The Sheep Look Up

by John Brunner

An enduring classic, this book offers a dramatic and prophetic look at the potential consequences of the escalating destruction of Earth. In this nightmare society, air pollution is so bad that gas masks are commonplace. Infant mortality is up, and everyone seems to suffer from some form of ailment. The water is polluted, and only the poor drink from the tap. The government is ineffectual, and corporate interests scramble to make a profit from water purifiers, gas masks, and organic foods. Environmentalist Austin Train is on the run. The Trainites, environmental activists and sometime terrorists, want him to lead their movement. The government wants him in jail, or preferably, executed. The media wants a circus. Everyone has a plan for Train, but Train has a plan of his own. This suspenseful science fiction drama is now available to a new generation of enthusiasts.

• ISBN10: 1932100059
• ISBN13: 9781932100051
• Publish Date: 1 June 2003 (first published 12 October 1973)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 14 July 2011
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: BenBella Books
• Edition: New edition
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 388
• Language: English

Reviews

[Cameron Trost]

SNAP QUIZ: Is the following an excerpt from a 1972 dystopian novel or from a conversation that took place in an American household this morning?

"Right square in the tradition: you kick people in the balls and expect them to do the apologizing. Because of you and people like you, we sit here in the richest country in the world surrounded by sick kids-"

You guessed it...or did you?

"The Sheep Look Up" isn't a novel in the traditional sense. You're not going to read a "story". This is a mish-mash of nightmarish snippets that you can dip in and out of (highly recommended for sanity's sake) without losing track of the overall direction the book is dragging you in. This is the literary equivalent of watching a 24/7 news broadcast, but decidedly more insightful. John Brunner took trends that were already well underway in the seventies and let them drag him into the future. What's most disturbing of all, of course, is that reading this book today, you can't help but affirm that much of what he wrote happened (and is happening) in almost precisely the way he described it. This doesn't make him a prophet; it just means he was paying attention and extrapolated his analysis of society as he got it down on paper using appropriately disjunct, anguish-inducing prose. And the hungry sheep? Well, they're still looking up, and their numbers are growing exponentially.