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 Antigravity Enigma - Andrew May ****

Antigravity - the ability to overcome the pull of gravity - has been a fantasy for thousands of years and subject to more scientific (if impractical) fictional representation since H. G. Wells came up with cavorite in The First Men in the Moon . But is it plausible scientifically? Andrew May does a good job of pulling together three ways of looking at our love affair with antigravity (and the related concept of cancelling inertia) - in science fiction, in physics and in pseudoscience and crankery. As May points out, science fiction is an important starting point as the concept was deployed there well before we had a good enough understanding of gravity to make any sensible scientific stabs at the idea (even though, for instance, Michael Faraday did unsuccessfully experiment with a possible interaction between gravity and electromagnetism). We then get onto the science itself, noting the potential impact on any ideas of antigravity that come from the move from a Newtonian view of a...

The World as We Know It - Peter Dear ***

History professor Peter Dear gives us a detailed and reasoned coverage of the development of science as a concept from its origins as natural philosophy, covering the years from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. inclusive If that sounds a little dry, frankly, it is. But if you don't mind a very academic approach, it is certainly interesting. Obviously a major theme running through is the move from largely gentleman natural philosophers (with both implications of that word 'gentleman') to professional academic scientists. What started with clubs for relatively well off men with an interest, when universities did not stray far beyond what was included in mathematics (astronomy, for instance), would become a very different beast. The main scientific subjects that Dear covers are physics and biology - we get, for instance, a lot on the gradual move away from a purely mechanical views of physics - the reason Newton's 'action at a distance' gravity caused such ...

It's On You - Nick Chater and George Loewenstein *****

Going on the cover you might think this was a political polemic - and admittedly there's an element of that - but the reason it's so good is quite different. It shows how behavioural economics and social psychology have led us astray by putting the focus way too much on individuals. A particular target is the concept of nudges which (as described in Brainjacking ) have been hugely over-rated. But overall the key problem ties to another psychological concept: framing. Huge kudos to both Nick Chater and George Loewenstein - a behavioural scientist and an economics and psychology professor - for having the guts to take on the flaws in their own earlier work and that of colleagues, because they make clear just how limited and potentially dangerous is the belief that individuals changing their behaviour can solve large-scale problems. The main thesis of the book is that there are two ways to approach the major problems we face - an 'i-frame' where we focus on the individual ...

Search This Blog