Zeitgeist is exceptional, particularly in this sense: it's one of the very few near-future thrillers that has tumbled into the recent past almost unscathed, without becoming stale and irrelevant. Yet, anyway.Sterling's novel came out during The Year 2000, and it captures the jittery sense that many felt in the pre-Y2K West, that the end of the 20th Century would bring with it irreversible changes, and that most of them would be unpleasant. He hasn't exactly been proven wrong. Sterling was undoub...

Reading this book 20+ years after publication is wild, for sure. Sterling has always been good at predictions, but this stuff....Especially since the manuscripts probably was turned in in the first months of 1998, based on the copyright date.

"Starlitz stared in silent hunger at the satellite telephone. The device stank of futurity. They would probably go broke, being so far ahead of the curve and all, but the gizmo was an utter harbinger of things to come, like discovering a fossil in reverse. Starlitz felt a powerful urge to grip the phone, caress it, perhaps bite it, but he restrained himself. Vanna was sure to take that gesture all wrong."

Probably three and a half stars really. This was an entertaining read but I was never quite sure of what was going on or what it was all building up to. I guess I got it at the very end, last dozen pages or so, but it still felt like the book had contained a good deal more than was ultimately resolved. This was my first Bruce Sterling novel, and after enjoying a lot of his cultural commentary over the years, I was surprised at the Russ-Meyer-movie nature of the whole thing. But just like Beyond

Bruce Sterling is easily one of the most original writers out there today. So many works in the sci-fi/fantasy field are simply remixes of Lord of the Rings, or Conan, or a Heinlein/Asimov/Clarke/Niven novel. But when you open a Bruce Sterling novel you know you will be getting something that isn't like anything you've ever read before.And for this alone, bonus points.But I'll be honest...I'm not sure what I read. I liked the style, I got caught up in the characters, but I'm just not sure I'm cl...

My favorite things in this book I don't want to spoil in this review, but that doesn't really matter because I don't really understand them very well and I'm also perfectly fine with that. The book doesn't quite break through the barrier to modern fantasy, but it certainly pokes a hole in it now and then.

Whenever I read anything by Bruce Stirling it takes a little longer than normal to complete than another novel of approximate page/word length. Not because it is difficult to read, yet his stories make me stop and reconsider my personal beliefs in a manner that fine tunes the perceptions I may have long held. His characters challenge each other and in turn may challenge the reader, and as you sift through the pages you may find by the end of the story your conscious has passed through a sieve ma...

All the Leggy stories are great, but this one is like a 90s iteration of the old Moorcock Jerry Cornelius character, except instead of a spy he's managing a knock off Spice Girls act called the G-7. There were several times I audibly laughed reading this book. It's a pretty great book, paced expertly, with great dialog and Sterling's ear for authenticity in locations.

Strange but interesting world of Cyprus and money and fame.

Listened to this. Liked it. Kinda magical realist for a cyberpunk adventure. Because it's not cyberpunk, but it's got that fascination with the sorts of places were all the weird stuff is happening, where gangster mix with scam artists and spies and terrorists and black marketeers and fake girl bands and avatars existing in various narrative paradigms. Works, though.

All in all another great read from Bruce Sterling. I picked it up and was hooked pretty quickly, and ended up reading 80% of the book in one sitting (staying up way too late); fortunately I had enough left to make a good reading session while wrapping it up the next night,This is another fascinating work by Sterling, who specializes in near-future speculative fiction. This one isn't far in the future at all - in fact it's really in the present, since the book takes place in 1999 and it was publi...

Bruce Sterling is an astute of observer of pop culture, but this book goes far beyond that. Written in 1999 and published in 2000 it predicts the post Eric Snowden world, the rise of Islam on the global stage and centers on Turkey as the eye of the Mid-East storm. Slobodan Milosevic plays a minor role, but the Yugoslavia Wars are an underlying motif, especially the NATO bombing of Christians who were implicated in war crimes against Muslims. What a complicated world we have inherited! The book s...

Like most of Sterling's main characters, I hated this one at the beginning. But, also like most of Sterling's work, by the end I sympathized with the character enough to appreciate the changes he'd gone through.

Boy, is this weird book aptly named ... ideas and philosophy and sideways-stuff explode out of every page. The Balkans, Hawaii, Turkey, and pop music are all exposed. I guess you could call it magical reality, except he shows that, "there may be a reality somewhere, but it isn't here". At the end, my head felt like a can whose top was being pryed up.Sterling is one-of-a-kind; either you like going on sideways trips, or you don't. I sure do.

I am really not sure how to classify this book. Its certainly not cyberpunk, its not really science fiction. It is a however an interesting journey, sometimes technical, sometimes fanciful, sometimes firmly grounded in reality, that takes you through the changing of the millennium in a style i have only really seen with Haruki Murakami. I really liked it!

"Really bizarre romp through the Third World with Leggy Starlitz and an all-girl rock group. Leggy does business with some very dangerous and strange folks. It's a futuristic pop thriller, a funky and fun read."

I remember getting this book in hardcover, because at the time I was so excited about a new Sterling novel I wasn't about to wait for the eventual paperback edition. Sadly I remember almost nothing of this book and had to look up a synopsis to even recall it at all.

Following the research of notable philosopher in literature like Derrida, Sterling tries too hard to create something new, with a broken narrative speaking about itself... but without ever doing nothing else than to annoy the reader to death. If you want to get a better "let's break the fourth wall", tries any Deadpool comics, most of the Discword books, or books about comics from Scott McCloud. Oh well. Next book ?

Bruce Sterling has a sawed-off idea shotgun and you're about to get it in the face with this messy book. He has a new idea for every page, and some of them are interesting but none of them are focused; it feels indulgent, like he thinks he's too smart to need rigor.Pretty smart he is: this is one of the foremost authors in the cyberpunk subgenre, and the guy who invented the clever though self-defeating term "slipstream", for books that meld genres. Here he's using what we might as well call mag...

I just had to share this almost 'noir' flavored description of Istanbul, Turkey:[Quote:]Worn out from repeated jet flights, Starlitz stared murkily out his curtained window.So it was back to Istanbul, finally. He'd never meant to spend so much time here. The place had a fatal attraction for him. It had been so much stronger than he was, so far beyond his ability to help. The city was neck deep, chin deep, nose deep, in the darkest sumps of history. Istanbul was the unspoken capital of many subme...