Product Description

Customer Reviews (36)

THE SHEEP LOOK UP
THE BOOK WAS WRITTEN IN THE EARLY 70'S AS A NOVEL.BUT HOW VERY PROPHETIC IT IS. THE THINGS IT REFERS TO SUCH AS; SUPER POLLUTION OF OUR AIR , WATER AND ENVIRONMENT IN GENERAL AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SUPERBUGS THAT ARE ANTIBITIC RESISTANT.THIS AUTHOR WAS REALLY SPOT ON.THE VENDOR I ORDER FROM HAD THE BOOK IN MY HANDS IN A MARVELOUSLY SHORT TIME.WELL DONE AMAZON AFFILIATE, WELL DONE. THOROUGHLY SATISFIED WITH THIS PURCHASE FROM AMAZON.

The Sheep Look Up, by John Brunner
First read Brunner's The Sheep Look Up when it came out in 1972.It was cutting edge back then when the world he wrote about was only a prediction of what we may be faced with.Today, nearly 40 years later...in only 40 years...we stand at the precipice of Brunner's "future" world where everything from the food we eat to the air we breathe is making us sick and our world "leaders" are anything but.An excellent read; more timely now than when it was first written.

Read this book!
I am SO glad this book is available again! Years ago I found it in a second hand shop and since then I have been looking for it everywhere, in order to be able to give it to other readers.

When you start reading, please be patient. The first 60 pages or so, you probably won't understand what it's all about. Then, suddenly, you will realize you are 'in' the story, and that the prime character is... humankind as a whole. This is rather shocking, because individuals you thought to be very important may die or vanish, and others may fill their niches, just as in real life. And, just as in real life, don't expect a happy end. Although the details may be dated, the overall story is still as valid as ever.

This is one of the most intelligent books I ever read. I welcome it back, and will order several specimen at once!

A powerful vision of an unlikely future.Read it with relief and amusement.
Let me start by saying that I enjoyed this book.The fast-paced and unmerciful brutality of the story brings the horrible future to life in a frankly scary way.The choppy an abbreviated structure of the book provides a sense of panic as far too much is happening much too fast, just as Brunner intended.While the characters are empty shells, their horrifying experiences give this story the power to scare.This is the first Brunner book I've read, and I have to say I was impressed by his style and power.I hope to check out his other work sometime soon.

As I made my way through this book, most of what I felt was relief and amusement.Relief that this vision (or anything close to it) has not come true.Think about the very worst possible ecological and environmental situation the world could be in, and the vision Brunner presents here is probably worse than that.Air and water are poison, disease is the norm, Earth is unstable, super-pests have us confounded, and society has regressed.Thank God, none of these things have come true.I felt amusement because Brunner (and many people of the time) really did believe that this was the future.And, they saw this future coming before 1980!Almost 40 years after this book was written, it is fair to say that we have made positive progress.While I understand that the dawning of realization about ecology and environmentalism that occurred in the 60's and 70's profoundly impacted many people, I can't help feeling somewhat amused by the mortal fear and hysteria which people had for the future.Brunner and many of of his readers would have never believed that the world would be as beautiful today as it is.

What really surprised me was looking through the other Amazon reviews before I got ready to write my own.Nearly everyone seems to think Brunner's vision has come true or is just about to.Statements like:

"I think we're doomed"

"..much scarier because it is closer to the way it really is. Read it and weep."

"All of these ... visions of the future have come true."

"Scariest ... predictions about the future environment are correct."

"It is still coming"

Is it just that the people who tend to read this book are still convinced that the world is crumbling around them?Are these people who just cannot accept that positive gains have been made?Do they not believe that the air is cleaner now than when this book was written?Or that more attention and awareness of the environment are prevalent around the world than ever before?Or that resources and protections are being placed (with great success) on endangered animals that nearly went extinct in the 70's but are now on the road to recovery?Or that we now live in a more affluent society, with more people being more successful than ever before?Or any number of ways that life is better now than when this book was written?I suspect that most of these people have lived their lives with the constant feeling of impending doom.Reading books like this only help them justify their impulses of fear.

I am not trying to say that we shouldn't continue to be concerned about the environment or about the future of mankind on Earth, but at least let's acknowledge than in many respects, things are looking up.Thank God they haven't turned out the way Brunner predicted in this book!I encourage people to read this book.It is an exciting and scary story that is well told in a vivid way.And keep in mind that while it may come across as seeming ridiculous now, it was written as (and taken as) a very serious warning to the world.Might help give you some insight into the thinking of radical environmentalists even today.The future used to scare the [poop] out of some people, and visions like this help us see why.

The version of this book I read (published 2004) contained an afterward by a noted environmentalist.It followed along the same lines of most of the Amazon reviews here, supporting the myth that Brunner's vision has come true.It also celebrated the encouragement this book has given the more radical wings of the environmentalist movement (think planting bombs in Hummer dealerships), and gleefully noted the similarity (in his mind) between our former President Bush and the figurehead Prexy.Finally, it lambasted the field of crop genetic engineering with a fear mongering tirade sure to turn off anyone with real knowledge of the field.A poor choice for an afterward, left a very negative impression on me, and partially ruined this otherwise enjoyable book.

fantabulous book, a must read for modern times
Anybody living today can relate to this book.All of John Brunner's work is amazing but this one is particularly on point.I read it a number of years ago and reread it about every three to five years.It does not get less true over time.
highly recommend ... Read more

Product Description
If the twentieth century was the American Century, who will the next one belong to... and what will become of the nation's capital? Will Washington D.C. be drowned in the rising tides and its glory days forgotten, or will its residents rise to the challenge and remake the world in its image? In these stories you'll find as many questions as answers, but if assembled authors agree on anything, it's that we are destined to live in interesting times and more than that... ones that we will have a hand in creating. Ask not what the future can do for you... with stories by Cory Doctorow, James Alan Gardner, Joe Haldeman, Sean McMullen, Kim Stanley Robinson, Allen M. Steele, and many more. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Good collection of short stories by some very good writers
The common theme of this collection of short stories is the future of washington. Some of these stories are very good and some very good writers like Kim Stanley Robinson, L. Neil Smith, and Joe Haldeman contributed to this effort.
There is a lot of variety and a lot of imagination in these stories. Something for just about everyone.

Clarification
The story "The Day of the RFIDs," alluded to in the Daniel Miller review as a highlight of the FUTURE WASHINGTON collection, was actually written by Edward M. Lerner.

Not as good as I expected it to be
I was kind of disappointed with this book, honestly--the stories are very hit-or-miss.The best one is by Kim Stanley Robinson, but it's an excerpt from a novel, not written for this collection--probably better to just read the novel.Another highlight is by Cory Doctorow, exploring the use of RFID tags and the Dept. of Homeland Security, although I felt like going up to him and whispering "Your ideology is showing".As for the others, some of them are amusing (particularly one near the end in which Democrats and Republicans have devolved into warring tribes--it reads like it was co-written by David Broder and Hunter S. Thompson), but only a few make a serious attempt at exploring an interesting future.More common are relatively shallow attempts at parody, such as one story in which Indiana real estate agents plant a nuclear bomb in DC and exploit the chaos to move the capital to Fort Wayne.Overall, the book doesn't have enough worthwhile material to make it worth buying.Check it out of a library for a few of the stories, but don't waste your time or your cash.

Is there a future for Washington DC ?
Future Washington contains 16 stories from a variety of authors most usually not found in anthologies.The stories posit many different futures for the DC but most are dark and distopian in one way or another.

"Primate in the Forest" by Kim Stanley Robinson, "Hothouse" by Thomas Harlan, "Civil Disobedience" by Joe Haldeman, all have the area suffering from one degree of global warming or another as background.

"Ignition" by Jack McDevitt gives us an idea of what can happen with fundamental religion take over. Paranoia takes over a computer geek in Edward M. Lerner's "The Day of the RFIDs" but is he really that paranoid?

Jane Lindskold in "Tgers in the Capitol" has the original designer of the capitol area who is not all that happy with what was done with his designs. "Hallowe'en Party" by Nancy Jane Moore is basically directions and instructions for a future party in the DC area (the directions are only slightly off from those you'd get if you lived in this security conscious area now).

"Agenda" by Travis Taylor, "A Well-Dressed Fear" by B.A. Chepaities, "The Lone and Level Sands" by L. Neil Smith, "Hail to the Chief" by Allen M. Steele, and "The Empire of the Willing" by Sean McMullen, all deal with politics and intrigue on one level or another.

"Mr. Zmith Goes to Washington" by Steven Sawicki has my favorite aliens (from sfrevu.com's Damned Aliens Column) drop in for a Senate Hearing. "Indiana Wants Me" by Brenda W. Clough gives a look at what could happen to the DC area if Congress moved elsewhere. "Human Readable" by Cory Doctorow deals with the concept of who has access to IT and will it be economic status blind."Shopping at the Mall" by James Alan Gardner give us a view of what would happen if Americans just disappeared one day.

All in all, there are stories to make you laugh out loud, shake your head in frustration, dispair, and agreement.Those that make you think maybe you should pay just a bit more attention to what are leaders are doing FOR/TO us in DC.Every story is strong with character, place, and plot.It's a good buy. ... Read more

Product Description
This is nonfiction commentary. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Mars Trilogy, Icehenge, the Memory of Whiteness, the Years of Rice and Salt, Forty Signs of Rain, Three Californias Trilogy, Fifty Degrees Below, Galileo's Dream, Antarctica, a Short, Sharp Shock, Escape From Kathmandu, Sixty Days and Counting. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: The Mars trilogy is a series of award-winning science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson that chronicle the settlement and terraforming of the planet Mars through the intensely personal and detailed viewpoints of a wide variety of characters spanning almost two centuries. Ultimately, more utopian than dystopian, the story focuses on egalitarian, sociological, and scientific advances made on Mars, while Earth suffers from overpopulation and ecological disaster. The three novels are Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1993), and Blue Mars (1996). An additional collection of short stories and background information was published as The Martians (1999). The main trilogy won a number of prestigious awards. Red Mars starts in 2026 with the first colonial voyage to Mars aboard the largest interplanetary spacecraft ever, the Ares, with a crew of whom are to be the first hundred colonists, composed for the most part of Russians and Americans. The book details the construction of the first settlement on Mars, called Underhill. A debate among the colonists breaks out about the advisability of terraforming the planet, focusing on the two extreme views personified by Saxifrage "Sax" Russell, who believes their very presence on the planet means some level of terraforming has already begun and it should be continued, a viewpoint held by a group called the "Greens"; and by Ann Clayborne, who represents the viewpoint that humankind does not have the right to change...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=89970 ... Read more

Product Description
This is nonfiction commentary. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Mars Trilogy, Icehenge, the Memory of Whiteness, the Years of Rice and Salt, Forty Signs of Rain, Three Californias Trilogy, Fifty Degrees Below, Galileo's Dream, Antarctica, a Short, Sharp Shock, Escape From Kathmandu, Sixty Days and Counting. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: The Mars trilogy is a series of award-winning science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson that chronicle the settlement and terraforming of the planet Mars through the intensely personal and detailed viewpoints of a wide variety of characters spanning almost two centuries. Ultimately, more utopian than dystopian, the story focuses on egalitarian, sociological, and scientific advances made on Mars, while Earth suffers from overpopulation and ecological disaster. The three novels are Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1993), and Blue Mars (1996). An additional collection of short stories and background information was published as The Martians (1999). The main trilogy won a number of prestigious awards. Red Mars starts in 2026 with the first colonial voyage to Mars aboard the largest interplanetary spacecraft ever, the Ares, with a crew of whom are to be the first hundred colonists, composed for the most part of Russians and Americans. The book details the construction of the first settlement on Mars, called Underhill. A debate among the colonists breaks out about the advisability of terraforming the planet, focusing on the two extreme views personified by Saxifrage "Sax" Russell, who believes their very presence on the planet means some level of terraforming has already begun and it should be continued, a viewpoint held by a group called the "Greens"; and by Ann Clayborne, who represents the viewpoint that humankind does not have the right to change...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=89970 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Old favorite
I think I first read this eons ago in one of the magazines, Asimov's most likely.

The story's fine, but bits have stuck with me, like when the blind boy learns the importance of the period, and keeping the columns of numbers straight (OK, I still haven't learned this for myself).

And Beep-ball.One of the ways that our hero's heroics become believable.

And at one stage I had gotten most of the music he listens to.Keith Jarrett's Koln Concert is still a favorite.

Blind Geometer excellent, but...
I've read Kim Stanley Robinson's THE BLIND GEOMETER once before in a collection of short novellas by the author that I bought once while an exchange student in Germany (I was getting tired of reading Goethe and wanted to read something in my native English again for once).THE BLIND GEOMETER is EXCELLENT. But the rest of Kim Stanley Robinson's stories I found abysmally bad.I'm not sure if this book advertised here is the same one I read, however...I have yet to read any of his MARS books, though.Maybe he's gotten better. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The epic trilogy comes to an end
Following the more exciting and intriguing volumes RED MARS and GREEN MARS, the less eventful and slightly more plodding BLUE MARS brings Kim Stanley Robinson's great trilogy to a close.It was instantly declared a classic -- probably the most recently composed piece of SF fiction to have achieved that status.It has been declared as the work most crucial in bringing back hard SF to the marketplace (after several decades of either metaphysical SF in the mode of Philip K. Dick, who for record is my favorite SF writer, or one multi-volume space opera or fantasy disguised as SF).What is most overwhelming about Robinson's Mars Trilogy is the minute and meticulous detail in which he discusses precisely how the surface of Mars could (and would during the course of the books) be transformed to accomodate human living.

The book is likewise dominated by politics, and this on two levels.First, he imagines separating factions based on the varying ways Mars' inhabitants would prefer to form society in order to relate to the planet.Second, and very interestingly, all of these political parties are post-Marxist.Though none are explicitly Marxist in either their rhetoric or in their self-identification, all are in that they are post-capitalist (something that Marx predicted would be the material outcome of history).So the book functions as an imagining of how life after capitalism could exist.For instance, under capitalism men and women who are not the owners of capital are forced to sell their labor for wages.This is the universal condition in a Capitalist society as described by Marx.Because the labor is expended on things not directly required by the worker, the condition is described as alienated.But if you notice in Robinson's Mars, there are no salaries and people are allowed to work directly on the projects that they choose.Whether it is workable is not my concern.I merely find it interesting that this is one of the very, very few attempts in literature to describe a post-capitalist society.(Though Robinson also did this in one of the books in the California trilogy.)

Another word on this.Most Americans have a very confused and wildly inaccurate understanding of Marxism.They crudely conflate it with Communism as practiced in Russia, China, and Cuba, something that would have horrified Marx, not least because he was a passionate democrat (indeed, far more than Adam Smith, who was not a supporter of universal suffrage -- actually, neither was Marx, who while he felt that all men, regardless of their status as landowners, should be allowed to vote, was doubtful of the wisdom of allowing women to do so -- still, Marx's vision of enfranchisement were far more embracive than Smith's).Robinson is a Marxist, but he is clearly a Western Marxist, attached to thinkers like Gregor Luckacs, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Theodore Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Ernst Bloch.While most of these writers held more or less negative views about modern culture, Bloch was, like contemporary Marxist literary critic Fredric Jameson, far more positive about the literary and artistic products.Robinson clearly has a great deal in common with Bloch and Jameson than with the more dour Marxist theorists.It isn't an accident that Bloch's most famous is the massive (in English translation, 3 large volumes) THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE [Hoffnung] (a work that subsequently inspired Jürgen Moltman in writing THE THEOLOGY OF HOPE, which in turn was the major inspiration on the Catholic theologians putting forth Liberation Theology), appears obliquely but unmistakably in the Mars Trilogy.One of the landmarks on Robinson's Mars is known as Blochs Hoffnung.

I go into the Trilogy as a Late Marxist or post-Capitalism trilogy because I'm not sure that many have picked up on it.But it is sufficient to proclaim this one of the finest Marxist literary works ever written.It is also fascinating in that it reveals a political future in which the totalitarianism that many ascribe to Marx's ideas is not present, but instead only the democracy of which he was a passionate partisan.

Plotwise BLUE MARS is easily the least exciting of the three books.In fact, it is often merely plodding, tracing the ongoing shifts and changes in the flora and fauna of the rapidly developing planet.Robinson is also unceasing in imagining the subcultures that might develop on this new world, some of them not terribly appealing and some not unpleasant at all.And his constantly asking "What next?" leads us to visits to other planets and other moons in the solar systems, and although we do not follow them there, we even see some departing to other solar systems.Robinson's imagination knows few limits, simultaneously questioning where technology, politics, social mores and norms, economics, religion, and culture would go under these new conditions.The overall effect is breathtaking.No other writer in the history of SF has so comprehensively a future world might develop out of our own.

My lone complaint with the book is that this third volume tends to drift a bit.The point seems more to witness how the world might continue to change.There certainly is little in the way of a dominant narrative and even the arcs for the main characters feel more like add ons.Saxifrage Russell remains as fascinating as he was in GREEN MARS (he was something of a major secondary character in RED MARS).I always enjoy any bit where the book focuses on him.I never was able to warm up to Nirgal and never found Jackie to be the tiniest bit likable.Nadia and Art were less important; Michel slight more important while Maya remained herself.And it was a delight to see Ann rejoin the fold.But the main reason the book plods somewhat compared to the earlier volumes is the ongoing lack of any major conflict.It was like Robinson wanted to see how the attempt to terraform and cultivate Mars was going to go, but couldn't come up with a dominant story arc around which to display that.

Not that this is in any way a bad book.It simply isn't the exhilarating read that the first two books were.Mainly, the novel is an excuse to spend more time with characters we've gotten to known and love, or at least like.It doesn't add a great deal to GREEN MARS.No one loving those two books should avoid reading this one.But one should also not expect this one to be a game-changer like those two were.

Still, sitting back and looking at the three books as a total, this has to stand as one of the great works in SF history.These books have no competitors in describing a future world in such great and plausible detail.There have been other long sagas, like the Dune novels, but those were barely SF and perhaps should be considered fantasy.While the Mars Trilogy is also a political fantasy, it is more than anything the great work of hard science fiction.The third novel is a mild disappointment, but all in all this trilogy is unrivaled in the depiction of hard SF. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The epic trilogy comes to a close
Following the more exciting and intriguing volumes RED MARS and GREEN MARS, the less eventful and slightly more plodding BLUE MARS brings Kim Stanley Robinson's great trilogy to a close.It was instantly declared a classic -- probably the most recently composed piece of SF fiction to have achieved that status.It has been declared as the work most crucial in bringing back hard SF to the marketplace (after several decades of either metaphysical SF in the mode of Philip K. Dick, who for record is my favorite SF writer, or one multi-volume space opera or fantasy disguised as SF).What is most overwhelming about Robinson's Mars Trilogy is the minute and meticulous detail in which he discusses precisely how the surface of Mars could (and would during the course of the books) be transformed to accomodate human living.

The book is likewise dominated by politics, and this on two levels.First, he imagines separating factions based on the varying ways Mars' inhabitants would prefer to form society in order to relate to the planet.Second, and very interestingly, all of these political parties are post-Marxist.Though none are explicitly Marxist in either their rhetoric or in their self-identification, all are in that they are post-capitalist (something that Marx predicted would be the material outcome of history).So the book functions as an imagining of how life after capitalism could exist.For instance, under capitalism men and women who are not the owners of capital are forced to sell their labor for wages.This is the universal condition in a Capitalist society as described by Marx.Because the labor is expended on things not directly required by the worker, the condition is described as alienated.But if you notice in Robinson's Mars, there are no salaries and people are allowed to work directly on the projects that they choose.Whether it is workable is not my concern.I merely find it interesting that this is one of the very, very few attempts in literature to describe a post-capitalist society.(Though Robinson also did this in one of the books in the California trilogy.)

Another word on this.Most Americans have a very confused and wildly inaccurate understanding of Marxism.They crudely conflate it with Communism as practiced in Russia, China, and Cuba, something that would have horrified Marx, not least because he was a passionate democrat (indeed, far more than Adam Smith, who was not a supporter of universal suffrage -- actually, neither was Marx, who while he felt that all men, regardless of their status as landowners, should be allowed to vote, was doubtful of the wisdom of allowing women to do so -- still, Marx's vision of enfranchisement were far more embracive than Smith's).Robinson is a Marxist, but he is clearly a Western Marxist, attached to thinkers like Gregor Luckacs, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Theodore Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Ernst Bloch.While most of these writers held more or less negative views about modern culture, Bloch was, like contemporary Marxist literary critic Fredric Jameson, far more positive about the literary and artistic products.Robinson clearly has a great deal in common with Bloch and Jameson than with the more dour Marxist theorists.It isn't an accident that Bloch's most famous is the massive (in English translation, 3 large volumes) THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE [Hoffnung] (a work that subsequently inspired Jürgen Moltman in writing THE THEOLOGY OF HOPE, which in turn was the major inspiration on the Catholic theologians putting forth Liberation Theology), appears obliquely but unmistakably in the Mars Trilogy.One of the landmarks on Robinson's Mars is known as Blochs Hoffnung.

I go into the Trilogy as a Late Marxist or post-Capitalism trilogy because I'm not sure that many have picked up on it.But it is sufficient to proclaim this one of the finest Marxist literary works ever written.It is also fascinating in that it reveals a political future in which the totalitarianism that many ascribe to Marx's ideas is not present, but instead only the democracy of which he was a passionate partisan.

Plotwise BLUE MARS is easily the least exciting of the three books.In fact, it is often merely plodding, tracing the ongoing shifts and changes in the flora and fauna of the rapidly developing planet.Robinson is also unceasing in imagining the subcultures that might develop on this new world, some of them not terribly appealing and some not unpleasant at all.And his constantly asking "What next?" leads us to visits to other planets and other moons in the solar systems, and although we do not follow them there, we even see some departing to other solar systems.Robinson's imagination knows few limits, simultaneously questioning where technology, politics, social mores and norms, economics, religion, and culture would go under these new conditions.The overall effect is breathtaking.No other writer in the history of SF has so comprehensively a future world might develop out of our own.

My lone complaint with the book is that this third volume tends to drift a bit.The point seems more to witness how the world might continue to change.There certainly is little in the way of a dominant narrative and even the arcs for the main characters feel more like add ons.Saxifrage Russell remains as fascinating as he was in GREEN MARS (he was something of a major secondary character in RED MARS).I always enjoy any bit where the book focuses on him.I never was able to warm up to Nirgal and never found Jackie to be the tiniest bit likable.Nadia and Art were less important; Michel slight more important while Maya remained herself.And it was a delight to see Ann rejoin the fold.But the main reason the book plods somewhat compared to the earlier volumes is the ongoing lack of any major conflict.It was like Robinson wanted to see how the attempt to terraform and cultivate Mars was going to go, but couldn't come up with a dominant story arc around which to display that.

Not that this is in any way a bad book.It simply isn't the exhilarating read that the first two books were.Mainly, the novel is an excuse to spend more time with characters we've gotten to known and love, or at least like.It doesn't add a great deal to GREEN MARS.No one loving those two books should avoid reading this one.But one should also not expect this one to be a game-changer like those two were.

Still, sitting back and looking at the three books as a total, this has to stand as one of the great works in SF history.These books have no competitors in describing a future world in such great and plausible detail.There have been other long sagas, like the Dune novels, but those were barely SF and perhaps should be considered fantasy.While the Mars Trilogy is also a political fantasy, it is more than anything the great work of hard science fiction.The third novel is a mild disappointment, but all in all this trilogy is unrivaled in the depiction of hard SF. ... Read more