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Stand on Zanzibar
| Author: | John Brunner |
| Publisher: |
Gollancz, 1999 Doubleday, 1968 |
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| Book Type: | Novel |
| Genre: | Science-Fiction |
| Sub-Genre Tags: | Dystopia Dying Earth Human Development |
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Synopsis
There are seven billion-plus humans crowding the surface of 21st century Earth. It is an age of intelligent computers, mass-market psychedelic drugs, politics conducted by assassination, scientists who burn incense to appease volcanoes... all the hysteria of a dangerously overcrowded world, portrayed in a dazzlingly inventive style.
Donald Hogan was a mild-mannered student, a dilettante intellectual--at least that's what everyone was supposed to think he was. But Donald knew otherwise. He knew he was a spy.
But what Donald didn't know was that in a world overpopulated by the billions--in a society squeezed into hive-living madness by megabrain computers, mass-marketed psychedelics, and eugenics--where everyone was struggling for life--he himself was programmed for death!
Excerpt
context (1)
SCANALYZE MY NAME
Stock cue SOUND: "Presenting SCANALYZER, Engrelay Satelserv's unique thrice-per-day study of the big big scene, the INdepth INdependent INmediate INterface between you and your world!"
Stock cue VISUAL: cliptage, splitscreen, cut in bridge-melder, Mr. & Mrs. Everywhere depthunder (today MAMP, Mid-Atlantic Mining Project), spaceover (today freefly-suiting), transiting (today Simplon Acceleratube), digging (today as every day homimage with autoshout).
Autoshout cue: "It's happening it's happening! SCANALYZER SCANALYZER SCANALYZER SCANALYZER SCANALYZER SCANALYZER--"
Stock cue VISUAL: cliptage, wholescreen, planet Earth turning jerk-jerk-jerk and holding meridians for GMT, EST, PCT, Pacific Conflict Zone Time.
Live cue SOUND: "And it's six poppa-momma for the happening people keeping it straight and steady on that old Greenwich Mean Time--how mean can time get, you tell me, hm? Zee for zero, bee for base, counting down to one after ess ee eks--sorree--ess EYE eks! We know what's happening happening HAPPENING but that piece of the big big scene is strictly up to you, Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere--or Mr. and Miss, or Miss and Miss, or Mister and Mister, take your pick, hah-hah! Counting down to one after one poppa-momma for that good old Eastern Standard tie-yum, one after ten anti-matter for the Pacific Coast, and for all of you fighting the good fight in lonely midocean one after seven anti-matter--PIPS!"
Clock cue: 5 × 1-sec. countdown pips on G in alt, minute signal on C in alt.
Plug cue: "No time like the present for things to happen in, no better way to keep time straight and steady than by the signal from General Technics' critonium clock, so accuright it serves to judge the stars."
Script cue VISUAL: cliptage, splitscreen, excerpts from day's news.
Live cue SOUND: "And no better way to keep abreast--pardon--than with SCANALYZER!"
Cut autoshout cue. (If they haven't made it by this time they've switched off.)
Plug cue: "SCANALYZER is the one single, the ONLY study of the news in depth that's processed by General Technics' famed computer Shalmaneser, who sees all, hears all, knows all save only that which YOU, Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere, wish to keep to yourselves."
Script cue: the happening world.
the happening world (1)
READ THE DIRECTIONS
For toDAY third of MAY twenty-TEN ManhatTEN reports mild spring-type weather under the Fuller Dome. Ditto on the General Technics Plaza.
But Shalmaneser is a Micryogenic® computer bathed in liquid helium and it's cold in his vault.
(DITTO Use it! The mental process involved is exactly analogous to the bandwidth-saving technique employed for your phone. If you've seen the scene you've seen the scene and there's too much new information for you to waste time looking it over more than once. Use "ditto". Use it!
--The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan)
Less of a machine, more of a human being, but partaking of the nature of both, Georgette Tallon Buckfast is largely supported by prosthetics in her ninety-first year.
When the strain becomes TOO MUCH it's because Hitrip of California bred it to have less stalk per ounce, more clean-queen leaf. Ask "The Man who's Married to Mary Jane"!
Eric Ellerman is a plant geneticist with three daughters who's scared because his wife has developed a permanent pot-belly.
"... and Puerto Rico today became the latest state to ratify the controversial dichromatism provision of United States eugenic legislation. This leaves only two havens for those who wish to bear disadvantaged children: Nevada and Louisiana. The defeat of the baby-farming lobby removes a long-time stigma from the fair brow of the Junior-but-One State--a congenital stigma, one may say, since the J-but-O State's accession to hoodness coincided almost to the day with the first eugenic legislation concerned with haemophilia, phenylketonuria and congenital imbecility..."
Poppy Shelton has believed in miracles for years, but now there's one happening right inside her body and the real world is leaning on her dreams.
THE DIFFICULT WE DO AT ONCE. THE IMPOSSIBLE TAKES A LITTLE LONGER.
--Base version of General Technics motto
Norman Niblock House is junior VP in charge of personnel and recruitment at General Technics.
"One fraction of a second, please--participant breakin coming up. Remember that only SCANALYZER's participant breakin service is processed by General Technics' Shalmaneser, the more correct response in the shorter quantum of time..."
Guinevere Steel's real name is Dwiggins, but do you blame her?
Do your slax sufficiently convey your natural power--at a glance?
If you're wearing MasQ-Lines, the answer's yes. Tired of half measures, we at MasQ-Line Corp. have put the codpiece back where it belongs, to say to the shiggies not kidder but codder.
Sheena and Frank Potter are all packed ready to leave for Puerto Rico because a green and a red light are just lights to him.
"Two participant breakins! Number one: sorree, friend, but no--we are not wrong to say Puerto Rico's decision leaves a mere two havens for the dissident. Isola does enjoy statehood, but the whole area of the Pacific its islands occupy is under martial law and you don't get a pass for other than martial reasons. Thanks for asking us, though, it's the way of the world, you're my environment and I am yours, which is why we operate SCANALYZER as a two-way process..."
Arthur Golightly doesn't mind not being able to remember where he put things. Looking for them, he always finds other things he'd forgotten he had.
THE DIFFICULT WE DID YESTERDAY. THE IMPOSSIBLE WE'RE DOING RIGHT NOW.
--Current version of General Technics motto
Donald Hogan is a spy.
"Number the other: dichromatism is what's commonly called colourblindness, and it is sure as sidereal time a congenital disability. Thank you, participant, thank you."
Stal (short for Stallion) Lucas is a yonderboy, weighed, measured, and freeflying all the way.
(IMPOSSIBLE Means: 1 I wouldn't like it and when it happens I won't approve; 2 I can't be bothered; 3 God can't be bothered. Meaning 3 may perhaps be valid but the others are 101% whaledreck.
--The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan)
Philip Peterson is twenty years old.
Are you undermined by an old-style autoshout unit, one that needs constant reprogramming by hand if it's not to call you for items that were descheduled last week?
GT's revolutionary new autoshout reprograms itself!
Sasha Peterson is Philip's mother.
"Turning to a related subject, rioting crowds today stormed a Right Catholic church in Malmö, Sweden, while early mass was in progress. Casualty lists suggest a death toll of over forty including the priest and many children. From his palace in Madrid Pope Eglantine accused rival Pope Thomas of deliberately fomenting this and other recent uprisings, a charge vigorously denied by Vatican authorities."
Victor and Mary Whatmough were born in the same country and have been married twenty years--she for the second time, he for the third.
What you want to do when you see her in her Forlon&Morler Maxess costumelet
Is what she wants you to do when you see her in her Forlon&Morler Maxess costumelet
If she didn't, she wouldn't have put it on
Maximal access is no exaggeration when you spell it MAXESS
Style illustrated is "Courtesan"
But you should see "Tart"
What there is of it
Elihu Masters is currently United States Ambassador to the one-time British colony of Beninia.
"Speaking of accusations, Dixierep Senator Lowell Kyte this anti-matter charged that dicties were now responsible for nine-tenths of the felonies committed per anum--sorree!--per annum in his home state of Texas and that Fed efforts to quell the problem were a failure. Privately, officials of the Nark Force have been heard to express concern at the way GT's new product Triptine is catching the dicties' fancy."
Gerry Lindt is a draftee.
When we say "general" at GT we mean GENERAL. We offer the career of a lifetime to anyone interested in astronautics, biology, chemistry, dynamics, eugenics, ferromagnetism, geology, hydraulics, industrial administration, jet propulsion, kinetics, law, metallurgy, nucleonics, optics, patent rights, quarkology, robotics, synthesis, telecommunications, ultrasonics, vacuum technology, work, X-rays, ylem, zoology ...
No, we didn't miss out your speciality. We just didn't have room for it in this ad.
Professor Doctor Sugaiguntung is head of the Tectogenetics Department at Dedication University in the Guided Socialist Democracy of Yatakang.
"The incidence of muckers continues to maintain its high: one in Outer Brooklyn yesterday accounted for 21 victims before the fuzzy-wuzzies fused him, and another is still at large in Evanston, Ill., with a total of eleven and three injured. Across the sea in London a woman mucker took out four as well as her own three-month baby before a mind-present standerby clobbered her. Reports also from Rangoon, Lima and Auckland notch up the day's toll to 69."
Grace Rowley is seventy-seven and going a bit weak in the head.
Here today and gone tomorrow isn't good enough for us in t...
Copyright © 1968 by John Brunner
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