Stand on Zanzibar
“Stand on Zanzibar has gained notoriety for its sheer accuracy. Set in 2010, the novel imagines a world not that far off from events that transpired in the surrounding decades—long after it was written…Some are unsettlingly on-the-nose. For example, the President of the United States is the charming and popular Mr… Obomi."
Time
A Time Magazine Pick of 8 Books That Eerily Predicted the Future
Nominated for the 1968 Nebula Award for Best Novel
Norman Niblock House is a rising executive at General Technics, one of a few all-powerful corporations. His work is leading General Technics to the forefront of global domination, both in the marketplace and politically---it's about to take over a country in Africa. Donald Hogan is his roommate, a seemingly sheepish bookworm. But Hogan is a spy, and he's about to discover a breakthrough in genetic engineering that will change the world...and kill him.
These two men's lives weave through one of science fiction's most praised novels. Written in a way that echoes John Dos Passos' U.S.A. Trilogy, Stand on Zanzibar is a cross-section of a world overpopulated by the billions. Where society is squeezed into hive-living madness by god-like mega computers, mass-marketed psychedelic drugs, and mundane uses of genetic engineering. Though written in 1968, it speaks of now, and is frighteningly prescient and intensely powerful.
Praise