“Stand on Zanzibar” (1968) by John Brunner is a science fiction novel set in 2010. In fact the action starts on May 3rd:
For toDAY third of MAY twenty-TEN ManhatTEN reports mild spring-type weather under the Fuller Dome. Ditto on the General Technics Plaza.
I first read those words when I was 14 and now here we are!
In Brunner’s 2010:
- All the whales are dead.
- Manhattan is under a dome to keep the air clean.
- Parents with genetic diseases are not allowed to have children.
- A computer has been built with more intelligence than any human being.
- Smoking is outlawed while certain psychedelic drugs are not.
- Homophobia is rare in rich Western countries where many go both ways.
- People live on the moon.
- Sexism is still taken for granted.
- The Third World is still being screwed by the West, particularly by large companies. It is still the scene of revolutions.
- The Soviet Union and communism have not fallen, yet the cold war seems to be over.
- The Roman Catholic Church has split in two over birth control
- America still undertakes huge civil engineering projects (like the Fuller Dome)
- Picture phones in rich countries
The main things he got wrong:
- The overload of the earth is not as bad as he imagined – even though it does have twice as many people
- The rise of feminism
- How the computer would become a part of daily life like the car and the telephone.
Unlike most science fiction, two of the main characters are black and racism and neocolonialism matter to the plot.
The book seems to be more about the 1960s than the future – 2010 is just 1968 driven to extremes. The world we would have had if the 1960s never ended.
Still it is a wonderful read. And that is in spite of the plot, which becomes slow and lost towards the end. I forget most of it, so no spoilers, but from what I remember General Technics, an American company, wants to buy Beninia, a poor African country. It promises to free its people of poverty but there is something secret Beninia has that will make the company rich beyond its dreams, something Beninia is too poor and backwards to take advantage of. The president of Beninia cannot be bought off but then finds himself in a moral quandary.
What makes the book great is not the story but how Brunner paints the future in such an interesting way, a way that makes you feel like you are there.
He does it through the Innis Mode, an idea he got from Marshall McLuhan and John Dos Passos. Instead of writing the story in chapters of dialogue and action told from one point of view he makes the chapters short and in between puts other stuff: ads, bits from the newspaper, stuff overheard at parties, statistics, excerpts from books of the period, short pieces on characters and background and so on. It gives you different views on the same world and makes it more you-are-there.
See also:
- McLuhan
- The Bechdel Test and Race – this book passes the test but just barely
- Mighty Whitey – the book could be seen as a satire on Mighty Whitey stories
- Nigeria – it and Shell are the closest thing 2010 has to General Technics and Beninia. But oil is old tech and Nigeria’s leaders are not as wise and good as the president of Beninia
- science fiction and fantasy writers I have posted on:
This sounds like an amazing read. I have to find it.
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Sounds interesting, I like reading about what people of the past thought how the future (our present) would be
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Excellent to remember this book and particularly on this day!
Ironically enough, however, a lot of sci-fi passes the Bechdel test. Most of Heinlein’s books, just for starters. The problem with race in sci-fi is that many of the characters act exactly as white middle-class Americans, though painted in different skin colors. This is such a dominant theme in sci-fi that many readers don’t even notice what color the characters are.
For example, off the top of your head (and no peeking at wikipedia or other sources!), what color or race was Johnnie Rico in Heinlein’s famous book Starship Troopers?
May the fourth be with you!
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Sounds like a cool read…I might add it to my “list”
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Whoa! Hardcopy @ Amazon for $175.00. Cheaper format available, but wow.
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I’m pretty sure that if you dig around, you can probably find an e-book version on the net, Temple.
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Depends on the copyright being expired. Go to Abe books:
http://www.abebooks.com/search/an/john+brunner/tn/stand+on+zanzibar
You can get a copy(used) as cheap as a dollar. Of course this will be a used copy and the price goes up according to the edition.
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F#$%, man, when is Abagond gonna review some BLACK sci-fi authors?
Three suggestions? Octavia Butler, Steve Barnes and Samuel R. Delaney.
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Prince had some insights as well…
I was dreamin’ when I wrote this
Forgive me if it goes astray
But when I woke up this mornin’
Coulda sworn it was judgment day
The sky was all purple,
there were people runnin’ everywhere
Tryin’ to run from the destruction,
U know I didn’t even care
say say two thousand zero zero party over,
oops out of time
So tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1999
I listened to that in the 80’s and was inspired 🙂
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Too busy to read — where’s the movie?
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@hernieth
Thnx for the link. One priced @ $2.99.
@thad
I did check Google Book.
Tananarive Due, another good writer of that genre.
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Shame on you, Patricia.
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Isn’t Tanarive Steve Barne’s wife?
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By far one of my favorite science fiction works of all time — and quite daring for the time. But yes, it’s not a “plot” book — it’s a world building work and a FULLY immersive one at that dealing with some of the key issues of the day — it was published in response to a famous work, the Population Bomb which predicted the type of population growth he describes (thankfully that didn’t happen!). You should try out some of his follow up masterpieces — The Sheep Look Up, Shockwave RIder (the first novel to posit a computer virus), and The Jagged Orbit.
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I think i have read this book when i was young, tho , i’m not really sure now about the plot.
I remember being pleased to read about black protagonist in a scifi book and that was the first time i heard or read the term nieblank .
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>>The problem with race in sci-fi is that many of the characters act exactly as white middle-class Americans, though painted in different skin colors. This is such a dominant theme in sci-fi that many readers don’t even notice what color the characters are.
For example, off the top of your head (and no peeking at wikipedia or other sources!), what color or race was Johnnie Rico in Heinlein’s famous book Starship Troopers?<<
Rico was Filipino, as were his friends Carmen and Carl. There were several clues early on, although the clincher came at the end when he revealed Magsaysay as a national hero and his native language as Tagalog.
The protagonist of Heinlein's "Tunnel in the Sky" is also black (American black, but not culturally African-American…he did not act African-American).
However, I'm not sure how even the best-meaning white writer in the 50s can predict how black people will act in the distant future. Unless they're doing something dystopic or fall into the Star Trek Ethnic Fallacy (where there still be identifiable ethnic groups and even local accents among humans who mate with aliens), I think it's a hard problem to solve logically.
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Yes, BUT, the POINT of the black protagonist in Stand on Zanzibar is that he acts white — John Brunner is purposefully setting him up that way — and his name is Norman….
In the extreme over-population of Brunner’s future world all racial categories have become unimportant since they are unable to maintain their individuality….
And this is the late late 60s…
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However, I’m not sure how even the best-meaning white writer in the 50s can predict how black people will act in the distant future. Unless they’re doing something dystopic or fall into the Star Trek Ethnic Fallacy (where there still be identifiable ethnic groups and even local accents among humans who mate with aliens), I think it’s a hard problem to solve logically.
Agreed, but then again, many of them did exactly that, didn’t they? I mean, they portrayed white, middle class American culture of the 1940s and ’50s as an enduring and all-encompassing culture. Yes, to a degree this was inevitable: we write about what we know. And yet this “inevitability” itself was a reflection of the fact that these mostly white, mostly male, mostly American authors simply didn’t know any other cultures.
If I were to write sci-fi today, it would be very hard for me not to include ethnic distinction, miscegenation and race/color issues in the mix because these are a part of my everyday world.
They obviously weren’t a part of Heinlein or Asimov’s.
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Odd aside: I have read Tunnel in the Sky many times and am normally pretty sensitive to race in late golden age sci-fi, but even I missed the fact that Rod Walker was black, though Caroline obviously was, IIRC.
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It’s precisely because of this problem that I find Samuel Delany so intriguing — since he’s a black homosexual sci-fi writer.
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Has anyone read Heinlein’s Farnham’s Freehold (1964)? It attempted to deal with some race issues… I wasn’t convinced (if it’s plot had merit or about the treatment of it’s themes)…
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Hey guys!
Does anyone here happen to know sites (or have links to articles) dealing with the representation of Africa in science-fiction?
Yeah, I’m aware that Africa in mainstream (white?) science-fiction is a rare occurrence.
On the net I read about the afro-futurism movement, but I have yet to read any of the books it produced.
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Delaney goes way beyond the adjectives “black” and “homosexual”. He’s one of the few writers out there that I’d categorize as fully human. I think he was so out of step with social realities for most of his life that he just doesn’t believe in identity fiction anymore. He’s much more interested in dissecting what people do and why and he’s much more in tune to the deep motivations that lurk behind people’s facades than almost any other writer I can think of.
His two slave lovers and freedom fighters in Neveronya are an absolutely fantastic example of this (as well as being the best straight-up linguistic mind f*** that I’ve ever seen in writing).
Farnham’s Freehold left me cold, too, Joachim. I believe that Heinliehn was trying to make a statement about the “naturalness” of racism and slavery, as well as turn the tables on white people by giving them a situation in which THEY were the ones enslaved, but it came across to me as way too ham-handed. I much prefer Butler for that sort of reading.
As for afro-futurism, this is the first time I’ve heard about it.
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“Heavy handed” “cold” = great adjectives to describe Farnham’s Freehold….
I absolutely loved Delaney’s Babel-17, Triton, and Nova! and his short story, ‘Aye, and Gomorrah.’
What’s your favorite?
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This book is why you do not let white liberals write about people of colour. Yet another book where Africans odour is a plot point, or heavily elaborated on (Noble Savage version.) You the Muslim guy constantly reminding that he is a muslim (Prophet’s Bear!) every four passages, and the usual over-compensating of minorities. Can we just have negroes that act like they do in real life? Like , go see them in the wild for a weeks or something?
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“The main things he got wrong:
The rise of feminism”
Still think that?
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