Reviews

The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner

mssunnyskies's review against another edition

Writing style is meandering and will take more attention than I have right now 

domydoo's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

chaosetc's review against another edition

2.0

Greed, politics, corruption, and conspiracy. Basically all of the usual suspects from your daily doom scroll. The story is solidly dystopian, and also, I write with dismay, still horribly relevant. But...

While the story seeks to be progressive, it is held back by the cringeworthy norms of the era that it came from, and the hammer that the author used to forge it. This book is about as subtle as a blow to the head. Somewhere in between all the finger wagging though there is an interesting plot. I sincerely hope that there might be, somewhere out there, another book that does the idea justice.

wormbroth's review against another edition

challenging dark funny tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

5.0

Beautiful terrible spectacular cloying vomit inducing. Narrative style reminiscent of Stand on Zanzibar by same author and told through newspaper clippings, radio talk segments, and fly-on-the-wall style eavesdropping. Almost no redeemable characters. Gnarly descriptions of poverty, addiction, race, gender, etc. But! No real buts actually- this is a great book following the natural conclusion of late stage capitalism and its effects on the US. 

og_rocklicker's review against another edition

dark reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot

4.5

kateofmind's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

mgreer56's review against another edition

challenging dark sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

blackaliss's review against another edition

challenging dark informative slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

0.25

Extremely relevant to today's climate change discourse. I still can't recommend it to anyone as it's not just a depressing read, it's also a boring depressing read. More series of newsclips with dry voiceover than a proper novel. 

mgouker's review against another edition

2.0

oh my... This was a disappointment. Some books don't age well. This is one.

11corvus11's review against another edition

4.0

Interesting to listen to this after reading it so long ago. It def still has a very bleak predictive look on our current ecological collapse. It's missing the advanced tech (which is something i didn't notice much when I read it long ago,) and is dated in gender and race dynamics (but for the time period Brunner have it a good shot to call attention to racism and misogyny.) It has some trauma porn that seems unnecessary though. Also I like bleak dystopias- they validate my despair with the current weight of the world- but our present is so laughably absurd at times that it could have used a bit more levity. Overall an important work of sci-fi especially in the era where stuff in this vein got less attention at times.