8 /10 1 Votes
Language English ISBN 0-06-010558-5 Dewey Decimal 823/.9/14 Country United Kingdom | 4/5 Goodreads Publication date 1972 OCLC 447474 Originally published August 1972 Publisher Harper Genres Science Fiction, Dystopia | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (Hardcover & Paperback) Nominations Nebula Award for Best Novel, Locus Award for Best Novel Similar John Brunner books, Science Fiction books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sf book review the sheep look up by john brunner
The Sheep Look Up is a science fiction novel by British author John Brunner, first published in 1972. The novel's setting is decidedly dystopian; the book deals with the deterioration of the environment in the United States. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972 and is celebrated in a 1988 essay by John Skipp in Horror: 100 Best Books.
Contents
Title
The title of the novel is a quotation from the poem Lycidas by 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 ...Plot summary
With the rise of a corporation-sponsored government, pollution in big cities has reached extreme levels and most (if not all) people's health has been affected in some way. Continuing the style used in Stand on Zanzibar, there is a multi-strand narrative, and many characters in the book never meet each other; some characters only appear in one or two vignettes. Similarly, instead of chapters, the book is broken up into sections which range from thirty words in length to several pages.
The character of Austin Train in The Sheep Look Up serves a similar purpose to Xavier Conroy in The Jagged Orbit or to Chad Mulligan in Stand on Zanzibar: He is an academic who, despite predicting and interpreting social change, has become disillusioned by the failure of society to listen. This character is used both to drive the plot and to explain back-story to the reader.
By the end of the book, rioting and civil unrest sweep the United States, due to a combination of poor health, poor sanitation, lack of food, lack of services, ineffectiveness of services (medical, policing), disillusionment with government/companies, oppressive government, high incidence of birth defects (pollution-induced), and other factors; all services (military, government, private, infrastructure) break down.