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evnhll's review
4.0
while it is not an easy read (jumps around alot) I would recommend it to anyone who like dystopia. It mirrors and shows the possible darkness ahead for our modern struggles with the environment and government. I don't understand why this isn't talked about in the same way that Orwell or Huxley are. If you hear me calling the president "prexy" you can blame this book.
"You couldnt look to that straw dummy Prexy and his cabinet of mediocrities for anything more useful than pious platitudes"
"You couldnt look to that straw dummy Prexy and his cabinet of mediocrities for anything more useful than pious platitudes"
books17's review
3.0
Quite good, although I really wasn't feeling it for the first half of the book. It takes a very long time to find its plot, jumping around from thing to thing with no real focus for probably two thirds, until it homes in. Also incredibly 70's.
oleksandr's review
2.0
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 ...
--Lycidas by John Milton
This novel was nominated for Nebula award in 1973. While many reviewers here on GR stress its forecasting power, for me it is more a backward looking book. The story is set in late 1970s or so and is more an eco-thriller than ‘pure’ SF. It is heavily based on the real world situation in the late 60s and early 70s: a fractured hippie movement with increased number of drug addicts, black militia movements started by Black Panthers and riots like “Long, hot summer of 1967”, serious deterioration of environmental situation in large urban areas (e.g. the Great Smog of 1952 in London) and publication of the Club of Rome dire warnings.
In the novel the large metropolitan areas are so dirty that no one walks the street without a mask and people don’t see the Sun for months in a row. Active usage of antibiotics created resistant microbes and almost anyone has a skin condition, which cannot be cured. At the same time millions die in the third world due to the crops failure owing to the pesticide resistant worms. Attempt to ameliorate the situation with food relief leads to the (accidental?) poisoning of people in Africa and Latin America with psychotropic drug in the food. Thousands of trainites (eco-hippies) actively protest the pollution, often by actually increasing it. Anyone, who tries to protest is under the threat of an assassination by big business and/or the state.
The novel follows a large number of diverse characters, many of whom will not survive to the end of the book. This multi-POV narrative makes it hard to get into the book, especially if you read it is short time periods. One of the main messages is that you, western civilization representative in your greed and search of quickly realized profits has shit all over the planet (so death to the rich).
The recipe for this novel: take a lot of real environmental problems and make them even worse; and many different diseases with hard to pronounce names; do not forget a bunch of STDs and make everyone scratch his/her crotch constantly due to pubic lace and other irritation; add visuals of smelly sweet puss, acid diarrhea, greasy water and wilted grass. Populate the setting with characters, neither too nice nor true evil, whose personal problems don’t allow them to see the big picture. Mix and shake them randomly. Kill a few and shake some more. Add dull-witted drug poisoned youth and bitter old men. Spruce with race and gender inequality. Add Club of Rome warnings.
This is not an easy read. It actually fails as a forecast, but that’s not a true purpose of SF, it is intended as a warning. Is it relevant today? I’d say not much, for while there are definitely huge problems that face humanity, including global warming (actually fully missed by the book), overuse of antibiotics and the like, actually we (humanity) made a great progress – just read what was the environmental situation in London or L.A. in the 60s. Now something similar in say India and China. The problem of global hunger is greatly ameliorated (but still present). Most of the top-10 richest men made their capital not in exploiting the natural resources or poor of the world…
But swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ...
--Lycidas by John Milton
This novel was nominated for Nebula award in 1973. While many reviewers here on GR stress its forecasting power, for me it is more a backward looking book. The story is set in late 1970s or so and is more an eco-thriller than ‘pure’ SF. It is heavily based on the real world situation in the late 60s and early 70s: a fractured hippie movement with increased number of drug addicts, black militia movements started by Black Panthers and riots like “Long, hot summer of 1967”, serious deterioration of environmental situation in large urban areas (e.g. the Great Smog of 1952 in London) and publication of the Club of Rome dire warnings.
In the novel the large metropolitan areas are so dirty that no one walks the street without a mask and people don’t see the Sun for months in a row. Active usage of antibiotics created resistant microbes and almost anyone has a skin condition, which cannot be cured. At the same time millions die in the third world due to the crops failure owing to the pesticide resistant worms. Attempt to ameliorate the situation with food relief leads to the (accidental?) poisoning of people in Africa and Latin America with psychotropic drug in the food. Thousands of trainites (eco-hippies) actively protest the pollution, often by actually increasing it. Anyone, who tries to protest is under the threat of an assassination by big business and/or the state.
The novel follows a large number of diverse characters, many of whom will not survive to the end of the book. This multi-POV narrative makes it hard to get into the book, especially if you read it is short time periods. One of the main messages is that you, western civilization representative in your greed and search of quickly realized profits has shit all over the planet (so death to the rich).
The recipe for this novel: take a lot of real environmental problems and make them even worse; and many different diseases with hard to pronounce names; do not forget a bunch of STDs and make everyone scratch his/her crotch constantly due to pubic lace and other irritation; add visuals of smelly sweet puss, acid diarrhea, greasy water and wilted grass. Populate the setting with characters, neither too nice nor true evil, whose personal problems don’t allow them to see the big picture. Mix and shake them randomly. Kill a few and shake some more. Add dull-witted drug poisoned youth and bitter old men. Spruce with race and gender inequality. Add Club of Rome warnings.
This is not an easy read. It actually fails as a forecast, but that’s not a true purpose of SF, it is intended as a warning. Is it relevant today? I’d say not much, for while there are definitely huge problems that face humanity, including global warming (actually fully missed by the book), overuse of antibiotics and the like, actually we (humanity) made a great progress – just read what was the environmental situation in London or L.A. in the 60s. Now something similar in say India and China. The problem of global hunger is greatly ameliorated (but still present). Most of the top-10 richest men made their capital not in exploiting the natural resources or poor of the world…
robmoldad's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
heavenlyspit's review against another edition
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
vailynst's review against another edition
4.0
Mini-Review:
4 Stars for Narration by Stefan Rudnicki
4 Stars for Concepts & Brutal Perspectives
2.5 Stars for Jarring Transitions
Currently on Audible Plus
Recommendation: Print Version over Audiobook
Read the book. The story & changes in perspectives will make more sense in print than it did in audio format. Rudnicki did a great job with the narration but that did not make it easy to keep track of what and where events were happening.
I'm not even sure why I ended up getting this book to read for my "Soon to Be Read" pile. I believe it may be on one of the group shelves and that's why I flagged it to read while it's on Audible Plus.
I did not know anything about the story before I read it. I didn't even remember the blurb because it's been a few months and a couple hundred books since I added it to my audio library.
Most disaster stories have a big war, biochemical warfare, planet wide natural catastrophe or something along those lines. I don't usually read stories about the slow decay. The kind that seems so slow in happening that it would never be a problem for me to deal with today. A handful of stories take on current events and spin a likely domino of events. The Sheep Look Up is one of those types of books.
It's very angry. I felt like the story was yelling at me and beating me up from the start to finish. There's no pause to breathe or relax. It's constant tension and explosion of emotions, actions and consequences. This is not a comfortable book. It's an extreme take on what could happen.
I think this was a good story to shake you up and make you think. Don't take what the story is telling you to be the truth. You're reading a fictional account using some facts and a lot of fiction. It is a story to make you think and act. Even if the actions only affect your life and what you do, that's better than being intentionally blind.
A lot of the world we know is based on a level of trust that we do not question. I'm glad that I live in a place where that is possible.
I'm not sure how other people take this story. I'm not about anti-government, evil corporations or whatever. All of that is based on people and it's the people that end up making the good or bad changes.
For me, I take this story as a warning and to care about my mind & body. It's hard to take care of other people or things when you do not take care of yourself. So, it's good to know what you take in by air, water and food. How materials in the objects around you may be temporarily useful and a part of the next trash pile that could be around longer than my lifespan. In what ways events and products may be presented to be perceived in a certain manner because that's easier than to ask questions. Learning and awareness are good. Processing may suck but that's life.
I'm glad I read the book. I'm also glad it's over because I couldn't handle the level of fear and rage that filled the pages.
If you ask me, this was a pretty darn good horror story. It's scary because it's possible.
4 Stars for Narration by Stefan Rudnicki
4 Stars for Concepts & Brutal Perspectives
2.5 Stars for Jarring Transitions
Currently on Audible Plus
Recommendation: Print Version over Audiobook
Read the book. The story & changes in perspectives will make more sense in print than it did in audio format. Rudnicki did a great job with the narration but that did not make it easy to keep track of what and where events were happening.
I'm not even sure why I ended up getting this book to read for my "Soon to Be Read" pile. I believe it may be on one of the group shelves and that's why I flagged it to read while it's on Audible Plus.
I did not know anything about the story before I read it. I didn't even remember the blurb because it's been a few months and a couple hundred books since I added it to my audio library.
Most disaster stories have a big war, biochemical warfare, planet wide natural catastrophe or something along those lines. I don't usually read stories about the slow decay. The kind that seems so slow in happening that it would never be a problem for me to deal with today. A handful of stories take on current events and spin a likely domino of events. The Sheep Look Up is one of those types of books.
It's very angry. I felt like the story was yelling at me and beating me up from the start to finish. There's no pause to breathe or relax. It's constant tension and explosion of emotions, actions and consequences. This is not a comfortable book. It's an extreme take on what could happen.
I think this was a good story to shake you up and make you think. Don't take what the story is telling you to be the truth. You're reading a fictional account using some facts and a lot of fiction. It is a story to make you think and act. Even if the actions only affect your life and what you do, that's better than being intentionally blind.
A lot of the world we know is based on a level of trust that we do not question. I'm glad that I live in a place where that is possible.
I'm not sure how other people take this story. I'm not about anti-government, evil corporations or whatever. All of that is based on people and it's the people that end up making the good or bad changes.
For me, I take this story as a warning and to care about my mind & body. It's hard to take care of other people or things when you do not take care of yourself. So, it's good to know what you take in by air, water and food. How materials in the objects around you may be temporarily useful and a part of the next trash pile that could be around longer than my lifespan. In what ways events and products may be presented to be perceived in a certain manner because that's easier than to ask questions. Learning and awareness are good. Processing may suck but that's life.
I'm glad I read the book. I'm also glad it's over because I couldn't handle the level of fear and rage that filled the pages.
If you ask me, this was a pretty darn good horror story. It's scary because it's possible.
tarabyt3's review
4.0
This book is more broken than Star Wars Galaxies after they introduced Jedi. The fragmentation is incredibly hard to follow and the heavy cast list is crazy. Still, this only served to highlight the state of the world and affairs and human life in general. Snapshots of depravity and hopelessness and human doggedness to just keep on keeping on. Probably one of the most depressing, mind-boggling things I've ever read and yet I'd love to read it again.
mastercabs's review
5.0
Holy. Crap.
It took me a long time to read this because it was on Kia's Kindle, and I just had trouble getting around to it, BUT... HOLY CRAP.
This was written in 1972?
I really thought that I was going to end up rating this as a four because there were certain parts of the story that I thought were a tad intellectually/writing-wise lazy, but it more than makes up for them with the dearth of characters and their different personalities, the colorful and hideous landscape of a poisoned future, and - above all - the terrifying reality that while our civilization isn't being killed off in exactly the same way that it is in this, the message still stands.
How can we say that we care about the planet when even the aid organizations are often out to make a profit? How can we talk about children when we're cooking the planet, poisoning the ocean, and turning out biosphere into a horror show that wouldn't support animals who have an instinct to live in the wild, let alone a bunch of office workers who wouldn't know nightshade from potatoes?
True, our biosphere isn't as polluted as this one, but there's still time: the book is set in, what, 2070?
Also, a word on Prexy: he is Trump. He was made to be a caricature, I feel, but he's fitting the bill too well for me to ignore... forty-five years before the man's presidency. Christ. I don't know whether to be inspired by the fact that someone could write something this simultaneously fascinating and frightening or disgusted by the fact that we've seen crap like this coming since the onset of the industrial revolution. We ignore the Rachel Carsons and the Paul Ehrlichs - or we don't and find that our efforts are largely meaningless in a system of entropy and greed - either way, the simple message is that unless something almost unimaginable happens, humanity is bound for an extinction level calamity.
I used to get into arguments a lot with a Communist friend of mine about the accuracy of Malthusian economics. They would always eventually boil down to his saying that we do not need to be governed by resource allocation if it is done sanely and equitably. The world can be bountiful for all. This resulted in my saying that infinite growth isn't possible in a finite system, but I realize now that that doesn't matter. The truth is that we either learn to limit ourselves to our resources or nature will do it for us. Whether or not its possible in a potential system that we can create is almost inconsequential. To wit, if my grandmother had balls, she'd be my grandfather.
We either accept what's going on and react to it as a society, or we keep believing that international terrorism and gay sex are the downfall of all civilization and allow our society to collapse under its own weight.
You can make the argument that Brunner and his ilk - Al Gore comes to mind - are wrong because their predictions have not come true yet, but the simple fact is that species die out on earth all of the time. Our days are certainly numbered, and the number is indubitably less than the Republican party would have you believe - if you buy everything else that they are selling these days.
It took me a long time to read this because it was on Kia's Kindle, and I just had trouble getting around to it, BUT... HOLY CRAP.
This was written in 1972?
I really thought that I was going to end up rating this as a four because there were certain parts of the story that I thought were a tad intellectually/writing-wise lazy, but it more than makes up for them with the dearth of characters and their different personalities, the colorful and hideous landscape of a poisoned future, and - above all - the terrifying reality that while our civilization isn't being killed off in exactly the same way that it is in this, the message still stands.
How can we say that we care about the planet when even the aid organizations are often out to make a profit? How can we talk about children when we're cooking the planet, poisoning the ocean, and turning out biosphere into a horror show that wouldn't support animals who have an instinct to live in the wild, let alone a bunch of office workers who wouldn't know nightshade from potatoes?
True, our biosphere isn't as polluted as this one, but there's still time: the book is set in, what, 2070?
Also, a word on Prexy: he is Trump. He was made to be a caricature, I feel, but he's fitting the bill too well for me to ignore... forty-five years before the man's presidency. Christ. I don't know whether to be inspired by the fact that someone could write something this simultaneously fascinating and frightening or disgusted by the fact that we've seen crap like this coming since the onset of the industrial revolution. We ignore the Rachel Carsons and the Paul Ehrlichs - or we don't and find that our efforts are largely meaningless in a system of entropy and greed - either way, the simple message is that unless something almost unimaginable happens, humanity is bound for an extinction level calamity.
I used to get into arguments a lot with a Communist friend of mine about the accuracy of Malthusian economics. They would always eventually boil down to his saying that we do not need to be governed by resource allocation if it is done sanely and equitably. The world can be bountiful for all. This resulted in my saying that infinite growth isn't possible in a finite system, but I realize now that that doesn't matter. The truth is that we either learn to limit ourselves to our resources or nature will do it for us. Whether or not its possible in a potential system that we can create is almost inconsequential. To wit, if my grandmother had balls, she'd be my grandfather.
We either accept what's going on and react to it as a society, or we keep believing that international terrorism and gay sex are the downfall of all civilization and allow our society to collapse under its own weight.
You can make the argument that Brunner and his ilk - Al Gore comes to mind - are wrong because their predictions have not come true yet, but the simple fact is that species die out on earth all of the time. Our days are certainly numbered, and the number is indubitably less than the Republican party would have you believe - if you buy everything else that they are selling these days.
silenttardis's review
5.0
omg... this was grim and just got itself even darker with each page i turned.... the kind of future/present i do not want for our children, but maybe its already here not as bad, but quite bad T_T characters come and go as fast as we get to know them, some parts they were like selling adds, or propaganda...
uhmm i guess we really need to be afraid of what is to come... some things we already have now, like some superbugs that are really hard to exterminate, but i believe this book is a kind of a necessary reading for everyone... i was reading and thinking, no, please no, and things only got worse... and what for? money? no one takes money to the grave... T_T
uhmm i guess we really need to be afraid of what is to come... some things we already have now, like some superbugs that are really hard to exterminate, but i believe this book is a kind of a necessary reading for everyone... i was reading and thinking, no, please no, and things only got worse... and what for? money? no one takes money to the grave... T_T
hessiebell's review
4.0
Read it years ago, and it always stuck with me... today, it seems way too prescient for comfort.
I'd re-read it, but it's too much like the news.
I'd re-read it, but it's too much like the news.