglas Coupland
- Neuromancer -- William Gibson
- Nineteen Eighty-Four -- George Orwell
- Orlando -- Virgina Woolf
- The Shockwave Rider -- John Brunner
- Snow Crash -- Neal Stephenson
- Stand on Zanzibar -- John Brunner
- Stranger in a Strange Land -- Robert Heinlein
- Trouble with lichen - John Wyndham
- UBIK -- Philip Dick
- Watchmen -- Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
- Woman on the Edge of Time -- Marge Piercy
(I am creatively interpreting "The Colour of Magic" as "all Discworld", "Dune" as "the six Dune books", etc.)
- Stand on Zanzibar was so prescient it gave me goosebumps when I read it 5 years ago.
- The better prescient reference is John Brunner’s triad of The Shockwave Rider (origin of the computer virus, too!), The Sheep Look Up, and Stand on Zanzibar. They very much foreshadow the shallow pop star president, contempt for expertise, mass poverty, and incoherent direct action scenarios of technocracy/mass surveillance/prediction markets (shockwave), climate and pollution (the sheep), and population (Zanzibar). Great, if chilling stories.
They were written in the 60s and 70s but felt disturbingly predictive when I first read them in the 80s and even more so today.
(Big fan of both Ballard and Gibson too, though they are very different)
- > But then Gibson must have done some pretty in depth research for Neuromancer, right?
Isn't he on record that his documentation was listening to techies talking shop in bars?
> And then do you really want to harshly judge the book on that one slightly laughable thing about memory when, in other ways, it was incredibly forward looking and almost prophetic.
He seems to understand humans. Gibson's world and Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar are imo the most "prophetic" sf books written so far.
- +1 for Stross, Egan and the Bobiverse - I haven't read the others so will have a look, just wanted to add Stand on Zanzibar by Brunner, if the Bobiverse is there then MurderBot should be to.
- "Stand on Zanzibar" (1969 Hugo Award Winner) — John Brunner
Great book.
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The Sheep Look Up
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The Left Hand of Darkness
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2008–2026
Ursula K Le Guin
93 recommend · 206
