How do you write a novel that successfully conveys a sense of overpopulation? Perhaps a stochastic structure (if a novel structure can be stochastic) is the only real way to do it. This novel, from the late 1960s, uses the population projections of the mid-century, and without the knowledge of upcoming breakthroughs in agriculture, to assume that the passing of the population past seven billion would spin the world into a kind of geopolitical turmoil. It did, of course, but with the fall of the Soviet Union also happening and the the Norman Borlaug stuff it does look a little different.
This novel is specifically structure like John Dos Passos’s USA Trilogy, which uses short chapters, mini-biographies, news clippings, and other broken up narratives to try to explain the chaos of the first two decades of the 20th century in the US. This book is more focused than that, constantly going back to a main character is who employed as synergy expert and trained assassin, as he investigates intrigue in a fictional African country.
The title of the story results from speculating that if all seven billion occupied one meter square, they could all stand on the island of Zanzibar, though it would sink into the ocean.
Some things he gets right: The internet! He basically invents the internet, or more so thinks to put it in.
Another funny thing: this is perhaps the only science fiction novel I have ever read that correctly predicts that people (at least Americans) will be smoking a LOT less by 2010. Wild.
