Yet Another Security Leak From the Future

In which The Author finds the referendum result predicted in a classic science fiction novel

I've recently started rereading John Brunner's 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar. I say rereading because I first bought a copy about fifteen years or so ago. Gollancz had reissued it as part of their SF Masterworks series, so I grabbed it as soon as it came into stock in Dillons. I didn't know anything about it, apart from the fact that it had won the Hugo award, and was regularly cited as one of the most important SF books ever written. I didn't even know that Mr Brunner had died until I read it on the back cover.

Thinking about it now, it was probably a good thing I didn't buy it when it was still in print in the early 1980s. I'd never have made it past the first couple of chapters. The dense, challenging story of overpopulation, eugenics, racism, colonialism, legalised drug use, industrial espionage and mental breakdown would have been way over my head when I was a teenager. Like The Silmarillion (which I did buy at the time), it would have gathered dust on my shelves for decades before I plucked up the courage to tackle it again.

Anyway, I read it and then lent it to Paul E., thinking he'd probably enjoy it as well. I haven't seen it since. I haven't seen him since Stuart Cable's funeral, come to that. I found a second-hand copy in Pontypridd Market a few months ago, so I snapped it up and started reading it again a few days ago.

I should explain that it's a linear narrative, but told in a non-linear fashion, if that makes any sense. While the main characters move through the story in a fairly conventional manner, their adventures are punctuated with brief sections entitled 'the happening world'. Made up of imagined news items, overheard snatches of conversation, advertising slogans, TV broadcasts and so forth, 'the happening world' sets the scene for the overall story. It seems that Mr Brunner pulled off a nice trick by capturing in print our channel-hopping habits of the near future. It also includes short snippets from an imaginary book by a renegade sociologist, The Hipcrime Vocab, some of which have already found their way into my other blog O'Gorman's Unfamiliar Quotations.

Considering that the book is nearly half a century old, you can probably imagine my surprise when I found another security leak from the future in 'the happening world (4)'. Subtitled 'Spoken Like a Man', it allows us to eavesdrop on the political framework which underlies the plot. Needless to say, the US military is engaged in another of its overseas adventures. While the countries may be fictional, the attitudes are very real – and can be read in any tabloid newspaper and heard in any Valleys pub on any day of the week. Here's the chapter, in full:

Confidential: Cases have been reported of the term 'little red brother' being used by units of the marine and naval forces deployed from Isola. Officers are instructed to remind their men that the officially-approved terms are 'chink', 'slit-eye', 'yellowbelly' and 'weevil'. Use of softass civilian terms is to be severely punished.

'What they could not hold by force of arms they are trying to win back by the power of their foreign money! We must drive out these parasites, these immoral bloodsuckers who corrupt our womanhood, mock our sacred traditions and scoff at our prized national heritage.'

KEEP OUT!

Allships urgentest allships urgentest following storm Thursday night mines are loose and drifting at approaches to Bordeaux Roads stand by till daylight and await go signal from units of Common Europe Navy.

'What I want to know is, how much longer is that damned government of ours going to take this lying down?'

PRIVATE!

'Our enemies skulk on every side, waiting for us to relax our vigilance. But we shall not give them the chance they seek to fall on and devour us. We shall stand firm, and our nation shall be purged of dross in the pure fire of self-sacrifice.

TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

To all Party bureaux: Revisionism and backsliding has been noted with concern in the following Departments …

'Yeah, but what I mean, even if he does have clean genotype a guy with a proper sense of social responsibility just doesn't have five kids in this day and age! I don't care if he does get the Populimit Bulletin in his mail – that could be a cover, couldn't it? No, I say he must be one of these Right Catholic bleeders. And I want him out!'

BEWARE OF THE DOG

'What rightfully, legally and historically belongs to us lies groaning under the heel of a foreign tyrant!'

THESE PREMISES PROTECTED BY SAFE-T-GARD INC.

'It is not enough that we ourselves should enjoy freedom. We shall not be truly free until everyone alive can make the same sincere and honest claim.'

NO RIGHT OF WAY

'It is not enough that we ourselves should enjoy freedom. There are those in our very midst who extol the virtues of an alien way of life which we know to be evil, hateful and wrong!'

NIGGER DON'T LET THE SUN SHINE ON YOUR HEAD

'Dirty Reds—'

My country, 'tis of thee

NATIONALS RIGHT LANE ALIENS LEFT LANE

'Capitalist hyenas—'

There'll always be an England

BLANKES NIEBLANKES

'The wogs begin at Calais—'

Vive la France!

FLEMING WALLOON

'Bloody nignogs—'

Deutschland über Alles

YORUBA IBO

'Goddamn people next door—'

Nkosi Sikelele Afrika

YOURS MINE

'They're all mad bar thee and me and thee's a little queer—'

MINE!

MINE!!

MINE!!!

PATRIOTISM A great British writer once said that if he had to choose between betraying his country and betraying a friend he hoped he would have the courage to betray his country.

(Amen, brothers and sisters! Amen!

—The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan)