Thanks to the person who suggested, "The Sheep Look Up"

[Sequoia]

http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/1932100016.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIlitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

When did you last bask in the sun, friends? When did you last dare drink from a creek? When did you last risk picking fruit and eating it straight from the tree? What were your doctor?s bills last year? Which of you live in cities where you don?t wear a filtermask?
- John Brunner, The Sheep Look Up

The President of America blames every chemical spill, toxic dump, and the resulting contaminated food supply not on the companies responsible, but on "terrorists." American corporations dump their engineered food on Africa and Honduras as food aid. Land Rovers and other gas guzzlers get tagged while stuck in traffic. Environmental revolutionaries are hunted by the feds as thousands engage in acts of ecotage to defend what is left of the Earth. Environmental groups go undercover into American supermarkets and test the food to see if it is truly safe. Sounds like today?s headlines, but it is actually from the first few chapters of a 1972 science fiction book by John Brunner ? The Sheep Look Up.

British author John Brunner wrote this story of ecological resistance right when the modern environmental movement was just starting to take off. Earth First! was still about a decade away from springing out of the pages of American author Ed Abbey?s Monkeywrench Gang. Brunner?s story is set in a future America when the radical environmental movement (closer to the Earth Liberation Front than Earth First!) has swelled to over a million strong, corporations run America, and her puppet of a President called Prexy is a dead ringer for the USA's Dubya.

http://news.diversebooks.com/reviews/03/07/15/1121233.shtml

[Jackpine Radical]

1. I remember that book.

I need to re-read it. Thanks for the reminder.

[dweller]

2. my copy is beaten and battered

and rubber-banded together. But i still free it to re-read every now and then.

dp

[Sequoia]

12. Uh oh...coffee split on my library copy.

I'm in trouble now. The pages are warped. Crap. I even took precautions to protect my book by putting the coffe mug in a plastic bag in my tote sack but it tipped over anyway. I hate coffee mugs that are small at the bottom and big at the top. Who designs these things that tip over all the time. Idiots. Time for a new mug that makes sense.

[damntexdem]

3. Ooh, a blast from the past.

I read it at about the same time I read Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar."

http://www.amazon.com/Stand-Zanzibar-John-Brunner/dp/1857988361/sr=1-1/qid=1169077888/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-4553451-0664718?ie=UTF8&s=books

[badgerpup]

7. I've got his book "Shockwave Rider"

That one is frighteningly prescient too. :wow::scared:

[Fire Walk With Me]

13. "SOZ" is definitely a winner as well. I enjoyed it more than "Sheep".

[classof56]

4. I recall reading "The Sheep Look Up" in 1972 and being disturbed for weeks.

Maybe months. I had two children born in 1968 and 1970 and my spouse and I took the "ZPG Pledge" to no more than reproduce ourselves out of concern for our floundering planet, Mother Earth. I am glad to report we stuck to that pledge, but I still cringe when I think of Brunner's novel, especially now.

Good book, this. Hope others will read and heed. I recommend it.

[fed-up]

5. I think that was me! my sis rec'd it for me when I 1st got food allergies

then I started recommending it to others after I started and worked on our GE Free campaign (which sadly lost).

An excellent read, with so many parts coming true.

Cheap older copies are available online, but if someone wants to read the afterward by David Brin at the back of the book that deals with genetically altered foods they will have to buy the newer copy (copyright 2002?)

Glad you enjoyed it!

[atommom]

6. I rec'd it to someone here recently too. It's a sad book. Very prescient.

He predicted so many of our ecological catastrophes.

[klook]

8. Check out "The Space Merchants" by Pohl & Kornbluth

Originally published as Gravy Planet in 1952, this is a satirical novel in which consumerism is king and advertising agencies rule the world. (Hmmm...satirical novel or documentary??) Conservationists ("the Consies") are at odds with the status quo, and the main character, a cocky account exec, learns to his horror how the other half lives. Not a great work of literature by most standards, but it's funny, entertaining, and prescient, and the authors had the right attitude about the marketing-uber-alles mindset. And it would make an excellent movie.

Thanks for the reminder about the Brunner book also -- I must re-read it.

[eridani]

9. Brunner sure got a lot of things right

Stand on Zanzibar missed on the enemy du jour, though. He thought it would be an extension of the Vietnam war to involve all of east Asia, including China. Missed out entirely on oil and the Middle East.

[Keekaaha]

15. China

Wait a while. China is/will be our primary enemy.

[raccoon]

10. Read it back in the 1970's, I'll have to re-read it.

Very prescient book. Thanks for the heads up about the afterword by David Brin, whoever posted that.

[n2doc]

11. Great, depressing, uncompromising book

The President in the book reminds me so much of W. I would guess he was thinking of Nixon, but the short, nasty quips are really on the spot. As are the predictions about going to "natural" foods that really arn't natural or organic, just marketed as such. And the rich enclaves guarded to keep out the masses. Everyone with a taste for SF should read this. The ending is also one of the most bleak, but probably realistic, book endings I have read.

[MisterP]

14. and the violent reactions whipped up by corporate propaganda