Schismatrix Plus (SF) - Bruce Sterling *****

Bruce Sterling is one of the key figures from the cyberpunk phase of SF. In a way, that term is misleading - unlike punk music, cyberpunk is an intellectual take on the genre - it just had the kind of spiky edginess we associate with the music. The only Sterling I'd read before was The Difference Engine, his alternate Victorian steampunk collaboration with William Gibson, but the novel Schismatrix, along with a handful of short stories in the same future included in this collection, has a solidly future setting.

In Sterling's strangely sterile future, the interesting societies are all based in space habitats - some circumlunar, others extending to the outer planets. Earth itself is left to a regimented society that has abandoned advancement. There are multiple, splintered societies, though many are either Shapers, who use genetic/biological modifications to produce enhanced humans and Mechanists who take the cyborg route.

The storyline itself is relatively simple - what explodes in complexity is the plethora of cultural groupings and cliques, and the different degrees to which humans are leaving their humanity behind, in some cases to extreme levels that are both repulsive and fascinating. Sterling also brings in a number of alien species - one having a major role to play throughout and another featuring in one of the short stories. These aren't really stories where you get heavily invested with the main characters, but rather with society as a whole.

Occasionally the writing feels a little lazy - a couple of times it's not really clear what's happening in descriptive passages without re-reading them, and there's a major plot jump that seems rushed. But there's no doubt that Sterling throws at us a whole host of concepts, from simple genetic modification to Prigogine's views on system complexity in a dazzling but exciting manner. I might have winced at 'the dome maintained [the temperature] at 40 degrees Kelvin' (there are no degrees on the Kelvin scale), but this is science fiction at its impressive best.

I'm not sure how realistic you can consider Sterling's future to be. The biological modifications his post-humans make can be extremely far out... and the whole idea of space habitats has a flawed feel once you examine the realities of making space liveable. For that matter his future society is depressing: one where cultures seem unable to hold onto any stability for more than tens of years, and often are distinctly superficial. But it's a great ride.

Paperback:

Kindle:
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee:
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Comments

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...

The New Lunar Society - David Mindell *****

David Mindell's take on learning lessons for the present from the eighteenth century Lunar Society could easily have been a dull academic tome, but instead it was a delight to read. Mindell splits the book into a series of short essay-like chapters which includes details of the characters involved in and impact of the Lunar Society, which effectively kick-started the Industrial Revolution, interwoven with an analysis of the decline of industry in modern twentieth and twenty-first century America, plus the potential for taking a Lunar Society approach to revitalise industry for the future. We see how a group of men (they were all men back then) based in the English Midlands (though with a strong Scottish contingent) brought together science, engineering and artisan skills in a way that made the Industrial Revolution and its (eventual) impact on improving the lot of the masses possible. Interlaced with this, Mindell shows us how 'industrial' has become something of a dirty wo...

Search This Blog