Surtac wrote:

Here's a status report on my re-read of Stand On Zanzibar which, according to my records, I last re-read in 2008.

I'm still enjoying it at about halfway through, and this time around I find myself reading more slowly and absorbing more of the background detail than I recall doing before.  And as I do that, it becomes more and more clear to me that Brunner really did do a good job predicting Gibson's jackpot future that we are currently living in, and he did it a good forty years or so before Gibson.

Sure, he may have got the major driver wrong by focusing on overpopulation rather than climate change, but a lot of the other factors and flow-on effects are surprisingly relevant and familiar even as the details and implementations vary.  Eg., current global geo-politics conflict zones, economics, eugenics, cost of living issues, social de-cohesion, world health concerns, universal access to information in developed countries, ubiquitous communications, entrenched misogyny, inconsistent infrastructure capabilities etc and so on.

And then I saw the following article in my morning news feed and was reminded yet again that the jackpot really has already arrived.

https://pearlsandirritations.com/post/2026/08/mental-health-is-not-a-niche-issue-it-is-the-electorate/

So now I have to re-read some of Gibson's work as well to remind myself of the relevant aspects of the jackpot as described there.

 

Thanks for the update. I last read SoZ about 15 years ago, and it held up well. Perhaps deserves a reread. 
Incidentally, I imagine that article applies to every industrialized country, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the numbers and intensity were more so here…huge issue