A award-winning book by John Brunner dealing with Earth suffering from population explosion. The story is told from the viewpoint of a large number of characters, augmented with fragments of advertisements, television and books (including the hilariously cynical The Hipcrime Vocab).

I had read this book when it was first published in 1968. I have been re-reading it recently. It is set in the 2020s and makes references to dire events such as the death of the last whale in the 1980s. This of course dates it. As well, there are a few lapses in taste, primarily in spots where the author goes to extremes in discussing the extremes that he envisions societies will go. But, on the whole, the book is extraordinarily current, well-written, and a great deal of fun. Rather than speaking of the (as yet un-invented) Gibsonian Cyberspace of the Web, people access vast ranges of computerized information through their telephones and television sets. Which is where many people, especially in enterprise, feel the Web will be moving in any case now.