The Sheep Look Up

Got about 30% of the way through the John Brunner book by audiobook, but rain has prevented the daily yardwork and my enthusiasm for runs vs Nordictracking inside (which needs video or music). Also, the disjointed structure from various sources makes it more interesting but is hard to follow in audio (unless laying down or something allowing total focus). 

I'm going to have to switch to paper, as it's not on ebook format that I can find yet. And the copy I have is really tiny print. After a trip to Uncle Hugo's, I hope to have a better edition...

It's actually better than I thought from trying the first five pages several times. It takes some getting past archaic cultural schtuff - particularly the parodic yet normal sexism and racism of characters and their chit chat - and getting into the to-me old fashioned style (though newish and zippy at the time, of course). 

The themes are timely. Some of the humor is quite funny still. I can think of many ways Brunner and peers may have influenced Johanna Sinisalo, which I'm always looking for. Especially the collage kaleidoscope style of storytelling.

It's in a way hard to take at this particular cultural moment, and yet also strangely comforting. Like Disch's dystopic novels.

 

More later. I'm trying to push gaily forward into a new draft of a thing I've been working on a long time, that is feeling more solid than it has been. Getting the genre mix and characters' tone right has been a struggle. I need to get my resume together and deal with home repair before deep winter junk, too. This leaves less time for reading outside of audio. (Got a mystery for that now. Killingly by Katharine Buetner, to fit my mood. Good blurbs.)