Far too often, SF writers with no taste for homework set their cautionary tales in so distant a future that the process of shattering an ecosphere becomes a side issue.

John Brunner never tells us exactly when The Sheep Look Up is taking place, but it seems to be no later than 1980 or 1990—the very point at which all the "minor" environmental crises are beginning to converge into a disaster. It's the process that concerns Brunner, because an ongoing process can be stopped. Sheep has more political punch than any other ecological disaster novel I've read, precisely because its concrete details suggest concrete action.

Brunner has done his homework, and the novel's background is scrupulously built up from a collage of current data and careful extrapolation. (p. 63)

That the environment is delicately balanced is hardly a new insight. Yet Brunner scatters characters and climaxes in every direction—there's always someone, or something, near at hand to serve as a horrible example of what happens when you mess with Mother Nature. Hence, for a didactic novel, Sheep is virtually free of sloganizing.

The one problem is that, given the cast of hundreds (most of whom are locked into ideological functions), very few characters can be portrayed with much depth. Still, individuals are no more the focus of this book than a single oil spill. Brunner works with statistical extrapolation, and his large sample makes The Sheep Look Up utterly convincing. (p. 64)