Bruce Sterling
Author of The Difference Engine
About the Author
Bruce Sterling is a recent winner of the Nebula Award and the author of the nonfiction book "The Hacker Crackdown" as well as novels and short story collections. He co-authored, with William Gibson, the critically acclaimed novel "The Difference Engine." He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and show more daughter. (Publisher Provided) show less
Image credit: Photographed at BookPeople in Austin, Texas by Frank Arnold
Series
Works by Bruce Sterling
Twelve Tomorrows: Visionary stories of the near future inspired by today's technologies (all new 2016 edition) (2015) — Editor; Contributor — 28 copies
Bicycle Repairman {novelette} 18 copies
Maneki Neko {short story} 16 copies
Dinner in Audoghast 8 copies
Flowers of Edo [short fiction] 7 copies
The Denial 7 copies
Our Neural Chernobyl [short fiction] 6 copies
The Beautiful and the Sublime 6 copies
The Exterminator's Want Ad 6 copies
Green Days in Brunei 6 copies
Sacred Cow [short fiction] 5 copies
In Paradise 5 copies
The Lustration 4 copies
The Dead Media Notebook 4 copies
Homo Sapiens Declared Extinct 3 copies
White Fungus 3 copies
The Little Magic Shop 3 copies
Bulletins of The Serving Library #1 3 copies
Ivory Tower 3 copies
A Plain Tale from Our Hills 3 copies
Hormiga Canyon [short fiction] — Author — 2 copies
Esoteric City 2 copies
Spook 2 copies
Luciferase [short story] 2 copies
Slipstream {essay} 2 copies
Join The Navy And See The Worlds 2 copies
Deep Eddy 2 copies
The Queen Of Rhode Island 1 copy
L'amore è strano 1 copy
My Rihla 1 copy
The Latter Days Of The Law 1 copy
Instead of Work 1 copy
Mai più senza Torino. Due extracomunitari molto speciali alla scoperta della città (2012) — Author — 1 copy
User-Centric (short story) 1 copy
Tall Tower 1 copy
Executive Solutions 1 copy
The Littlest Jackal 1 copy
The Interoperation 1 copy
Telliamed 1 copy
The Growthing 1 copy
Colliding Branes 1 copy
The Paranoid Critical Method 1 copy
The Unthinkable 1 copy
Loco 1 copy
Goddess of Mercy 1 copy
Associated Works
The Steampunk Bible: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Imaginary Airships, Corsets and Goggles, Mad Scientists, and… (2011) — Contributor — 670 copies
The New Space Opera 2: All-New Stories of Science Fiction Adventure (2009) — Contributor — 322 copies
The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990 (1993) — Contributor — 315 copies
The Locus Awards: Thirty Years of the Best in Science Fiction and Fantasy (2004) — Contributor — 270 copies
Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Science Fiction (1991) — Contributor — 248 copies
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Six (2012) — Contributor, some editions — 139 copies
The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Fiftieth Anniversary Anthology (1999) — Contributor — 118 copies
Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic (2012) — Introduction — 110 copies
Cyberpunk: Stories of Hardware, Software, Wetware, Evolution, and Revolution (1995) — Contributor — 75 copies
Significant Objects: 100 Extraordinary Stories about Ordinary Things (2012) — Contributor — 57 copies
2001: An Odyssey in Words: Celebrating the Centenary of Arthur C. Clarke's Birth (2018) — Contributor — 54 copies
Nebula Awards 27: SFWA's Choices for the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year (1993) — Contributor — 53 copies
In the Shadow of the Towers: Speculative Fiction in a Post-9/11 World (2015) — Contributor — 37 copies
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction October/November 1994, Vol. 87, No. 4 & 5 (1994) — Contributor — 28 copies
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction August/September 2009, Vol. 117, Nos. 1 & 2 (2009) — Contributor — 19 copies
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction October 1990, Vol. 79, No. 4 (1990) — Contributor — 18 copies
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction May 1994, Vol. 86, No. 5 (1994) — Contributor — 17 copies
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction October/November 1993, Vol. 85, No. 4 & 5 (1993) — Columnist — 16 copies
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine: Vol. 9, No. 10 [October 1985] (1985) — Contributor — 14 copies
Asimov's Science Fiction: Vol. 20, No. 10 & 11 [October/November 1996] (1996) — Contributor — 14 copies
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction August 1982, Vol. 63, No. 2 (1982) — Contributor — 12 copies
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction November/December 2010, Vol. 119, No. 5 & 6 (2010) — Author — 12 copies
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine: Vol. 13, No. 9 [September 1989] (1989) — Contributor — 12 copies
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction April 1983, Vol. 64, No. 4 (1983) — Contributor — 11 copies
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction June 1993, Vol. 84, No. 6 (1993) — Contributor — 10 copies
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction September 2002, Vol. 103, No. 3 (2002) — Author — 9 copies
Subterranean Magazine Winter 2014 — Contributor — 6 copies
Science Fiction Eye #07, August 1990 — Contributor — 1 copy
Science Fiction Eye #10, June 1992 — Contributor — 1 copy
Science Fiction Eye #08, Winter 1991 — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Sterling, Michael Bruce
- Other names
- Omniaveritas, Vincent
- Birthdate
- 1954-04-14
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Brownsville, Texas, USA
- Places of residence
- Brownsville, Texas, USA (birth)
Pasadena, California, USA
Belgrade, Serbia
Turin, Italy
Austin, Texas, USA - Education
- Michigan State University (1974 ∙ Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop)
University of Texas at Austin (B.A. Journalism) (1976) - Occupations
- editor
novelist - Relationships
- Tesanovic, Jasmina (wife)
- Organizations
- Turkey City Writer's Workshop
Members
Reviews
Lists
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 123
- Also by
- 161
- Members
- 19,548
- Popularity
- #1,117
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 337
- ISBNs
- 268
- Languages
- 19
- Favorited
- 71
That’s understandable. This is not only a goodbye to international trickster Leggy Startlitz, smuggler and entrepreneur of questionable goods and services, but, as the Science Fiction Encyclopedia’s “Bruce Sterling” entry says “a mocking homage to the forever-disappeared twentieth century”.
With guest cameo references to George Soros, Osama Bin Laden, and Slobodan Milošević, this isn’t even a science fiction novel though it has interludes of magical realism. It’s a vivid and often funny look at the gaps in the global order’s wainscoting that a man like Starlitz thrives in, or, as he puts it, the places where the global order is fraying and he shapes a counternarrative. And the world it describes is one I mostly remember: Russia and the other former countries of the USSR coping with economic and often demographic devastation, Turkey trying to become the leader of the Islamic countries of central Asia, its more secular Islam a counterpoint to Iran, and the bombing of Kosovo in 1999. I didn’t remembered the self-immolation of Kurds to embarrass their old enemy Turkey.
Y2K is a major concern of Starlitz all throughout out this book, and it wasn’t published until October 2000. This is not a book about millennial anxiety that wasn’t published timely like James Gunn’s The Millennium Blues nor was it blindsided by events like Norman Spinrad’s Russian Spring. It starts toward the end of the millennium and in Istanbul. Leggy Starlitz, as part of a bet with genius music producer Makoto — essentially that they can make money out of a girl band – the G-7 – that has interchangeable members and whose music is crap.
Starlitz teams up with a rich Turk, Ozbey, to take the G-7 on a tour of Islamic countries including some that were formerly in the USSR. But, eventually, Starlitz finds out that Ozbey is tied up with the Turkish Deep State that is going to use the band to culturally destabilize those countries and make them more secular and less fundamentalist Islamic countries like Turkey. Not only will Turkey be sort of a leader of a new Caliphate, but Ozby will make some money heroin smuggling too.
Starlitz doesn’t want any of the girls dying before Y2K which is the absolute shutdown of the whole project. When he finds out what Ozbey is up to, Starlitz leaves the group, has some odd experiences in Mexico and America and Hawaii, and returns to confront Ozbey in Turkish Cyprus.
Characters from all the previous Starlitz adventures show up: Khoklov and Tamara (now residing in Hollywood) from “Hollywood Kremlin”, Vanna and ex federal prosecutor Jane O’Houlihan and Leggy’s daugther Zeta from “Are You for 86?”, and, maybe, characters from the “The Littlest Jackal” (no, my blogger due diligence didn’t cover re-reading that story).
The fantastical content enters in the weird interlude when Starlitz and Zeta leave Cyprus for Mexico. There he tosses their passports and ID papers and money. They slip across the border and end up squatting in some abandoned buildings in New Mexico.
It’s all part of a weird ritual to bring Starlitz’s father into existence, so Zeta can meet him before he vanishes for good at the end of the century. Starlitz’s father has a strange, obscure past, but the relevant point is that, when trying to steal some valuable metal around America’s first atomic bomb, he was in the device when it was detonated turning him into a sort of ghost haunting the twentieth century whose central narrative event was that first detonation. He can be evoked by use of old objects and music and dance. And, since the century is coming to an end, Starlitz’s father won’t be showing up again.
There is plenty of humor in the book and bizarre characters and a surprising number of bodies that need disposing of.
Upon finishing it about three weeks ago, it seemed fresh and delightful.
But thinking about it gradually generated annoyance. And that comes from Sterling’s seemingly sincere buy-in of post-modern notions of reality merely being a narrative. As Starlitz tells Zeta, when expressing his respect for French semioticians and structuralists and post-structuralists. It’s impossible to escape the world of language, that “social discourses” creates our reality. Granted, as he tells Zeta, there is a physical reality but then he goes to talk about how only French deconstructionists understood reality and it did them no good. Starlitz sees himself as existing in the places where the master narratives of the world are fraying and coming up against new, counter narratives.
This motif of politics and society as a narrative shows up elsewhere. Ozbey, when he confronts Starlitz towards novels’ end, says his destiny, his narrative, won’t allow him to be killed. Likewise, he has decided not to kill Starlitz since that seems an incongruous part of Starlitz’s narrative. It will be better if Leggy just disappears on New Year’s Day. The whole G-7 affair is an attempt to impose a narrative on Islamic countries.
Turkey is astounded that NATO has let it bomb Christian Serbia. Tim from ECHELON seems to be trying to impose some order, part of the US government’s new concern with international terrorism and the drug traffic. If Sterling was using this version of “narrative” as just a metaphor for making plans or using propaganda or lies we tell ourselves and others, that would be one thing. But the story seems to embrace the idea that things like rock bands can shape reality. “Controlling the narrative” and its variant phrases may have been the stated goal of many a would be politician and bureaucrat throughout the world, but it turns out that mere narratives don’t determine the amount of munitions someone can produce or even the desire to use them.
At novel’s end, Zeta tells her father’s he’s bad,
"totally provisional and completely without morality. You can personify the trends of your day, but you never get ahead of those trends. You never make the world any better."
People aren’t happy to him show up. However, when she grows up (she’s only 11), people are going to be happy to see her since she’ll make sure they get fed, watered, and bathed. (Zeta has been exposed to much squalor and poverty in the trip with her dad in Mexico, and he makes sure to tell that this is how most of the world lives. Her education is complete when she helps her dad bury some bodies in Cyprus.) The twentieth century’s problems, she says, are “crude and lousy”. The new century will have “serious, sophisticated problems”
Nor is she going to emulate her lesbian parents and their friends: “lame hippie crap” and petty criminals high on drugs.
The book seems to imply that hope of the world is NGOs or even a blatantly corrupt UN as Khoklov’s nephew thinks. Perhaps, Sterling foresaw the possibility of a do-good grifter like Chelsea Clinton or a Greta Thunberg. However, you can’t be absolutely sure with Sterling. Starlitz’s new idea, at novel’s end, is helping people with bad consciences spend their money. It sounds a lot like many a NGO scam today with a hardy skimoff for the people managing the NGO. Perhaps Sterling is once again ironically undercutting his seeming moral point.
Of course, few trend lines of the novel continued. Or, shall we say, those narratives couldn’t be imposed on reality. Russia revived. Turkey did not dominate Central Asian Moslems as it hoped. Turns out bombing Serbian Christians didn’t make Moslems any less tractable in their dealings with Europe, and Osama bin Laden introduced a new phase in the (failed) War on Terror. Still, it was an enjoyable book and is genuinely full of humor.… (more)