Stand on Zanzibar (John Brunner, 1968)

Stand on Zanzibar (John Brunner, 1968)

Sometimes you are reading a book, and it is great, and you finish it in a week or so, and you're on the next book, and it's also good, and soon, you are going through books like a pedophile goes through a kindergarten in his dreams, and suddenly, like a child in the pedophile's dream that turns out to be a cop, you reach a bad book, and everything slows down, and suddenly, the book takes you a long, long time to finish.

This is that book.

This science-fiction Hugo winner is a long book. More than 500 pages, but feels ten times that, because of how boring it is. The most annoying part of the book is the extent the author went in providing background for the future setting that he writes in. There are multiple chapters throughout the book that provides background for the world, supposedly from newspapers, books, shows, lectures, etc, etc. If I am reading an actual historical book, and the author provides multiple boring facts, at least I can be content that the boring shit I went through adds to my general knowledge. But what's the point of the book asking me to read about all these data on a world he just made up? Sometimes fiction books might create a world and try to get us familiar with its geography and history, but it should come from the story itself and from its characters, not actual table of facts, pages after pages.

And the story isn't that interesting either. The author has such a hard-on in trying to get us familiar with how smartly he has created the world, that he does not spend any significant time in creating three-dimensional characters. They are bland and there are MANY. There are only a few main characters, but like the random chapters on the world, there are countless side-plots with minor characters to, I am guessing, create a better background on the world. Basically, the book is like a boring non-fiction without the advantage of actually learning something useful at least.

1/5