Islands in the Net

by Bruce Sterling

In the high-tech twenty-first century, a family of "corporate associates" descends into an underworld of data pirates and bootleg biogenetics to discover the identity of new-order terrorists.

Genres: Science Fiction, Cyberpunk, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Novels, Politics

Hardcover

First published June 1, 1988

About the author

Bruce Sterling is an author, journalist, critic and a contributing editor of Wired magazine. Best known for his ten science fiction novels, he also writes short stories, book reviews, design criticism, opinion columns and introductions to books by authors ranging from Ernst Jünger to Jules Verne. His non-fiction works include The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier (1992), Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years (2003) and Shaping Things (2005).

Reviews

[Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I grew up knowing that this was supposed to be a great cyberpunk novel right in the heart of the genre as it was a few years after Neuromancer, and I did eventually get around to reading his novel with William Gibson, The Difference Engine, which was pretty much a steampunk novel.

Other than that, I kept berating myself that I'd never gone back and read what should have been a staple of the genre.

So what did I think?

He was well ahead of the curve when it came to predicting the future, pretty much nailing the EU, data havens and digital currency well back in the mid eighties. Back closer to that time, I'd probably be glorifying this novel as a predictive masterpiece.

Unfortunately, the story isn't strong enough to carry us through what is apparently our new norm.

It's great to read this novel from an archeological standpoint, seeing just how much he predicted that had come true, but beyond that it was just okay. Topless women and exploding buildings was pretty much the high-action points, imho. There really could have been some better character exploration and more interesting plots. That's pretty much the worst I can say about it. The tech seemed modern TODAY even though we're 30 years ahead from when it was written.

That's impressive as all hell. I could even trace a lot of the great elements that Neal Stephenson wrote about in Cryptonomicon a good fifteen years past this book. I wanted to applaud. But unfortunately, great ideas and a great heritage doesn't always prove to be a timeless classic, and that's a real shame.

I could see the outline of something that might have been a timeless classic. It's just a shame that it didn't make it.

[Allison Hurd]

Time of death: 39%

There's a lot in this book that, if I'd read it 25 years ago, I might have thought "wow. That's cool." Sadly I'm sadder and wiser now. I really wanted to like it, but a combination of where things seem to be heading and the narrator just absolutely mutilating the accents, I must declare defeat.

CONTENT WARNING: murder, racism, environmental collapse, Western imperialism.

Things that were super cool:

-Capitalism as nation. Way before it was cool, this book was thinking about late stage capitalism and how it might morph. Oddly this one thought something closer to communism might fit well with capitalism, but I appreciated having my pre-conceived notions tested.

-Future tech. It's normal now to have the idea of brain implants for internet access. I really liked that this one had basically Google Glass, long range receivers and the ability to wire in to other electronics. It felt more "plausible" and had interesting limitations.

-Loving family as main characters. A woman who has just recently given birth and her equal partner continue working and living life together. He helps change the baby and holds her on screen. They care about each other. They have strengths and weaknesses but those aren't on gender lines. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen this in any genre fic.

-Environmental collapse. Again, well before clifi was a subgenre, this book took it for granted that the world was going to shift massively, and thought about interesting ways humanity might pivot.

So, why the DNF?

-Bloat. This book talks and talks and talks without adding anything to the plot, character, or world. It also has one of my cardinal sins which is monologues about economics.

-No realism. I'm sorry, you do not bring your baby willingly on an excursion you think might end in murder. You do not turn off your earpiece to your protection in a van with strange men who are all armed when you have zero combat training. Gangsters don't show you their illegal secret lair as a sign of good faith.

-Nonsense plot. This story has the structural integrity of quick sand. Thrash around at all and it will kill you.

-Narrator. You know how the current wisdom is not to do voices for other races? This narrator boldly tried it. And, for some narrators like Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, that might work because they're friggen voice wizards. This narrator is not a voice wizard. She was serviceable, but she read all the Grenadians sound like very bad Irish accents.

-Tech wizardry. Having recently had the misfortune of reading the first book of Tad Williams' Otherland, my patience for badly introduced tech magic is low. I shut off right after we started down this path. This one has the honor of doing it first, perhaps, but I did not feel it was going to be doing anything else in a superlative way, so I find I must lay it to rest.

-Weird exploration of race. A completely unnecessary and strange consideration of trans-race folks (and not in the normal adoption way) happened that wasn't AS cringe as it could have been, but even in the early 90s my question would have been...why?

Great ideas, they just weren't built to last.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

People seemed to miss the boat on this one. Badly in need of a reissue, ditch the atrocious cover and update the text a little bit and this would be cutting edge or at least comfortably contemporary. Like Brunner or Moorcock’s Cornelius stories(and peer/co-conspirator Gibson) this takes a sci-fi lens to contemporary culture and stretches into plausible shapes. Sterling pretty much nails it(yes he gets some wrong but not enough to discredit the rest), with Globalism, the rise of the third world in the wake of U.S. redundancy and Soviet collapse, data havens and smuggling, terrorism and counter-terrorism( a pretty stunning rendition scene), drone aircraft, private armies, and a sort of European union. A fully realized three dimensional future with some terrific action, a lot of weird and wild characters, and an air of absurdist comedy. Iain M. Banks claims to have written an unpublished novel that he described as Catch-22 meets “Stand on Zanzibar”, which could be a good description of this book, as is Zelazny’s description of it as a “High Tech Candide” Pungent satire and great science fiction, Sterling has produced other books like Distraction and Holy Fire which have great ideas but languid pace, but the ideas and pace are consistent here. This along with Shismatrix, The Difference Engine, and some short stories prove Sterling’s genius as a fiction writer.

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a pretty highly regarded sf book, althou I am not entirely sure why. I like Sterling's editing (he edited the fine anthology "Mirrorshades") but am not a big fan of his writing. He exemplifies both the strong and weak points of the genre. My main complaint is one that I have about other SF novels: the ideas are engaging, the future world he posits is thought-provoking, but the characters are shallow, and there is very little real insight or feeling. SF too often ignores good prose and characterization in favor of kool zap! pow! action.

This book presents an overall vision of the future that is neither utopian nor bleak. There were some interesting notions: special poisons that make people go insane, little robot assassins and weapons, a one-celled protein called scop that people eat. Other ideas already seem obsolete: the Net as portrayed here has already arrived, super expensive video glasses (you can probably get something like it for a reasonable price today), and suitcase-enclosed portable computers that are a little bulky in comparison with laptops.

The lead character is a tough, aggressive, corporate gal named Laura Webster. She works for a corporation called Rizome that has a democratic power structure and is involved with some pirate data havens in Grenada and Singapore. She is married to a cardboard cutout named David, who also works for Rizome, and they have a baby. She is willing to risk this child's life and abandon it for a long period as she pursues her and her employer's vague goals in an explosion-filled romp across the globe. Judging by all the violence and swashbuckling characters, as well as the miraculous ability of the lead character to avoid harm, "Islands in the Net" seems aimed at the teen market and Hollywood.

[Ira (SF Words of Wonder) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Check out my full, spoiler free, video review HERE.

Written in 1988, this novel takes place in 2022 and Sterling nails many aspects of where the internet would be and how it would affect people’s lives. There is also a lot of other technology that he gets really close but of course he has some misses and omissions as well. The tech aspect of the novel was great and got me really interested. The plot, however, was a bit of a letdown. The main character is Laura, married and a mother of a 3-month year old baby. She and her family are host at a corporate lodge, when one of their guests gets assassinated she decides to go all in to try and solve this crime. Laura’s motivations did seem realistic most of the time and parts of the story were slow and dull. Overall, it was interesting and I’d like to read more from Sterling in the future.

[Seth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Islands in the Net now, it may take a minute to figure out why it's a cyberpunk classic. There is very little VR, and what is there is not described in detail. Most of the book is off the grid (but then again, much of Neuromancer is, too). The heroine isn't a hack, programmer, or counterculture sympathizer, in fact, she's a corporate worker.

But read further in and you'll see that it's about the essential cyberpunk issues. Corporations consolidating power and those who don't get any. The impact of instant world-wide communication and what happens to those who aren't included. How technology and society change one another and how the morals of those involved matter. Whether the masses can threaten a global social order. What kind of crimes, if any, can be forgiven for the sake of technical or social genius.

The major action of the book is completely relevant today: global terrorism and the questions of social and economic breakdown in Africa. What is likely, what is preventable, how do they affect the rest of the world, and does anyone have both the power and the will to affect the issues?

The book is written in Stirling's slightly-dry style and the setting changes back and forth in ways that may large sections of the book less interesting to some readers. It's worth it and it's far from a slog, but be aware going in that it's best to either do it in one quick read or spread out over many days.

The story follows Laura Webster. She is a high-flyer rising in Rizome Corporation, a multinational megaconglomerate. (The pun on "rhizome" is no doubt intentional.) At the beginning of the book she's starting up a new subsidiary, a Lodge in Galvaston the company uses as a combination retreat, vacation spot, and meeting place for the most discrete business. Her architect husband designed the place and now spends a lot of his time playing Worldrun, a sim game of modern politics. Like most players he can't master the art of keeping Africa stable.

Laura and David--and their baby--become involved in Rizome business with offshore data pirates, learning the ins and outs of international banking crime. Along the way they meet other people sheltering offshore, criminal scientists and artists. As her involvement deepens she finds herself stuck between Rizome, the newly-recreated Church of Isis, terrorists, rogue states, African nationalists, American nationalists, rival multinationals, and the interests of her own family. Terrorist acts threaten the almost-one-world government, a meltdown of African societies threatens to both her safety and her morals, and the implications of the gulf between Net-haves and Net-have-nots, whether by reason of location, income, or literacy, rises to the world stage.

This is one of the few cyberpunk books written from the suit perspective, and it's a pleasure to see genuine idealism alongside power-plays in the zaibatsu.

[fonz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Con la tontería ya es la tercera vez que leo esta novela y como es normal, cada vez que la releo me parece una cosa diferente. En cuanto al simple disfrute como lector hay que decir que resulta una historia muy entretenida, con un ritmo excelente, sus dosis de acción, un estilo directo y limpio (en inglés, la traducción al castellano es muy deficiente), sus momentos de sense of wonder (el superpetrolero, por ejemplo), su sentido del humor y su riqueza temática, política y tecnológica. Sterling asombra con su capacidad de predicción, ahora mismo la novela parece la crónica de nuestro presente levemente alterado, de una realidad paralela a la nuestra. Incluso hay una sensación extraña al leerla, la de estar ante un valle inquietante prospectivo, porque por mucho que Sterling haya acertado en sus especulaciones, la realidad siempre le va a ganar la partida predictiva a la ciencia ficción; el futuro es mucho más loco, más extraño, más extravagante y más cínico de lo que un inteligente e informadísimo escritor cyberpunk podía predecir en uno de sus mejores esfuerzos.

Sterling, recuperando la misma estructura argumental de "Schismatrix" y que posteriormente repetiría en "Holy Fire" o "Zeitgeist" emplea a un personaje principal que actúa de testigo recorriendo el mundo, tour en el que asistiremos a la proyección de cómo sería el futuro cuando las redes telemáticas incipientes de mediados-finales de los ochenta (época de redacción de la novela) abarcaran todo el globo. La redistribución del poder, la política, la tecnología y su influencia en la sociedad y como los diferentes sistemas políticos y económicos se las apañan en este contexto. A veces se pierde un poco en su posmodernismo y su ambigüedad, otras veces se queda algo corto (lo del grupo terrorista la verdad es que no se sabe muy bien de qué se trata ni a qué aspira, en varias ocasiones no es más que un mecanismo para hacer avanzar la historia), salvo en África, donde Sterling carga las tintas de una manera un poco pasada de rosca, pintando un panorama infernal que parece la Edad Media vista por un Ilustrado francés, aunque tiene la elegancia de no proponer los valores y la tecnología occidental como único medio de "salvar" el continente. Eso sí, si su remedo de Lawrence de Arabia hubiese sido un tuareg le hubiera quedado más apañao el mensaje.

Finalmente me gustaría detenerme en la protagonista de la novela, la para mí ya casi entrañable Laura Webster. Tal y como ocurre en otras muchas historias de Sterling, Laura es un personaje con unos valores culturales y morales completamente ajenos a los del lector, valores que además se enfrentarán a otros puntos de vista a lo largo de la novela (es necesario hacer notar que en muchos casos los personajes de Sterling no son más que herramientas que verbalizan puntos de vista socioculturales, Sterling está más interesado en plantear el choque cultural que en la psicología de personajes al uso). En este caso, ironizando acerca de la chusma que suele pulular por las historias ciberpunk, Laura Webster es una pre-millenial de clase media-alta felizmente casada y con niña, una buena empleada/asociada de Rizome, una gran corporación global de buen rollo (una anticipación de la imagen progresista que tienen de si mismas compañías como Google, haciendo el bien por el planeta mientras suben al siguiente nivel del capitalismo, el de desprenderse del estorbo que ya resultan ser los Estados nacionales). Laura Webster es el producto de unas circunstancias y un entorno social muy determinado muy diferente al nuestro, producto del final de la Guerra Fría y la desaparición de las armas nucleares, un personaje que se comporta como si tuviese un palo de rígida superioridad moral metido por el culo, mojigata y antihedonista, a quien le repugnan cosas tan apreciadas durante el siglo XX como la violencia, el materialismo, el cinismo y el cortoplacismo. Que puede llegar a resultar cargante si no realizas un esfuerzo intelectual por entenderla (aunque para alivio del lector varios personajes le arrean unos cuantos zascas, como dicen los jóvenes ahora). Este personaje es una decisión muy arriesgada, incluso suicida, pero realista, coherente con el extrañamiento e inmersión en ese futuro que Sterling persigue, aunque a ratos acompañar a este personaje en su bildungsroman es como ser un señor mayor y tener el timeline de Twitter petado de millenials en constate estado de virtue signalling; no me extraña que cierto autor, editor y articulista patrio se cargara burlonamente a la pobre Laura en uno de sus cuentos.

[Fabio Carta · Rating 3 out of 5]

"La Rete era un titanico specchio di vetro. Rifletteva ciò che vi si specchiava. Principalmente, la banalità umana".Cit. B. Sterling, "Isole nella Rete".

Era tempo che non leggevo Sterling. Ed è stato un dolce tormento ritrovare il suo stile di scrittura perfetto al limite dell'irritazione, quel continuo rimando ad attualità e tecnologie, in un balletto tra l'immaginario, il reale e il plausibile fatto con precisione certosina. Discorso a parte sono i meriti predittivi dell'immaginazione di Stirling. Parliamo di un romanzo del 1988 che spazia dai complotti dei Big Data ai droni ante-litteram, dai googleglass alle dirette social fino agli smartwatch: incredibile! Un vero profeta. Altra cosa sono i temi classici del cyberpunk - uno standard praticamente definito dall'opera di Sterling insieme a quella di Gibson - con le lotte, tradimenti e diserzioni corporative, l'ecologia al collasso e la sopravvivenza di versioni new-wave e stralunate di anarco-marxismo da una parte e globalismo cripto-fascita dall'altra, in un magma di relativismo dove le sub-culture emergono ben caratterizzate, quanto enormemente sopravvalutate da un destino storico sgangherato, in cerca disperata di nuove, eroiche ideologie.
I personaggi marginali sono sagome di cartone ritagliate lungo il profilo delle loro stranezze "freak" pseudo-etniche, che li definiscono interamente; i personaggi principali, invece, beh...difficile rendere simpatica la coppia di corporate-fricchettoni con tanto di bimba al seguito. Ogni loro dialogo sembra preso da un collettivo studentesco, qualcuno li ricorda? Dopo quanti minuti di verboso e vacuo entusiasmo politico avevate voglia di fuggire in cortile a farvi una partita a pallone o a fumare?La trama offerta a questi personaggi, poi, appare un malconcio tentativo di trasformare il predetto intellettuale politicante in uomo di azione, in questo techno-thriller postmoderno dove la voglia di eroismo a tutti i costi costringe l'autore a inventare un intero mondo del futuro, tanto più inverosimile tanto più si avvicina alla portata dei loro vaghi ideali democratico-corporativi. Il risultato è - ahimè - un action-movie incompleto, mutilato. Solo nell'ultima parte, durante un tour crudele nell'Africa cyberpunk, sorgono finalmente dei personaggi, o meglio delle comparsate vagamente coerenti nel solito carnevale turbo-etnico, a cui mai riusciremo ad abituarci. Ed è singolare che a essere riconoscibili, tra tanta ossessiva e pretenziosa voglia di originalità, siano proprio i carnefici, banali e familiari nella loro cattiveria, al punto da renderli isole preziose di conformismo becero, ma finalmente comprensibile. 
Alla fine del romanzo ci rendiamo conto che non c'è una vera risoluzione o una rivelazione. Non c'è nulla di tutto questo perché in fondo non c'è stato un vero e proprio intreccio narrativo. C'è semmai una mesta, insensata "rassegnazione" a quanto avvenuto. A me piacciono gli affreschi di parole, le valanghe "postmoderne" di particolari insignificanti che, quando si toccano, si sovrappongono e si intrecciano si rivelano come significanti, come lo stile obiettivo, asciutto e distaccato della cronaca, puntuale e pungente al punto giusto per rendere la particolarità di ambienti esotici e/o persone eccentriche, ma qui sembra che non ci sia altro. Sembra la pretenziosa guida turistica di un futuro bislacco e visionario, spennellato con maestria ma che dopo un po' francamente annoia. Resta l'ammirazione incondizionata per il fraseggio mai enfatico, per nulla polemico - per quanto la materia dell'intrigo terzomondista si presti a scivoloni politici - eppure così eccessivamente descrittivo e... troppo compiaciuto di sé. Francamente dopo aver letto "Chaos USA" e la "Matrice spezzata" mi aspettavo di più.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author strikes me as a tad illiberal and seems to trust ill formed democracies that are embodied by corporate autocracies when influenced by sari wearing PR American spokeswoman who use their own baby as a subterfuge for clandestine operations while callously endangering the infant. I can hope the author meant for the reader to dislike the protagonist because that behavior just seemed unforgivable, but I think my hope would be misplaced.

You can never really be certain if the author meant everything ironically in this book or really thinks the story makes sense. The story does not cohere, each of the events are intrinsically silly, the meaning the author is trying to get at seemed misplaced, and his illusions to Bill Cosby seem to be clearly unintentionally ironic today given that he is such a beast of a human being while fortunately Bing Crosby who is also mentioned is still rightfully worthy of one’s time. The author projects the sensibilities of his time period, 1989, into 2023-2025 and the author’s myopic parochialism blinds him to the absurdities of his own time period.

When I read Heinlein, I today realize that he is somewhat of a reactionary with a libertarian albeit illiberal (neo-liberalism) perspective. I get the same feeling while reading this book about the author. I can forgive that within good sci-fi such as Starship Troopers, but I am less forgiving when the plot is absurd, the events unbelievable, the corporatist are bad no matter how the author sugar coats the story, and the characters are repulsive.

The bombing of Nagasaki in 1945 is the single most racist event that ever happened in as much as the Holocaust doesn’t qualify as a single event. This author recreates that explosion for his time period, 2025, as if to show that is what is fated to happen unless a T. E. Lawrence saves the non-connected world from themselves since the world always needs a savior to come from the elites of the world, at least that’s how this writer seems to think.

I came across this book because the Great Course Lecture on great science fiction literature highly recommended this book. I’ve determined that I do not like cyberpunk sci-fi, and that I’m starting to realize why I stopped reading sci-fi in the 1990s.

[Patrick DiJusto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Damn you Bruce Sterling! You reminded me of the potential of the net, and how we have squandered it.

For those of use who were on the internets in the late 1980s (like Bruce, and me), this book perfectly captures the hopes that we had for the new technological future. Well, Bruce was always a much more cynical bastard than the rest of us, so we had the Utopian ideals, and he saw how human beings would fuck them up.

Except, he didn't. Bruce fell for the optimism, juust a little bit, in that he thought that the influence of the internet would be uniformly positive, and the only negative actions that came from it would b the negative actions people perpetrated on the net.

In the time of the writing of the book, he was't wrong. The internet was a paradise, run as a cooperative venture for the benefit of all mankind. There was no spam. There were no "comments". There were no paywalls. There was no World Wide Web, even. There was only the promise of untrammeled communication between people, and who could ever argue against that?

I realize that this review is more a review of the techno-optimism of the late 1980s, and not a review of the book per se, but you'll have to take my word for it: a review of the techno-optimism of the late 1980s IS a review of the book.

[Enric Herce · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5/5.
Només tres anys després de Neuromàntic i un de Mirrorshades, de la que ell mateix va ser l'antologista, Sterling ens porta una novel·la ciberpunk que trenca molts esquemes. Hi ha una xarxa de dades que permet està interconnectat en tot moment, però el ciberespai hi té poc pes, la tecnologia que ens planteja és força plausible, aplicada a problemes reals, i els hackers deixen pas a terroristes. Ens passejarem per tot el món: Singapur, Àfrica, Amèrica llatina, en una trama complexa de geopolítica i lluites de poder, seguint les passes de Laura i David Websters que miren d'aclarir l'assassinat d'un pirata de dades que té lloc a l'alberg que regenten, propietat de la megacorp Rizome.
Tenim, doncs, uns protagonistes amb feines normals, amb família i fills, que descobriran, en els seus viatges, tecnologies que, en molts casos, proposen solucions enginyoses a qüestions relacionades amb la contaminació o la fam mundial, tecnologia amb aplicacions positives. És a dir, una novel·la ciberpunk de 1987 on ja trobem dos trets que s'acostumen a plantejar com a característics d'allò que alguns anomenen post-ciberpunk.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The plot has so many twists that the main characters repeatedly cut themselves on its sharp edges. Like the best cyberpunk fiction, parts of it are prescient, while other parts miss the mark. The protagonist is very different for the genre - a wife and mother of a newborn child. That's a world away from Neuromancer's burnout Chase, for example.

[Karla · Rating 4 out of 5]

*PopSugar2018 Reto #42: Libro de ciberpunk*

Último reto para completar el PopSugar, con un libro que no me llamaba para nada y que terminó encantando!
No soy seguidora de este tipo de libros, pero este me atrapo por completo. Me lo leí de una sentada por lo interesante que es el mundo: gobiernos fantasmas, corporaciones que asumen el papel de naciones, piratas cibernéticos con aliados y enemigos, y los pobres civiles que no se enteran de nada, pero, que de un momento a otro se ven arrastrados por los conflictos entre las corporaciones y los piratas.
Me encantaron las planeaciones, la estrategia y los enfrentamientos de inteligencia, así como la fuerza y capacidad de reacción que tiene la protagonista.
Mi único pero en esta historia, es la relación que presentan de los protas, o son muy maduros para aceptar las cosas, o de plano no se querían tanto como aparentaban

[James Dunphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was craving a science fiction read outside of my usual realm of authors. I picked up Islands in the Net for a few reasons;
1) It's an early cyberpunk novel (I love me some cyberpunk)
2) It's by Bruce Sterling (and I have only been exposed to William Gibson primarily)
3) It was $2.00 at my favorite local book store
Picking this thing up, wow, holy crap. You would think this book was written maybe a few years ago if it weren't for the dated frizzy tangle of 80's hair on the front cover. To think that this was written in 1988 is mind blowing considering the content. Science fiction then, borderline reality now.
The story takes place in the early 2020's where democratized multinational companies dominate both economic and political spheres. Smaller, sometimes third world countries like Granada, Luxemburg, and Singapore have become havens for data storage due often due to loose regulations. Our protagonist is a middle-aged corporate woman/mother/wife Laura in charge organizing a gathering representatives from three data haven organizations that have been linked to terrorist, revolutionary groups. After an air drone assassinates a key data haven representative, Laura, hey husband, and young baby embark on a third world tour to clean up the now damaged image of the Rizome multinational organization.
What happens from there is a crazy ride for Laura through Grenada, Singapore, and Mali. Our main protagonist is an early 30's, married, mother, which was surprisingly fresh in a the typical world of low-class meets high tech grimy hackers or sexed out female assassins. It's interesting to me in a sci-fi subgenre that was all the rage in the mid to late 1980's that Sterling would go completely against the tropes set before him by the Gibsons of the genre. Laura is wife and mother, but she is also a strong, independent woman who wants a career and stands for principals perhaps even above her organization. She is a very strong female character which I absolutely loved. Although she spends the majority of the novel running from chaotic, terrorist attacked third worlds, she hardly ever seem weak or lost. She's a savvy 2020's woman I can only hope exists a decade from now.
Aside from her there are other interesting characters throughout this. Laura's husband David is a Mr. Mom type. Goofy, and non-interested in the corporate sphere he works in. Sticky Thompson is a face changing terrorist with neurotoxin bacteria in his gut. He gives Neuromancer's Hideo a run for his cyberpunk assassin credits. And finally, rogue American journalist Johnathan Gresham and his Tuareg nomad rebellion.
The world is incredibly detailed with background history that feels organic. From the steelwork mazes of Grenada to the crazy metal low-tech of the Tuaregs. Although the real world has panned out a whole lot differently than this 1988 visage of 2020's events, they are not so far off that they couldn't have happened. Sterling predicted a lot of elements of modern global 21st century globalization – the rise of global terrorism as a means of protesting the “developed” world, assassination via aerial drone, and net enabled watches and glasses (although most of us are still waiting on the Google Glasses...). The net is less of a hallucinatory abstraction of data and information for users to travels through and explore that Gibson's Sprawl Matrix is. Instead, Sterling's net is more a conglomeration of phone lines, video equipment, and personal communication and messaging. Sterling noted the internet as a means of media convergence and interactivity between users. It's less prose like and pretty the Gibson's interpretation, but if we look at where the evolution of the internet has taken us today – all the way to the current wave of internet enabled wearable devices – I would say that Sterling had a his ear to the pulse of what those primitive 80's networks were slowly becoming.
This is a great novel from first page to last. It starts off strong and gradually builds. Although the old dated 80's sci-fi covers may make the novel appear dated, it is really in need of a fresh coat of paint because it is incredibly modern and forward thinking looking back on it. Sterling's cyberpunk dystopia less gritty and street, more corporate and sleek. He's a unique flavor a computer science fiction than the William Gibsons and Neil Stephensons I've read in the past. This was a great book. One I will remember for a while and one I will keep in the back of my head to read again as the years go by. A great work of science fiction, a seminal underrated work of the cyberpunk subgenre, and just a fun book. 5 stars. Easily the best thing I read all summer.

[prcardi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Storyline: 1/5
Characters: 2/5
Writing Style: 2/5
World: 3/5

Islands in the Net puts one in the unusual, albeit not unheard of, position of an accidental, distant spectator. It is full of spectacles: a roller coaster with its crests and troughs, strings of colored lights, random and bizarre embellishments. There’s a veritable carnival going on in this cyberpunk political thriller, but somehow the planner forgot to include an on-ramp for access. One reads along as the presumably exciting events happen and the unbelievable occurs. It all happens without understanding or feeling. Character motivations, ideologies, personal beliefs, the nature of dangers or the rewards for success – none of these are explained. So, characters wanting something ill-defined, to some unspecified degree, make choices from an unknown set of options for unclear reasons. What are surely supposed to be exciting things result. What they mean, who they affect, why it matters? These components are never delivered. It is clear that it all means something, affects some, and matters to a degree. Beyond that it was guesswork.

The exceptional amount of vagueness in the text is all the more unfortunate because the book is detailed in some many other areas. There’s cool technology, a fairly thought-out political order, lots of very specific ideologies. Coming near (but before) the end of the Cold War, the book had some interesting thoughts on the trajectory of things to come that, while were wrong, did anticipate some of the geo-politics we are left with today. The plot takes the reader through the intimate and mundane, the small-scale revelation, and the macro-level, all on a plotted path that should have heightened the reading experience. There was just something fundamentally wrong with the pacing, characterization, description, and grammar. The author was principled – ruling out narrative exposition in favor demonstrative action. That would normally be the right choice. The problem for Islands in the Net is that the actions did not clearly demonstrate anything. Perhaps it is a function of the time and environment in which it was written. Perhaps one needs a common referent – maybe the author did not build an on-ramp because he assumed we were already at the carnival. For whatever reason, the author throws out names of obscure or co-mingled political and economic ideologies and assumes the reader knows enough about them that explanation is unnecessary. The thoughtfully hinted-at world-order is struck, and we’re supposed to anticipate and draw conclusions based on revelations, but the premises were never clearly laid. We get introduced to characters but before we understand who they are, they rush off to do something uncharacteristic. I never understood the people, organizations, politics, or technology that the book began with. The book was intent on changing those characters, groups, ideas, and inventions. I did not understand that process. The reward at the end was supposed to be the distance between the result and what it all began with. But I couldn’t measure the distance between a beginning I could never find and a conclusion that I did not recognize.

This failed as a story.

[Eran · Rating 2 out of 5]

Managed to finish it by sheer power of will of not wanting to leave another book in the middle.
Something about the writing is just clumsy, cumbersome and falls flat - words are just plastered there, but they are not what people would say or think. They don't flow or immerse, Especially in the beginning some sentences I had to go over a couple of times just to make sure the words are right and make sense, because it didn't feel like that at all. It just feels tedious and boring and uninspiring.
The story is ok, and was enough that I could somehow slug through it just for the events, but there's little plot going on and the character writing is just bad as any other aspect of the writing.
Given the year of writing, sure it's futuristic in some way that now seems quaint and maybe even prescient, but that's not enough.
And cyberpunk? barely feeling it, some places where the story is more about political world views etc. but that's mostly lost in events. And the tech isn't really there for it, sure there's a smartwatch-like thing described somewhere in the beginning and people connect to the "net". So it's sci-fi, again, especially for the time it was written in. But it's not really what I would define as the spirit of cyberpunk. So if this is supposed to be somewhere in the beginning of the genre, it was skipped and left behind for the genre to be formed around other works and ideas - and rightfully so.

Giving it two stars, this time less for the semantic meaning of "it's ok", it's more in the "did not like this" category, but somehow one star doesn't quite expresses what I feel for it either. 1.5 would have been the score I guess.

[Nicholas Avedon · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Estrelllas.

Sin duda Sterling está en el lado del "ciberpunk serio", junto con Gibson. Esta novela es considerada por muchos la mejor novela ciberpunk, y por otros, ni siquiera ciberpunk. Todo depende qué esperemos encontrar. No hay nada divertido, ni cómico ni esencialmente innovador. Si dejamos de lado que Sterling ha sido capaz de predecir treinta años de historia con bastante precisión, podríamos decir que Sterling al igual que Gibson, tiene excelentes cualidades narrativas y literarias. Sterling es uno de los pocos autores ciberpunk clásicos que se toma en serio el desarrollo de personaje, más aún que Gibson, aunque no tiene la misma habilidad para generar ambiente ni su prosa. Sin embargo, se toma muy en serio la historia, y en "Islas en la red" nos cuenta una enorme historia, protagonizada por una mujer casada y con un hijo que lucha contra piratas de datos, corporaciones y traficantes de ADN. Aunque carente del ambiente Ciberpunk de otras obras, es una lectura totalmente recomendada. Una lectura imprescindible diría yo. Yo la he gozado con intensidad, a pesar de que es bien larga.

[Apa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sterling is getting better book by book but this one is not a masterpiece. Again, too many things crammed in.

The book is definitely cyberpunk but it has not aged well. The in-book-present is already a couple of years ago, our current tech is more advanced (mostly) and the attitudes are very 80s. A female lead is a good step forwards though!

As a future prediction the book did get a surprising number of things right! Drones, EU, small portable phones, everpresent Internet...

Worth reading if you are going to read all of Sterling books or doing a cyberpunk deep dive. Otherwise don't bother.

[Frédéric · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you read this book, say, right now, just bear in mind it was written 25 years ago. Of course the actual world is not what Sterling described then but you gotta admit that what seemed pure fantasy in 1989 tends to be way more credible now.
Apart from that, this is a great book, with a real clever geopolitical plot (as opposed to Gibson's techie/social stories, of which I am a huge fan, mind you) with an awesome strong female lead character.
If you wanna know what cyberpunk is, there are 2 books you gotta read : Gibson's Neuromancer and this one.

[Thom · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book predicts a lot (data havens, digital currency, smart watches) with a forgettable plot.

I'm sure I read this in the 90s, but barely remember any of it. A great description I read elsewhere is "cyberpunk from the corporate side", and that seems a good fit. Sterling spends a lot of pages describing various near-future tech, though this tech often fails to advance the plot in any way. Just over half way through it becomes a suspenseful thriller, and finishes with observations on government.

The author definitely had a good feel for the near future.

[J.G. Keely · Rating 2 out of 5]

Has not aged as well as Gibson's work. I'm not certain what's more jarring, Sterling's enthusiasm for both nanotech and fax machines, or Star Trek's matter/energy conversion but inability to heal a spine.

[Ron Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

A seminal work helping to establish the cyberpunk genre, this dystopian sci-fi story has one foot in a near-future (2023-25) from today (2018) where nation state power has receded and transnationals have filled the vacuum, and yet the work has the other foot firmly stuck in the mindset of the Cold War.


Sterling has misread the future, in his world data pirates are the biggest threat to privacy, stealing data and selling it to corporations who can profit from it; a sad inversion to today's reality where transnational tech-giants legally capture and monetize our private data while hackers try to set that data free.


In this book Sterling makes some interesting predictions that have recently come true:

* Autonomous electric vehicles
* Automated attack drones
* VR and augmented reality glasses
* Failed African states
* Climate change and its impact on populations
* Corporate warfare via mercenary armies
* Allegiance to corporations over states
* Media blackouts
* Mass produced food replacements like Soylent, called "Scop"
* The rise of a neoliberal hypercapitalist Singapore
* The failure of global governance like the UN


Other speculative descriptions are more shortsighted:

* Continued ubiquity of faxes and hard copy printouts
* The continuation of the USSR


This book defines the paradigm example of a strong female lead, waaay before the era of strong female leads. Laura is the prototype for the strong lean-in badass mother, and unfortunately the world Sterling created end up tearing her life apart. She stands up and stoically works through it, despite the seemingly bleak pointlessness of the postmodern condition she and the other citizens of this world continue to live through.

[Tomer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had this book on my Cyberpunk reading list for quite a while. As I have started reading, it reminded me some of the ideas of the "Cryptonomicon "by Neal Stephenson with its Data havens and financial concepts. As it went on I was hoping to see some first eye action as in "Koko takes a vacation" by Kieran Shea, but unfortunately our protagonist her peers wander through the plot and manage to barely tilt the balance in their favor by sheer luck rather than design. I am not saying it does not fit the main concept of things, but the book turns out to be quite a manifesto for the economic powers and ideologies of its time along with some good predictions, which may carry up to the present. Unfortunately the cost of it, at least for me, was in the interest of the plot in favor of deeper background contemplation.
This is one of those books, which more solid for its ideas and concepts, rather than as an execution of a plot.

[Tomasz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely not one to be read for futurologistic predictions, although one thing - drone warfare - is creepily prescient here. Also, the mores have progressed a lot farther than Bruce Sterling envisioned, so those requiring trigger warnings should consider themselves duly warned.
However, this is vintage Sterling, propulsive, imaginative, very much a skilled practicioner of the writing arts already. No action for action's sake, a bit of neat corporate and internecine wrangling, the sense that the world described hides quite a few more interesting places. Not ideal, no, but still recommended (if preferably to cyberpunk completists).

[Eric Reyes · Rating 4 out of 5]

It should surprise no one that this is an excellent book.

Set in a postindustrial world free of 'the bomb' and military adventurism through a global security and information agreement known as 'The Vienna Convention', what would seem to be the utopian 'end of history' turns out to be not so simplistic or pure as people are led to believe.

Our main protagonist is Laura, a child of the Convention and the world it brought about. As a promising member of the Multinational Corporation Rizome, she, along with her husband and newborn child, run a company lodge that acts as a type of 'Camp David' where careful negotiations and gracious accommodations seek to court any number of advantageous relationships. Rizome is itself an 'economic democrat' institution with a highly communal though still clearly corporate structure, acting less as our current breed of predatory opportunists as a kind of pseudo-philosophic consumer necessity concern with benevolent aspirations.
The world post-convention is a postindustrial one. The world's resources and environment have been pushed past the breaking point, and with the end of the traditional model of international economic and martial competition, as well as the shuttering of security agencies and hordes of military specialists and stockpiles, the great mass of humanity is concerned with feeding itself and finding something to do. Also with the end of the old comes the beginning of the new; data rules everything, and in a world of a unified currency and all-pervasive scrutiny, censorship, and a surrender to authority, 'Data Havens' arise in the impoverished 'third world.' These havens act as new frontiers for technology and science, economic experimentation, a high-tech brand of piracy that is as anathematic to the new world order as nukes or a standing army or privacy.
Laura and her family play host to a mediation attempt by Rizome between several factions of these pirates, the company taking a 'if we can't beat them, we'll co-opt them' approach. Unfortunately, a successful assassination of one of the participating members puts Laura, her family, and the company in the crosshairs of the global order as well as the illicit pirates and fringes of the unified world. In an attempt to save face, be a good soldier, and hold to her principles, Laura and her family venture to Grenada, the most gravely wounded party in the attack, to act as witnesses and placate everyone, especially 'The Vienna Heat.'
This begins a series of violent, tragic events filled with cyber-psychedelic-voodoo houngans, heavily armed drones, secret nuclear submarines, mercenary armies and the bleached bones of Africa. The truth is elusive, though everyone assures you, with a gun to your back and a pat on the head, that their version is the truest of true. Pinky swear.

Now that that's out of the way.

I thoroughly loved this book. I'm a huge fan of cyberpunk and while this novel definitely fits into the cannon, the current cultural idea of the genre would view it as a retro techno-thriller of some kind. This is the world between 'the collapse' and 'the dark future' and hits all of the beats, is wearing all the right clothes, and is chipped for all the right tech.
It is written so expertly. It manages to build the world, including the insular corporate world of Laura and Rizome and other named and unnamed corps, effectively and efficiently. At a glance and in a paragraph or so, you get a feel for the weight, the wear, the woe of the world. There's bits here and there that might catch us off guard because of what they suggest rather than their being any crazy newspeak. The idea that the CIA, NSA, KGB, Green Berets, Spetznaz, NATO, Warsaw Pact, ICBM's, Nuclear subs and the like would suddenly be gone at the stroke of a pen seems so fantastic that it might as well be in the realm of high fantasy. With that being said, Africa tearing itself apart through abundant surplus weaponry and the apathy of the 'developed world', people subsisting purely on manufactured food and the welfare state without purpose or meaning, the elite ruling class of a globalized system facing threats with delaying actions, obfuscation and outright denial, yeah... a little too real.
There's a lot here that is dated, mainly in the conceptualization of Tech and predictions on the future of race relations and some country's fates. With that being said, it doesn't detract or side-track (Though there's a random line about 'always having a think for black guys' that felt awkward if only for the idea that it was a white guy writing a white woman talking about a white guy with artificially darkened skin but I'll leave it to you to decide).
The action, when it comes, is gripping and well paced. Even in the thick of the chaos with smoke and bullets and stun grenades there's a sense of being there, of being in the middle of it all. Some authors have a problem with a detached, remote presentation of violence or even being a witness to violence, but not here.
The characterization throughout is also very effective. Where some characters on the surface might seem like caricatures, the greater environmental and narrative depth granted to everyone by default makes it more of the passing summation everyone makes of others around them. Anyone granted any screentime is given a wonderful human depth that makes their flaws, positive traits, and even their deaths all carry weight in the story.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and I hope you will too.

[Marco Landi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Più che sci fi, è un libro ucronico che utilizza la poca fantascienza per una disamina politica mondiale.. se la parte tecnologica risulta un po' datata, per essere un libro scritto 34 anni fa è davvero attuale: multinazionali, terrorismo, minaccia nucleare, globalizzazione, banche dati, privacy e utilizzo dati sensibili.. la terza parte ha di sicuro un po' di pagine di troppo che allungano un po', ma resta sempre scorrevole e dinamico... Una bella avventura...

[Sidsel Sander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vildt sjovt, at den foregår i september 2023. Interessant scifi-roman.

[Christian Molenaar · Rating 4 out of 5]

For all the predictions Sterling makes about the future the most eerily prescient is post-millennials in 2020 hitting synthetic THC and calling anyone who lived through the Cold War a boomer

[Wendy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just didn't get it. It felt very complicated. (Maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind)

[⚔️Kelanth⚔️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Isole nella rete, in originale "Islands in the net", è un romanzo di Bruce Sterling, chiave di volta nell'evoluzione letteraria dell'autore, senz'altro una delle voci più interessanti (e probabilmente la più impegnata) emersa nella fantascienza dell’ultimo quarto di secolo. Ideologo cyberpunk, forse troppo schierato sul fronte di sinistra nei primi anni ’80, Sterling sembra ritrattare molte delle sue tesi con questo romanzo, sfiorando in più di un’occasione una preoccupante deriva destroide. Questo romanzo ha vinto il John W. Campbell Memorial Award per il miglior romanzo di fantascienza nel 1989, ed è stato nominato sia per la Hugo e Locus Awards dello stesso anno.

Il romanzo offre una visione di un mondo all'inizio del 21 ° secolo, a quanto pare tranquillo, con il mondo che è dominato dalle multinazionali e dalla Rete, un complesso sistema telematico che gestisce tutte le informazioni ed è il perno della politica e dell'economia globale. Il protagonista, che si muove in questo scenario, durante un convegno organizzato da una grande multinazionale per stabilire una sorta di armistizio coi pirati telematici, si troverà sotto un attacco terroristico e verrà travolto da eventi fuori dal suo controllo: si ritroverà in luoghi che sono fuori dalla rete, da un datahaven di Granada , a Singapore e nella parte più povera dell'Africa, dopo un disastro che l'ha colpita.

Credo che posso scindere la mia recensione in due parti: se analizziamo la capacità dell’autore di aver cercato di immaginare con sagacia un futuro prossimo, l’opera risulta sicuramente interessante in quanto anticipava situazioni che, ad oggi, sono quanto mai attuali, ma che sul finire degli anni ’80 non lo erano per niente. Se invece andiamo a considerare il testo in quanto romanzo di fantascienza si rivela essere nient'altro è che un thriller fantapolitico a tratti piuttosto noioso.

Le capacità di Sterling, risplendono se descrive l’evoluzione dei rapporti tra l’uomo e il mondo, il suo rapporto mediatico e la tecnologia che domina il futuro da lui immaginato. Nelle pagine di apertura poi, passa in rassegna gli eventi ancora oscuri della storia degli anni ’70 e inizi ’80, senza trascurare il ruolo svolto dall'alta finanza internazionale negli affari interni dell’Italia e del Vaticano. Poi la sua verve si assopisce e resta in uno stato di letargo che dura la bellezza di quasi 400 pagine. Un intervallo nel quale il Nostro, colto da sindrome di rigetto, trova il modo per scagliarsi contro tutto e contro tutti, salvo poi accogliere le istanze di tutte, ma proprio tutte, le parti in campo.

In buona sostanza non posso dire che il libro mi sia completamente dispiaciuto, ma affermare che è stata una buona lettura mi sembra troppo, direi che sono quei libri che passati anni dalla lettura ti sovvengono come qualcosa di nebuloso di cui ricordi poco e non ti dispiace affatto.