Stand On Zanzibar
There are seven billion-plus humans crowding the surface of 21st-century Earth. It is an age of intelligent computers, mass-market psychedelic drugs, politics conducted by assassination, scientists who burn incense to appease volcanoes ... all the hysteria of a dangerously overcrowded world, portrayed in a dazzlingly inventive style.
Moving, sensory, impressionistic, as jagged as the times it portrays, this book is a real mind stretcher - and yet beautifully orchestrated to give a vivid picture of the whole.
John Brunner was a prolific British SF writer. In 1951, he published his first novel, GALACTIC STORM, at the age of just 17, and went on to write dozens of novels under his own and various house names until his death in 1995 at the Glasgow Worldcon. He won the HUGO AWARD and the BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION AWARD for STAND ON ZANZIBAR (a regular contender for the 'best SF novel of all time') and the BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION AWARD for THE JAGGED ORBIT.
For more information see www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/brunner_john