John Brunner - The Sheep Look Up (1972, 457pp, Ballantine Books, USA)
Predictive Science Fiction generally dates all too quickly, but The Sheep Look
Up is a chilling example of the genre at it's best. Brunner's chronicle of the
fall is not one in which warriors prowl the wasteland or in which the Earth
goes out in a blinding flash, but one in which human health and rationality
merely crumble under the accumulated weight of ecological destruction.
In a remarkably perceptive manner Brunner ties together various disparate plot
lines to illustrate the interconnection of a number of seemingly random and
unconnected events. The cumulative effect of multiple problems such as resource
wars, over population, ill health, seeping radiation, soil erosion, introduced
predators and so on is made all too clear.
Whilst the author's message is somewhat blunt his real skill comes in avoiding
the cheesiness of novels and movies such as Soylent Green or The Omega Man.
The characters and events illustrated here are well rounded and precise and
his exploration of the pitfalls of leadership and government indifference rarely
come across as heavy handed. Indeed even his condemnation of green washing and
eco-consumerism in the face of disintegrating cities and an increasingly barren
countryside is both clear and prescient.
Interestingly enough (though perhaps not surprisingly given the book's fiercely
bleak outlook) The Sheep Look Up is generally credited as the last book Phil
Ochs read before his suicide in 1976. Its message so profoundly affected the
deteriorating folksinger that in his depressed, alcohol soaked final days he
insisted on only being addressed by the name of it's central figure, John Train,
an environmental pioneer who buries himself in the city slums when it becomes
clear that his warnings are doomed to failure.
-IBM.