food shortages. The right-wing government is indifferent to those problems. The President, known as Prexy, can only offer snappy quotes in response to various disasters. When poisonings and famine become rampant, the government scapegoats Honduran communist rebels and puts the country under martial law. It resorts to violence and oppression to silence its critics. References are made to attempts to rein in the environmental destruction, but they are depicted as having made no difference to the state of the environment. Even so, one Republican Senator claims that the regulations are destroying American business. Crime, racial, and civil unrest is growing. Travel abroad is discouraged because of terrorist attacks on planes, and fewer and fewer people graduate with science, engineering, or business management degrees, as agriculture and food-related degrees are most in demand and most likely to lead to emigration from the US. The number of poor people is growing while the decreasing number of wealthy people enclose themselves in walled communities guarded by armed mercenaries. The US is said to be involved in various foreign wars, similar to the one in Vietnam, which was ongoing when the book was published. A conflict in Honduras is hampered first by American soldiers coming down with enteritis and then by the need to crack down on violence in the United States. Many young men flee the draft. A growing group of environmentally-conscious activists calling themselves "Trainites" (from their hidden leader Austin Train) turn slowly to terrorist acts in an attempt to stop the corporations from spoiling the Earth. The character of Austin Train is an academic who despite predicting and interpreting social change, has become disillusioned by society's failure to listen. The character is used to drive the plot and to explain the background story to the reader. Plot "The Sheep Look Up" takes place over the course of a single year, with each chapter depicting one month. The story is a multi-strand one, involving a variety of characters whose paths only cross as the world's ecological disaster brings them together. December The novel starts with a man running across the Santa Monica Freeway in a bizarre incident before getting killed when he is hit by a car. The accident and the ensuing traffic jam results in Philip Mason, a Denver-based executive at the Angel City insurance company, being late for a meeting. The head of the insurance company says that it has