John Brunner
Harper & Row, New York
1972
Hardback
In previously written reviews of other books by Brunner I have explained how John Brunner is an author that I've been wanting to read more of ever since reading Shockwave Rider, which I discussed in my paper on virtual reality in science fiction. I must say that The Sheep Look Up is one that disappointed me terribly.
As I've said else where, during a visit to a book sale at the Jonesboro, Arkansas public library in early January, I found a large number of Brunner's works available in mostly discarded hardback Science Fiction Book Club editions. I was able to purchase them for twenty-five to fifty cents each..
Interesting for its unique characters, I kept waiting to see how Brunner would weave the individual stories into one gigantic moral tale concerning how humankind has raped this poor earth in the name of capitalism. Instead, many characters were killed off with relative nonchalance. And it wasn't humankind that did the raping of this planet but rather American capitalism. I found myself siding, to an extent, with the cardboard cutout evil capitalists against the tirades of European finger pointers, of which Brunner seemed to be the very worst.
Sorry, I didn't find the moral of the book very good and felt this was not one of Brunner's better works. Let's not forget that the reason America has done so well at contaminating the environment is because we learned how to do so in the name of capitalism so well from our European parents.
This is the first of Brunner's works I've read that I would suggest a pass on. Choose something else by him. He does have much better works.