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Stand On Zanzibar: Difference between revisions
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''[[Stand On Zanzibar]]'' is a Hugo Award-winning dystopian novel by [[John Brunner]].
It's set in the year 2010, when the population of Earth has reached 7 billion. The Soviet Union is defunct as a superpower, but China is rapidly industrializing and increasing in power. Giant corporations have large enough economies to control entire countries. In-vitro fertilization and genetic mapping are becoming a reality. A computer the size of a large book is more powerful than the most massive supercomputers of the Sixties. Personalized digital avatars of yourself feature in everyday entertainment. Religious denominations are rapidly polarizing on moral issues like abortion. And ordinary people suddenly snap and go on killing sprees in schools, workplaces, and malls.
[[Real Life|Sound familiar?]] Did we mention this book was written in 1968?
On the other hand, [[Big Applesauce|New York]] [[Domed Hometown|is encased in a giant dome]], Puerto Rico and part of the Philippines are U.S. states, eugenics legislation has passed in 48 states, and the West has cured its addiction to oil.
''Stand On Zanzibar'' isn't your ordinary dystopian novel; the plot is secondary to an intense
* '''Context''', background information, [[Paratext]], incomprehensible transcripts of TV shows, and excerpts from the writings of rogue sociologist Chad Mulligan.
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▲* [[Balkanize Me]]: Inverted: several groups of African countries have merged into larger states.
* [[Bittersweet Ending]]/[[Earn Your Happy Ending]]: {{spoiler|They discover the secreted chemical that makes Beninia so peaceful, but Dr. Sugaiguntung is the one man who could have successfully spliced Shinka genes into everyone else, and Donald killed him. They can still synthesize and mass-produce the chemical to ensure world peace, but this is basically an admission that humanity can't be saved by its own devices without resorting to dystopian means.}}
* [[Bulungi]]: Beninia. Dahomalia and RUNG, too, but these latter two are conglomerations of already-extant IRL nations.
* [[Cyberpunk]]: Contains enough elements to be considered a proto-example.
* [[Deus Est Machina]]: Shalmaneser is getting there.
* [[Domed Hometown]]
* [[Emotion Bomb]]: {{spoiler|The Shinka have a pheromone that makes people less aggressive. At the end, the characters contemplate replicating it to create world peace}}.
* [[Exposition Beam]]: EPTification has aspects of this.
* [[Fantastic Drug]]: Triptine, Skullbustium, Yaginol and "Truth or Consequences" all of which are described as 'lifters' (uppers), and all of which seem to have at some hallucinogenic effects.
* [[Free-Love Future]]: The "shiggy circuit
* [[Future Slang]]: Shiggies, codders, bleeders, muckers, Aframs, etc.
* [[Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke]]: A surprisingly early example of this trope.
* [[He's Back]]: When we first meet Chad Mulligan, he's a drunken, surly wreck who hates everything. After learning about the situation that crashed [[Master Computer|Shalmaneser]], he springs into action, fixes the world's most powerful computer in less than fifteen minutes, and is reinvigorated with life for the rest of the book. {{spoiler|And then he spirals back into despair in the last two pages.}}
* [[High Octane Nightmare Fuel]]:
* [[Homage]]: The style is inspired by John Dos Passos's U.S.A. Trilogy.
* [[Humans Are Flawed]]: But Chad loves them all anyway.
* [[I Need a Freaking Drink]]: Chad says this after solving the Shalmaneser problem.
* [[Instant AI, Just Add Water]]: Shalmaneser is rapidly approaching artificial intelligence as it gains processing power. Right now, he's at the level of [[The Stoner]].
* [[Loads and Loads of Characters]]
* [[Mary Suetopia]]: Beninia, which is suspiciously devoid of many of the problems of the neighboring countries.
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* [[Mega Corp]]: General Technics. "The difficult we did yesterday. The impossible, we're doing right now."
** [[Redesigning Eva (Darth Wiki)|This announcement has been brought to you by the Prometheus Corporation, building a better world through the fire.]]
* [[Neural Implanting]]: Being EPTified, or Educated for Particular Tasks.
* [[Population Control]]: Eugenics is rapidly becoming the norm in developed countries, banning children of carriers of colorblindness, hemophilia, and other genetic disorders.
* [[Positive Discrimination]]: The reason Norman became a vice-president of GT is because he's black.
* [[
* [[Engineer Exploited For Evil]]: Dr. Sugaiguntung.
* [[Shout-Out]]: The override to make Shalmaneser accept invalid data is to say [[The Hunting of the Snark|"I say it three times, it must be true"]].
* [[Spy From Weights and Measures]]: Donald is employed by the US government, and our introduction to him is "Donald Hogan is a spy", but he really just sits around absorbing information while collecting a paycheck. At least until he's
* [[The Stoner]]: Bennie Noakes and company.▼
* [[Superpowerful Genetics]]: The Yatakangi claim that they will create genetic supermen, which sets off a panic equivalent to Sputnik in other countries.
* [[That Man Is Dead]]: At the end, Donald claims this of himself after a mental breakdown and refers to his previous self as "the other Donald Hogan". He still uses the name, since he figures the dead Donald won't complain.
* [[Tear Jerker]]: {{spoiler|Chad's breakdown}} at the end.
* [[Title Drop]]: "You could '''stand''' us all '''on''' the six hundred forty square mile surface of the island of '''Zanzibar'''."
▲* [[The Stoner]]: Bennie Noakes and company.
▲* [[Title Drop]]: "You could '''stand''' us all '''on''' the six hundred forty square mile surface of the island of '''Zanzibar'''."
* [[Two Lines, No Waiting]]: Between Donald and Norman's plots, which form the story of the book. Though there's several hundred pages unrelated to either of them in the book as well.
* [[Walking the Earth]]: Chad Mulligan traveled around as a bum for a while.
* [[Wham! Line]]:
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[[Category:Science Fiction Literature]]
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