Stand on Zanzibar Author: John Brunner | Language: English | ISBN:
B004VMV3U4 | Format: EPUB
Stand on Zanzibar Description
Norman Niblock House is a rising executive at General Technics, one of a few all-powerful corporations. His work is leading General Technics to the forefront of global domination, both in the marketplace and politically---it's about to take over a country in Africa. Donald Hogan is his roommate, a seemingly sheepish bookworm. But Hogan is a spy, and he's about to discover a breakthrough in genetic engineering that will change the world...and kill him.
These two men's lives weave through one of science fiction's most praised novels. Written in a way that echoes John Dos Passos' U.S.A. Trilogy, Stand on Zanzibar is a cross-section of a world overpopulated by the billions. Where society is squeezed into hive-living madness by god-like mega computers, mass-marketed psychedelic drugs, and mundane uses of genetic engineering. Though written in 1968, it speaks of 2010, and is frighteningly prescient and intensely powerful.
At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.
- File Size: 1242 KB
- Print Length: 576 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0765326787
- Publisher: Orb Books; First Edition edition (August 16, 2011)
- Sold by: Macmillan
- Language: English
- ASIN: B004VMV3U4
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #58,647 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #82
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Classics
- #82
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Classics
British writer John Brunner's novel, first published in 1968 (it won both the Hugo and British Science Fiction awards, and four years later, the French Prix Apollo), is certainly one of the most literary, complex, challenging, even difficult works of science fiction written during the twentieth century. Yet, in spite of the hurdles it may present some readers, the book manages also to be fast-paced and hysterically funny.
One of the triumphs of Brunner's book is that it can be read on any number of levels, which is probably why it seems to resonate with readers of extraordinarily divergent tastes. Having read it twice (once as a bookwormish Valley brat and now twenty-odd years later as a still-bookwormish publishing professional), I am not surprised that this book might be entirely different beasts to different readers; the enthralling, bewildering thriller I remembered from my adolescence has somehow transformed itself into a darkly sardonic political and social commentary--and I like both versions just fine.
The novel is not, at first, an easy read. Its "unique" jump-cut/collage structure, its pseudo-hip prose style, its fabricated lingo--all are modeled rather precisely on John Dos Passos's classic American classic trilogy, "U.S.A." Like Dos Passos, Brunner interlaces chapters in several strands. The bulk of the storyline appears in the "Continuity" chapters, which detail the misadventures of secret agent Donald Hogan and corporate executive Norman House, and the "Tracking with Closeups" chapters, which describe two dozen characters who are peripheral to the action. The other two strands--"Context" and "The Happening World"--provide background material (film descriptions, encyclopedia entries, song lyrics, document excerpts, advertising jingles, news stories, etc.
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