Mining the Genre Asteroid: Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
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Donald Hogan is a spy. Meanwhile, his roommate, Norman House, suspects nothing of this. To him, Donald is a self employed dilettante. Bookish, maybe, but not a bad guy. Norman has other things to occupy him, like his rising star at General Technics. General Technics is a corporation vast enough and powerful enough to contemplate a political and economic takeover of an small, refugee-laden African nation which by all rights should be absorbed, conquered, or writhing in civil war and discontent like much of the continent. And yet it is not. Why?