The Sheep Look Up

infobox Book |
name = The Sheep Look Up
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = Cover of first edition (hardcover)
author = John Brunner (novelist)
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = United Kingdom
language = English
series =
genre = Science Fiction, Dystopian
publisher = Harper & Row
release_date = 1972
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
pages =
isbn = ISBN 0-060-10558-5
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"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 dealing with the deterioration of the environment in the United States. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972.

The title of the novel is a quotation from the poem "Lycidas" by John Milton.

Plot introduction

With the rise of a corporation-sponsored government, pollution levels in big cities have 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 appear in one or two vignettes only. 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.

Publication notes

Despite being nominated for a Nebula Award, the book fell out of print in the 1990s, only later being republished. The new edition contains a foreword by David Brin and an afterword by environmentalist and social change theorist James John Bell. Brin places the book in the context of Brunner's time and other writings. In the afterword, Bell treats the book almost as prophecy, drawing parallels between events in the book and subsequent real world developments: "His words have a kind of Gnostic power embedded in them that gives his characters passage into our world". A couple specific examples are that "Brunner's puppet of a president, affectionately called Prexy, is a dead ringer for our Dubya" and that sabotage done by the Earth Liberation Front is pulled directly from the pages of the novel. Writer William Gibson made a similar remark in a 2007 interview: "No one except possibly the late John Brunner, in his brilliant novel "The Sheep Look Up," has ever described anything in science fiction that is remotely like the reality of 2007 as we know it." [Dennis Lim: " [http://www.salon.com/books/int/2007/08/11/william_gibson/ Now romancer] ". Interview with William Gibson, Salon.com, 11 August 2007]

*Republished hardback, 2003: ISBN 1-932100-05-9
*Republished paperback, 2003: ISBN 1-932100-01-6

References

External links

* [http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue450/classic.html Review by "Science Fiction Weekly"]
* [http://tal.forum2.org/sheep A review by Tal Cohen]