Stand on Zanzibar

Judith Merrill called Stand On Zanzibar "the first true SF novel", and in his introduction to the 2011 edition Bruce Sterling calls parts "radically antinovelistic" and the book in general a "unique formal achievement". Let me assure you, dear reader, such hyperbole statements are bollocks. I've written about some SF-readers' real literature frustration before, and I won't repeat all that here. Obviously, some people need to be told that what they are reading is really True Art, and really worth their Time.

Sterling goes on to compare John Brunner's first non-pulp novel to George Perec's 1978 La Vie mode d'emploi in an attempt to make Brunner's book more formally visionary than it actually is: it predates the English translation of that 'real' literature masterpiece by 20 years. While doing so, he almost casually brushes aside the formal comparisons to Dos Passos' U.S.A., a trilogy from the 1930s that uses the same narrative techniques. Sterling claims Dos Passos doesn't really count, as he was an "naturalistic" writer, and Brunner "antinaturalistic". Content is not form in my book, so "unique formal achievement"? Yeah right. And in Dutch Louis Paul Boon already wrote an even more radical cut up book right after WW2.

Maybe it was unique in the context of SF. Brunner might have been the first speculative writer to put all these techniques together in one book: I'm not widely enough read in pre 1968 SF to verify this. But its partial techniques were tried & tested, in speculative fiction too. I'm guessing books that alternate the big storylines with smaller storylines or vignettes can be easily found. The habit of inserting made up texts from the future period somebody is writing about is not unheard of either: just look at this list of fictional books Frank Herbert quoted from in the Dune series. Asimov did the same in the early 50ies. And Tolkien had fictional song and verse too.

All this is not to shit on Stand On Zanzibar, as Stand On Zanzibar is a masterpiece.

(...)

Please read the full review on Weighing A Pig...