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Published : 1968Pages : 648
Overall Mark : 7/10
There are seven billion-plus humans crowding the surface of 21stcentury Earth. It is an age of intelligent computers, mass-market psychedelic drugs, politics conducted by assassination, scientists who burn incense to appease volcanoes... all the hysteria of a dangerously overcrowded world, portrayed in a dazzlingly inventive style.
JOHN BRUNNER (1934-1995)
Brunner published his first novel pseudonymously at the age of 17, and through the 1950s and early 1960s wrote many SF adventure novels, mainly for US publishers although he was British. His work grew more ambitious in the late 1960s; Stand On Zanzibar, which won a Hugo award, is generally regarded as his greatest achivement.
VERDICT
This is a very confusing book, which has various sections which intersperse with each other and provide both background information for the reader as well as a continuing narrative. This is a lengthy novel which could have been far shorter if much of the descriptive chapters had been removed, but this would have lost the novel it's distinctive feel. This novel is not for those who want a quick fix when reading, but the whole idea of the book ios fascinating and leaves a lot to be thought about, especially as the future in this novel is less than two years away.
