The work, a monumental (nearly 600 pages), is a powerful dystopian novel that focuses on the psychological, social, political, costume of the problem of overpopulation. The work's title, as stated in the opening pages, is derived from news, images from Brunner that "giving each female, male and Pupetto a space of thirty to sixty centimeters, that might be planted on all of milleseicentocinquantotto square kilometers area on the island of Zanzibar. " This calculation is mentioned twice more in the text, updated with the increasing world population parallel to the progress of the events narrated.
The main scenario of the work are the United States in 2010. Overpopulation has led to a marked increase in the cost of the house, changing living standards and reducing the size of homes that a family can afford. Even at the highest levels of society, singles living together to reduce costs while SFinfo, homeless girls, passed from man to man to have a place to live in a kind of legalized prostitution. By law it is forbidden to have more than two children while eugenic laws more stringent to prevent procreation of a growing number of individuals. While having children is considered a kind of privilege, the other increases the feeling of general intolerance even towards the offspring of others. Meanwhile, the ammoccatori, individuals who in a fit of madness commit massacres, increasing every year as well as the consumption of drugs. The Catholic Church has bent to the problem of overpopulation, endorsed contraception, a group of extremists, the True Christian, he refused it, creating a schism and electing its own anti-pope named Eglantine, based in Madrid.
Internationally, skirmishes between the U.S. and China take place daily in the Pacific, the Philippines joined the U.S. as a fifty-state as the "Island". For this reason, the state power is concentrated in the west coast, the area also subject to continuous terrorist attacks Chinese, while the east coast is now in power in the hands of big corporations.
In this scenario, where many other variables come into play, such as an electronic brain which may have reached self-awareness and a mysterious African ethnic group that seems to possess the secret of peace, we follow the adventures of two young characters, Norman and Donald Hogan House whose lives are overwhelmed, respectively positive and negative, from the fate that awaits them in two world leaders at the antipodes.
The novel is constructed in an innovative way with short chapters, four different types. In the pieces of the sequence we follow the mainstream of the work dedicated to the two protagonists, in close-ups are told the stories of several characters in the background, the context has songs from speeches or books to provide a summary and analysis of reality Atropos-geographical, political, historical and socio-economic area in which the story is immersed while they are collage Latest News fragmented, political slogans or advertisements that provide a perception of reality similar to what you can get from reading a newspaper or watching a newscast.
extraordinary works, all in Zanzibar has a great story, not obvious, with a cast of characters well-constructed and never dull. The novel is an immense futuristic vision built on solid content and extrapolations, brush with a wealth in particular, with a manic attention to detail seemingly insignificant, that only the variety of expression used (in the narrative are complemented collage, free verse, rhymes, parodies of popular songs and much more) can afford. A reading, in short, from which every lover of science fiction can not do without.
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