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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.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here
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