When did you last bask in the sun, friends? When did you last dare drink from a creek? When did you last risk picking fruit and eating it straight from the tree? What were your doctor?s bills last year? Which of you live in cities where you don?t wear a filtermask?
- John Brunner, The Sheep Look Up

The President of America blames every chemical spill, toxic dump, and the resulting contaminated food supply not on the companies responsible, but on "terrorists." American corporations dump their engineered food on Africa and Honduras as food aid. Land Rovers and other gas guzzlers get tagged while stuck in traffic. Environmental revolutionaries are hunted by the feds as thousands engage in acts of ecotage to defend what is left of the Earth. Environmental groups go undercover into American supermarkets and test the food to see if it is truly safe. Sounds like today?s headlines, but it is actually from the first few chapters of a 1972 science fiction book by John Brunner ? The Sheep Look Up. If you?re curious about what comes next, BenBella Books is putting this long out-of-print book back in circulation this summer. British author John Brunner wrote this story of ecological resistance right when the modern environmental movement was just starting to take off. Earth First! was still about a decade away from springing out of the pages of American author Ed Abbey?s Monkeywrench Gang. Brunner?s story is set in a future America when the radical environmental movement (closer to the Earth Liberation Front than Earth First!) has swelled to over a million strong, corporations run America, and her puppet of a President called Prexy is a dead ringer for the USA's Dubya.

"As far as there are any guides for science fiction writers wanting to make their near-future societies credible, the rules of thumb that have proved most reliable in my experience are these," lectured John Brunner near the end of his life. "Take it for granted that the government will disregard long-term dangers ? such as those affecting the environment ? in order to cling to power; that the citizenry will do the same because thinking is too much like hard work; and when the handful of Cassandras are proved right, they will be held to blame and very likely stoned or shot." This describes well the plot of The Sheep Look Up.

Severe Acute Respiratory Science Fiction

?described as quote disastrous unquote by airlines, travel agencies and tour operators. Hotel bookings are down by an average 40, in some cases 60, per cent. Commenting on the report just prior to departing for Disneyland, where he is slated to deliver a major speech on education, Prexy said, quote, well, you don?t have to go abroad to know our way of life is the best in the world. End quote..
- John Brunner, The Sheep Look Up

When crops fail and people start falling ill from the food, runaway killer viruses, and the pollution in The Sheep Look Up, the US President, "Prexy," blames it on terrorists, "It is my sad duty to inform you that our country is in a state of war ... not a war with bombs and tanks and missiles, not a war that is fought by soldiers gallant on the field of battle ... but a war that must be fought by you, the people of the United States. We have been attacked with the most cowardly, the most monstrous, the most evil weapons ever devised by wicked men. We are the victims of a combined chemical and biological attack." The actual corporate culprits, of course, go unnoticed.

Unfortunately the villains in The Sheep Look Up are very real. Monsanto's contribution to the world and the story include ? Saccharin, Agent Orange, DDT, Dioxins, and PCBs. Brunner is familiar with the legacies of Monsanto and other industry giants like DuPont and Dow Chemical. He delivers many direct challenges to them through the voices of his activist characters. "And I presume on the eighth day God called you and said, ?I changed my mind about insects!?"

The World is Eating out of Kraft?s Hands

"I guess the nearest analogy would be with cheese," said Mr. Bamberly.
- John Brunner, The Sheep Look Up

In The Sheep Look Up, Puritan Foods supplies middle class Americans with supposedly safe and wholesome foods. The Trainites ? Brunner's radical environmentalists in the story ? secretly test Puritan's food to see if they're lying about its safety. What they discover is just the tip of the iceberg.

Kraft Foods is the largest food company in the country, and the second largest in the world. In a fascinating parallel to Puritan Foods, environmentalists from the Genetically Engineered Food Alert have been secretly testing Kraft's products. These brands are found in 99 percent of U.S. households, and many of them, such as Taco Bell taco shells, Boca Burgers, Post cereals and Stovetop Stuffing have been found to contain untested and unlabeled genetically engineered ingredients. These secret tests also discovered a variety of genetically engineered corn unfit for human consumption, called Starlink. This discovery cost the biotech industry billions as skittish investors pulled out fearing more such biotech blunders.

More than a year after StarLink was found in the U.S. food supply, it appeared in food aid shipped to Bolivia by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Food Program. "The U.S. considers this genetically engineered corn unfit for human consumption and has banned it for years. Yet it has been sent to Bolivia as food aid," said Gabriel Hervas, President of the Bolivian Forum on Environment and Development. In The Sheep Look Up, Brunner?s "Globe Relief ? the world?s largest relief organization" ? gets into similar trouble when its food shipments of "Nutripon" are found to be poisoning Africa and Honduras.

Science fiction, John Brunner believed, had "a refreshing readiness to question our taken-for-granted assumptions." A book like The Sheep Look Up does more than just question the way things are, it gets people hungry for a better tomorrow. Forget about our leaders with their super-sized promises and forget about the corporations? shelves of junk. None of this stuff feeds our appetite for a healthy and sustainable planet. "The hungry sheep look up and are not fed," wrote the poet Milton three centuries ago, referring to a corrupt church?s inability to satisfy its flock ? the metaphor is apt for America and Eruope. Indeed, such a hunger is what feeds revolutionaries, and The Sheep Look Up is a cookbook for inspiring revolution.

James John Bell writes for underground publications like, The Earth First! Journal, Fifth Estate, Green Anarchy, Clamor, and science and computer publications like, The Futurist and California Technology. Portions of this essay were excerpted from his Afterword to the new 2003 edition of John Brunner?s The Sheep Look Up. His website is LastWizards.com."