John Brunner’s “Stand on Zanzibar” spookily predicted today

Equally compelling, however – and even more instructive – is the process by which Brunner constructed this society of his future and our present. When an excerpt appeared in New Worlds magazine in November 1967, an editorial claimed that it was the first novel in its field to create, in every detail, “a possible society of the future”. For instance, the ‘hobby-type saboteurs’ that pop up throughout the novel, getting their kicks through recreational violence, came to Brunner after he clocked the prevalence of Peter Pan syndrome on both sides of the Atlantic, and then read about kids vandalising public transport for fun.

Source: www.bbc.com