Stand on Zanzibar
Encyclopedia
Stand on Zanzibar is a dystopia
n New Wave science fiction novel written by John Brunner
and first published in 1968. The book won a Hugo Award for Best Novel
at the 27th World Science Fiction Convention in 1969, as well as the 1969 BSFA Award
and the 1973 Prix Tour-Apollo Award
.
, to create a sprawling narrative that presents a complex and multi-faceted view of the story's future world. Such information-rich chapters were often constructed from many short paragraphs, sentences, or fragments thereof – pulled from sources such as slogans, snatches of conversation, advertising text, songs, extracts from newspapers and books, and other cultural detritus. The result is reminiscent of the concept of information overload
.
The narrative itself follows the lives of a large cast of characters, carefully chosen to give a broad cross-section of the future world. Some of these interact directly with the central narratives, while others add depth to Brunner's world. Brunner appropriated this basic narrative technique from the U.S.A. Trilogy
of John Dos Passos
. On the first page of the novel, Brunner provides a quote from The Gutenberg Galaxy
by Marshall McLuhan
that approximates such a technique, entitling it "the Innis
mode" as an apparent label.
and its projected consequences, and the title refers to an early twentieth-century claim that the world's population could fit onto the Isle of Wight
(with an area of 381 square kilometres (147.1 sq mi)) if they were all standing upright. Brunner remarked that the growing world population
now required a larger island — the 3.5 billion people living in 1968 could stand together on the Isle of Man
(area 572 square kilometres (220.9 sq mi)), while the 7 billion people who he projected would be alive in 2010 would need to stand on Zanzibar
(area 1554 square kilometres (600 sq mi)).
Throughout the book, the image of the entire human race standing shoulder-to-shoulder on a small island is a metaphor for a crowded world where each person feels hemmed in by a prison made not of metal bars, but of other human beings. By the end of the book, some of that crowd is (metaphorically) knee deep in the Indian Ocean
surrounding the island.
. A number of plots and many vignettes are played out in this future world, based on Brunner's extrapolation
of social, economic, and technological trends. The key main trends are based on the enormous population and its impact: social stresses, eugenic
legislation, widening social divisions, future shock
, and extremism. Certain of Brunner's guesses are fairly close, others not, and some ideas clearly show their 1960s mind-set.
Many futuristic concepts, products and services, and slang
are presented. The Hipcrime Vocab and other works by the fictional sociologist Chad C. Mulligan are frequent sources of quotations. Some examples of slang include "codder" (man), "shiggy" (woman), "whereinole" (where in hell?), "prowlie" (an armored police car), "offyourass" (possessing an attitude) and "mucker" (a person running amok
). A new technology introduced is "eptification" (education for particular tasks), a form of mental programming.
The book centres on two New York men, Donald Hogan and Norman Niblock House. House is a rising executive at General Technics, one of the all-powerful corporations. Using his "Afram" (African American
) heritage to advance his position, he has risen to vice-president at age twenty-six.
Hogan is introduced with a single paragraph rising out of nowhere: "Donald Hogan is a spy". Donald shares an apartment with House and is undercover as a student. Hogan's real work is as a "synthesist", although he is a commissioned officer
and can be called up for duty
.
The two main plots concern the fictional Africa
n state of Beninia (a name reminiscent of the real-life Benin
, though that nation in the Bight of Benin
was known as the Republic of Dahomey
when the book was written) making a deal with General Technics to take over the management of their country, in a bid to speed up development
from third world
to first world
status. A second major plot is break-through in genetic engineering
in the fictional Australasian nation of Yatakang (which seems to be a disguised Indonesia
), which Hogan is soon sent by the U.S. government ("State") to investigate. The two plots eventually cross, bringing potential implications for the entire world.
The books are:
Greg Bear
praised Stand On Zanzibar, thirty years after its initial publication, as a science fiction novel that, unusually, has not become dated since its original appearance: "It's not quite the future we imagined it to be, but it still reads as fresh as it did back in 1968, and that's an amazing accomplishment!"
16, 1978
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
n New Wave science fiction novel written by John Brunner
John Brunner (novelist)
John Kilian Houston Brunner was a prolific British author of science fiction novels and stories. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, about an overpopulated world, won the 1968 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. It also won the BSFA award the same year...
and first published in 1968. The book won a Hugo Award for Best Novel
Hugo Award for Best Novel
The Hugo Awards are given every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was once officially...
at the 27th World Science Fiction Convention in 1969, as well as the 1969 BSFA Award
BSFA award
The BSFA Awards are literary awards presented annually since 1970 by the British Science Fiction Association to honor works in the genre of science fiction. Nominees and winners are chosen based on a vote of BSFA members...
and the 1973 Prix Tour-Apollo Award
Prix Tour-Apollo Award
The Prix Tour-Apollo was an annual French award given to the best science fiction novel published in French during the preceding year. Awards were given in 1972-1990, inclusive, and usually went to a work first published in English in the US or UK.-Winners:...
.
Description
A lengthy book, Stand on Zanzibar was innovative within its genre for mixing narrative with entire chapters dedicated to providing background information and worldbuildingWorldbuilding
Worldbuilding is the process of constructing an imaginary world, sometimes associated with a fictional universe. The result may sometimes be called a constructed world, conworld or sub-creation. The term world-building was popularized at science fiction writer's workshops during the 1970s...
, to create a sprawling narrative that presents a complex and multi-faceted view of the story's future world. Such information-rich chapters were often constructed from many short paragraphs, sentences, or fragments thereof – pulled from sources such as slogans, snatches of conversation, advertising text, songs, extracts from newspapers and books, and other cultural detritus. The result is reminiscent of the concept of information overload
Information overload
"Information overload" is a term popularized by Alvin Toffler in his bestselling 1970 book Future Shock. It refers to the difficulty a person can have understanding an issue and making decisions that can be caused by the presence of too much information...
.
The narrative itself follows the lives of a large cast of characters, carefully chosen to give a broad cross-section of the future world. Some of these interact directly with the central narratives, while others add depth to Brunner's world. Brunner appropriated this basic narrative technique from the U.S.A. Trilogy
U.S.A. trilogy
The U.S.A. Trilogy is a major work of American writer John Dos Passos, comprising the novels The 42nd Parallel ; 1919, also known as Nineteen Nineteen ; and The Big Money . The three books were first published together in a single volume titled U.S.A by Harcourt Brace in January, 1938...
of John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...
. On the first page of the novel, Brunner provides a quote from The Gutenberg Galaxy
The Gutenberg Galaxy
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man is a book by Marshall McLuhan, in which he analyzes the effects of mass media, especially the printing press, on European culture and human consciousness...
by Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist...
that approximates such a technique, entitling it "the Innis
Harold Innis
Harold Adams Innis was a Canadian professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on media, communication theory and Canadian economic history. The affiliated Innis College at the University of Toronto is named for him...
mode" as an apparent label.
Title
The primary engine of the novel's story is overpopulationOverpopulation
Overpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. The term often refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment, the Earth...
and its projected consequences, and the title refers to an early twentieth-century claim that the world's population could fit onto the Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...
(with an area of 381 square kilometres (147.1 sq mi)) if they were all standing upright. Brunner remarked that the growing world population
World population
The world population is the total number of living humans on the planet Earth. As of today, it is estimated to be billion by the United States Census Bureau...
now required a larger island — the 3.5 billion people living in 1968 could stand together on the Isle of Man
Isle of Man
The Isle of Man , otherwise known simply as Mann , is a self-governing British Crown Dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, within the British Isles. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Lord of Mann is...
(area 572 square kilometres (220.9 sq mi)), while the 7 billion people who he projected would be alive in 2010 would need to stand on Zanzibar
Zanzibar
Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...
(area 1554 square kilometres (600 sq mi)).
Throughout the book, the image of the entire human race standing shoulder-to-shoulder on a small island is a metaphor for a crowded world where each person feels hemmed in by a prison made not of metal bars, but of other human beings. By the end of the book, some of that crowd is (metaphorically) knee deep in the Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...
surrounding the island.
Structure
As in Dos Passos's work, the chapters are headed by one of several rubrics:- Continuity: Most of the linear narrative is contained in these chapters.
- Tracking with Closeups: These are similar to Dos Passos's Camera sections, and focus closely on ancillary characters before they become part of the main narrative, or simply serve to paint a picture of the state of the world.
- The Happening World: These chapters consist of collage-like collections of short, sometimes single-sentence, descriptive passages. The intent is to capture the vibrant, noisy, and often ephemeral situations arising in the novel's world. At least one chapter of the narrative, a party where most of the characters meet and where the plot makes a significant shift in direction, is presented in this way.
- Context: These chapters, as the name suggests, provide a setting for the novel. They consist of imaginary headlines, classified ads, and quotations from the works of the character Chad C. Mulligan, a pop sociologist who comments wryly on his surroundings and in one chapter, actual headlines from 1960s.
Plot
The story is set in 2010, mostly in the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. A number of plots and many vignettes are played out in this future world, based on Brunner's extrapolation
Extrapolation
In mathematics, extrapolation is the process of constructing new data points. It is similar to the process of interpolation, which constructs new points between known points, but the results of extrapolations are often less meaningful, and are subject to greater uncertainty. It may also mean...
of social, economic, and technological trends. The key main trends are based on the enormous population and its impact: social stresses, eugenic
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
legislation, widening social divisions, future shock
Future Shock
Future Shock is a book written by the futurist Alvin Toffler in 1970. In the book, Toffler defines the term "future shock" as a certain psychological state of individuals and entire societies. His shortest definition for the term is a personal perception of "too much change in too short a period of...
, and extremism. Certain of Brunner's guesses are fairly close, others not, and some ideas clearly show their 1960s mind-set.
Many futuristic concepts, products and services, and slang
Slang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...
are presented. The Hipcrime Vocab and other works by the fictional sociologist Chad C. Mulligan are frequent sources of quotations. Some examples of slang include "codder" (man), "shiggy" (woman), "whereinole" (where in hell?), "prowlie" (an armored police car), "offyourass" (possessing an attitude) and "mucker" (a person running amok
Running amok
Running amok, sometimes referred to as simply amok is a term for a killing spree perpetrated by an individual out of rage or resentment over perceived mistreatment....
). A new technology introduced is "eptification" (education for particular tasks), a form of mental programming.
The book centres on two New York men, Donald Hogan and Norman Niblock House. House is a rising executive at General Technics, one of the all-powerful corporations. Using his "Afram" (African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
) heritage to advance his position, he has risen to vice-president at age twenty-six.
Hogan is introduced with a single paragraph rising out of nowhere: "Donald Hogan is a spy". Donald shares an apartment with House and is undercover as a student. Hogan's real work is as a "synthesist", although he is a commissioned officer
Officer (armed forces)
An officer is a member of an armed force or uniformed service who holds a position of authority. Commissioned officers derive authority directly from a sovereign power and, as such, hold a commission charging them with the duties and responsibilities of a specific office or position...
and can be called up for duty
Active duty
Active duty refers to a full-time occupation as part of a military force, as opposed to reserve duty.-Pakistan:The Pakistan Armed Forces are one of the largest active service forces in the world with almost 610,000 full time personnel due to the complex and volatile nature of Pakistan's...
.
The two main plots concern the fictional Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
n state of Beninia (a name reminiscent of the real-life Benin
Benin
Benin , officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It borders Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east and Burkina Faso and Niger to the north. Its small southern coastline on the Bight of Benin is where a majority of the population is located...
, though that nation in the Bight of Benin
Bight of Benin
The Bight of Benin is a bight on the western African coast that extends eastward for about 400 miles from Cape St. Paul to the Nun outlet of the Niger River. To the east it is continued by the Bight of Bonny . The bight is part of the Gulf of Guinea...
was known as the Republic of Dahomey
Republic of Dahomey
The Republic of Dahomey was established on December 11, 1958, as a self-governing colony within the French Community. Prior to attaining autonomy it had been French Dahomey, part of the French Union...
when the book was written) making a deal with General Technics to take over the management of their country, in a bid to speed up development
International development
International development or global development is a concept that lacks a universally accepted definition, but it is most used in a holistic and multi-disciplinary context of human development — the development of greater quality of life for humans...
from third world
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
to first world
First World
The concept of the First World first originated during the Cold War, where it was used to describe countries that were aligned with the United States. These countries were democratic and capitalistic. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the term "First World" took on a...
status. A second major plot is break-through in genetic engineering
Genetic engineering
Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification, is the direct human manipulation of an organism's genome using modern DNA technology. It involves the introduction of foreign DNA or synthetic genes into the organism of interest...
in the fictional Australasian nation of Yatakang (which seems to be a disguised Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
), which Hogan is soon sent by the U.S. government ("State") to investigate. The two plots eventually cross, bringing potential implications for the entire world.
Books within the book
Quotations from books by Chad C. Mulligan, a former sociologist turned iconoclastic social commentator, appear throughout the novel to illustrate or contrast plot points.The books are:
- The Hipcrime Vocab — "Hipcrime" is one of Mulligan's neologisms; his definition is "You committed one when you opened this book. Keep it up. It's our only hope."
- You're an Ignorant Idiot — a series of pieces poking holes in "common sense" and received wisdom.
- Better ? than ?
- You: Beast — a "popular science" book, condensing the science of mob psychology, population pressure, and biological imperative so that readers living in the increasingly populated world can better understand their own environment.
Critical reception
Algis Budrys declared that Stand on Zanzibar "takes your breath away," saying that the novel "put[s] itself together seemingly without effort [and] paints a picture of the immediate future as it will, Brunner convinces you, certainly be."Greg Bear
Greg Bear
Gregory Dale Bear is an American science fiction and mainstream author. His work has covered themes of galactic conflict , artificial universes , consciousness and cultural practices , and accelerated evolution...
praised Stand On Zanzibar, thirty years after its initial publication, as a science fiction novel that, unusually, has not become dated since its original appearance: "It's not quite the future we imagined it to be, but it still reads as fresh as it did back in 1968, and that's an amazing accomplishment!"
External links
Stephen H. Goldman, "John Brunner's Dystopias: Heroic Man in Unheroic Society", Science Fiction StudiesScience Fiction Studies
Science Fiction Studies is an academic journal founded in 1973 by R.D. Mullen. The journal is published three times per year by DePauw University. As the name implies, the journal publishes articles and book reviews on science fiction, but also occasionally on fantasy and horror when the topic...
16, 1978