'Stand On Zanzibar' by John Brunner

'Stand on Zanzibar' (SoZ) is one of those SF novels with an awful lot of hype around it. I really wanted to like it. I really wanted it to blow my mind.

First published in 1968, SoZ gives us a detailed picture of the dystopian future world... of 2010. Earth's population has reached over 7 billion. Cannabis is legal, but tobacco is illegal. Most countries have eugenics legislation. There is greater acceptance of the LGBT community.

To give us a broad view of this dystopian world, SoZ has four categories of chapters: 'Continuity', which tells the main storyline; 'Tracking With Closeups', which give insights into the lives of minor characters; 'The Happening World', which give samples of conversation, news headlines, announcements, facts, etc; and 'Context', which gives detailed background information.

SoZ is certainly impressive in its ambitious scope, but I found it disappointingly dated and dull.

There is a lot of irritating fake slang: 'codder', 'shiggy', 'sheeting', 'whatinole', 'dreck', etc. The only female characters are either sex objects or a sinister elderly businesswoman. 'The Happening World' chapters often felt like printouts of Facebook news feeds: occasionally there is something interesting, often it's drivel. The main plot advances extremely slowly, and features uninteresting characters.

At the halfway point I was resolved to give up, but the main plot interested me just enough that I genuinely wanted to know what happened. I failed to find an online summary to save me the effort. I decided to persevere, skipping many of the 'Context', 'Tracking With Closeups', and 'The Happening World' chapters, and only skimming the 'Continuity' chapters to get it over with quickly. It wasn't worth it.

SoZ gave me greater certainty that our present reality is a dystopian future, a more interesting dystopian future than the one presented in this 'masterwork' from 1968. Read SoZ if you're interested in the history of science fiction, but if you want a detailed picture of a dystopian world, you'd be better off reading the news, National Geographic, or New Scientist, and occasionally scrolling through Facebook or Twitter.

Don't Vote UKIP

(I originally wrote this on my personal Facebook wall in the run up to the 2014 European Parliament elections.)

I am worried about UKIP's popularity. I am worried that people are actually going to vote for them. I've thought for awhile that voting for UKIP was a bad idea, but was also aware of my own ignorance of the situation. I thought that there might be something other than lie-filled propaganda fuelling their popularity.

Not any more. I am now absolutely certain that voting UKIP is a really, really bad idea.

UKIP's MEPs have a track record of not turning up to work, and not voting in Britain's interests, despite being paid £60,000 per year to do so. Voting for UKIP is a vote for lazy, apathetic workers who don't turn up. The sort of workers who would get sacked very quickly. As an MEP, they can't get Britain out of the EU, and they don't even bother to make the EU better for Britain, presumably so they have more to complain about in their propaganda.

The EU allows us to travel, to study, to work, to settle anywhere within it. A lot of British people do this. EU immigration works both ways. Importing and exporting is made a lot easier. We are a country reliant on imports. Britain's position in the EU is better than that of many EU countries. We've kept the pound; we have greater control over our economy. We are one of the strongest countries within it. The benefits of EU membership vastly outweigh its costs. It is in Britain's interest to stay in the EU; it is in the EU's interest to keep us in it.

Sure, our position could be improved, and its the job of competent (i.e. not UKIP) MEP's to sort that out. MEPs that turn up to work.

UKIP clearly have their own sinister agenda. Their propaganda presents the idea of leaving an internationally agreed human rights convention as a good thing. WHO READS THAT WITHOUT ALARMS GOING OFF? Who reads that and thinks 'Too right; I don't want my government accountable for human rights abuses'? They focus on the right of prisoners to vote, and suggest that this is an awful thing, presumably hoping for an emotional reaction to the idea that murderers and rapists can vote. The right of prisoners to vote is a safeguard against political oppression. Take it away and a government can imprison its opponents and stay in power. Take it away and we could become a dictatorship very quickly. We might get angry at the idea of a murderer being able to vote, but I'd rather that than live under a dictatorship. It might be a fairly ineffectual safeguard, but I can see why it's there.

I'm worried about the rise of UKIP. I really hope it's just a phase.

I don't align myself with any political party; I don't know who I'll be voting for on 22nd May, only that it won't be UKIP or BNP.

After having wandered round a decent chunk of the world, I now get annoyed at the idea of not voting when we live in a country where we can actually change who makes the decisions. We might not be particularly fond of any of them, but we can choose the ones that we think are least shit.
Laos is a 'democratic republic' with one political party. And a midnight curfew.

Use your vote.

And for fuck's sake, don't vote UKIP.

'Riddley Walker' by Russell Hoban

I have read a lot of science fiction, so it is becoming increasingly difficult to find science fiction novels that wow me like the genre once did. For the past few weeks I have been enjoying 'Riddley Walker' by Russell Hoban, which is the best SF novel I have read since February last year*. It has taken so long to read because the whole book is written in a made up version of English.

'How cud any 1 not want to get that shyning Power back from time back way back? How cud any 1 not want to be like them what had boats in the air and picters in the wind? How cud any 1 not want to see them shyning weals terning?'

Riddley Walker, the novel's eponymous narrator, lives an unspecified length of time in the future in post-apocalyptic Kent, where technology has regressed to Iron Age levels. Riddley tells us his story, records some of his people's folklore, and provides a copy of the one ancient text shared by the various tribes: 'The Eusa Story', which tells of how Eusa, with the aid of Mr Clevver, shrunk himself down and found a little man called Addom, who he accidentally split in half while interrogating to discover the secrets of the universe. 'The Eusa Story' is written in a more archaic dialect of fictional post-apocalyptic English:

'Owt uv that 2 peaces uv the Littl Shynin Man the Addom thayr cum shyningness in wayvs in spredin circels. Wivverin & wayverin & humin with a hy soun. Lytin up the dark wud... Bad Tym it wuz then. Peapl din no if they wud be alyv 1 day to the nex. Din even no if thayd be alyv 1 min tu the nex. Sum stuk tu gether sum din. Sum tyms thay dru lots. Sum got et so uthers cud liv. Cudn be shur of nuthing din no wut wuz sayf tu eat or drink & tryin tu keep wyd uv uther forajers & dogs it wuz nuthing onle Luck if enne 1 stayd alyv.'

'Riddley Walker' was first published in 1980, so it pre-dates textspeak and the internet. Perhaps the last few decades, with their lols and m8s and rofls, have detracted from the inventiveness of Hoban's Riddleyspeak. I think it shows that Hoban was extremely prescient: we have already seen English head in Riddley's direction. Hoban says in the afterword: 'Riddleyspeak is only a breaking down and twisting of standard English, so the reader who sounds out the words and uses a little imagination ought to be able to understand it. Technically it works well with the story because it slows the reader down to Riddley's rate of comprehension.' By forcing you to read it slowly, as you decipher the language, 'Riddley Walker' draws you into its world far more than the average post-apocalypse novel. Riddley's world seems hideously plausible.

'I said, 'You cunt.'

He said, 'Funny what peopl wil use for a hard word. The name of a pleasur thing and a place where new life comes out of. There ben times nor not too far back nyther when they use to offer to that same and very 1 what has her woom in Cambry. That same very Nite and Death we all come out of.'

I said, 'Dont you push words at me you rat cunt.''

Many of the words and phrases have double meanings: one of my favourite examples is 'sarvering gallack seas' for 'sovereign galaxies', but the tribespeople of Riddley's world imagine vast sky-seas, crossable on sky-ships, which are severing ('sarvering') them from the humans on other planets. The novel is highly regarded amongst People Who Read Lots.Will Self wrote the introduction to my edition, and David Mitchell wrote an appreciation in the Guardian. 'Riddley Walker' more than repays the effort spent in reading it. Read it. Read it. Read it.

*I read Karel Capek's 'War with the Newts' in February last year. It's a brilliantly bleak satire on colonialism, fascism and racism, made all the more bleak by the events that occurred after the novel's publication in 1936. ('War with the Newts' pokes fun at the Nazis for not liking Jews and being obsessed with racial superiority.) Capek stands next to Franz Kafka as one of the giants of twentieth century Czech literature.