Stand on Zanzibar

Although it took us several years to finally read novel in its entirety, Stand on Zanzibar is one of those necessary science fiction reads for everyone interested in the genre. It was not exactly what was expected. For instance, we initially thought President Obomi was the leader of the US, not of a fictional West African country, seemingly based on today's Benin and Togo yet distinct from Dahomey (Dahomalia). But we already knew what to expect with the more experimental narrative style of Brunner in this work, and the horrific dystopian future of the novel. The playful and clever slang phrases, intervening chapters that flesh out the world, and occasionally hilarious snippets of Chad Mulligan's writings or speeches make for powerful, sometimes frightening literature. 

The overpopulated world in which countries like the US have implemented eugenics legislation did not come into being by the 2010s, but it is a little scary how many of Brunner's predictions turned out to be true. We have our muckers today, as the frequency of mass shootings and violence indicates, just as we also witnessed the collapse of Detroit. Corporations do, more or less, control nations while US tensions with China is very real. Of course homosexuality is accepted, more or less, polyamorous couples exist and racism is less overt but pervasive. Racial tensions are ubiquitous, here in the US and across the pond. Old leftovers of colonial regimes in Africa likewise stand in for the lingering racial biases and tensions. African Americans refer to whites as "paleass" and characters like Norman are constantly on guard in a huge, corporate outfit like GT. On the other hand, we have not yet reached the scale of prostitution represented by shiggies or the perhaps the the level of terrorism and low-intensity civil war of Stand on Zanzibar yet, but it seems almost inevitable. 

What is perhaps most interesting about a novel written in the late 1960s, in an era when much of the Global South became independent states, is the projection of a future in which areas often deemed marginal became hugely significant in the fate of the species. By this, we refer to fictionalized West African and Southeast Asian nations. Yatakang, which appears to have been modeled on Indonesia, represented a third path for postcolonial states that is combined with the potentially dangerous genetic optimization program. Beninia offers hope through the genetics of the Shinka people. As one would expect, things do not quite go as planned and the reader is left feeling like Chad Mulligan: intensely frustrated by the human race yet madly in love with it. Mulligan almost certainly represents the sentiments of Brunner himself, and the fate of humanity remains in question. Whether the path forward lay with genetic engineering of the kind combining Shinka genetics with the techniques of the Yatakangi scientist, rule by sentient computers like Shalmaneser, or an alternative, one must remain optimistic. And the wealthy, powerful societies have a lot to learn from the backwards places like Beninia...