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Visionary in Residence
I'm a science fiction writer. This is a golden opportunity to get up to most any mischief imaginable. With this fourth collection of my stories, I'm going to prove this to you. With these words, Bruce Sterling—author of New York times Notable Books of the Year and one of the great names in contemporary fiction—introduces his latest collection of thirteen tales. If you're familiar with his cyberpunk creations you won't be disappointed, but these stories range far beyond the limits of future technology. Visionary in Residence takes the reader to places never imagined and certainly where no one has ever been.
320 pages, Paperback
First published April 6, 2005
6 people are currently reading
174 people want to read
About the author
Bruce Sterling
356 books1,202 followersBruce 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).
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
May 11, 2020
Review is solely for "Ivory Tower", a very cool short-short from 2005, that I somehow missed. If you're a Sterling fan, you have a treat in store. Link to story: https://www.nature.com/articles/434806a
Not sure my teaser quotes really need spoiler protection, when the whole thing is a 15-minute read (if that).
Great, great story. If you like Sterling, and/or hard SF, don't miss!
Not sure my teaser quotes really need spoiler protection, when the whole thing is a 15-minute read (if that).
Great, great story. If you like Sterling, and/or hard SF, don't miss!
May 13, 2022
Entertaining collection of stories. Surprisingly, the best were the last two, both with historical settings, though since Sterling co-wrote The Difference Engine I don't know why it should be surprising except that they were quite thorougly unexpected. Also particularly enjoyed The Scab's Progress with Paul DiFillipo, a biohacker yarn, and of course as always there's one wth Rudy Rucker which is always worth the entrance fee.
October 6, 2021
Collection of short stories by Bruce Sterling. "Luciferase" is a Classic fun story written from the perspective of a lightening bug, and much funnier if read aloud in 1930's accents. The rest of the book is fairly forgettable, but a fun read nonetheless.
February 9, 2022
Science fiction short stories.
February 10, 2010
Okay, first just ignore the wrapping this book comes in. I can accept 'Visionary in Residence' but the "13 NEW STORIES FROM THE LEATHER-JACKETED HIGH DRUID OF CYBERPUNK" is just embarrassing. If I was Sterling I'd be burning my dorky leather jacket and hunting down whoever put that on the back of my book. Okay...
I quite liked this collection there are some pieces that are just... pieces and not really stories, a few exercises, but there is 'User-Centric' which is Sterling working at his best, and his collaborations with Di Filippo and Rucker are really good, though hew closely to his collaborators' styles. The last two stories are interesting in that they show Sterling's chops away from his trademark style, perhaps future possibilities?
The following are notes on the stories I made along the way.
""In Paradise", cell phone as universal translator, but other than that..."
"'Luciferase': Holy anthropomorphization Mr. Disney! Though I did learn much about bug sex. Walt did have a didactic point.."
"'Homo Sapiens Declared Extinct': Wow, crap articles even in 2380, cockroaches and news reporters..."
'Ivory Tower', sad to see that females aren't any more welcome in physics in the future, but still room for sexy camp followers! Sad.
'Message Found in a Bottle', yeah Nature didn't run it, will we take heed either? I don't know if this kind of cautionary piece is all that effective.
'The Growthing', a companion piece without the companion...
'User-Centric': Yes!!!! This is Sterling connecting the knowledge tech with the knowledge of spirit. At first my heart sank with his intro where he is all on about how designers are the coolest folk. The memos of the first half are very gee-whiz, we're Dr. Frankensteins happily grooving in our crack-unit building a better tomorrow. But THEN... the memos break down into private messages between the anthropologist and team coordinator and their failure to have a relationship and the inappropriateness of one and the way "I've never made a man happy in my whole life" disrupts this fantasy.
And the memos are torn (electronically) in two and the marketing story of Albert and Zelda, suddenly becomes real life. And wow, this is not a bright glossy marketing brochure life, this is fucked up life. BUT its not necessarily the technologies fault. Sterling says, yeah, tech is fine, but it is a tool, not the be-all-end-all panacea, or the evil soul sucker: its just the tool. Its the toolmakers and the users who are fucked. Fucked on a pretty fundamental, existential level. But hey, that's life. "What if the story was all about this, instead: What if you tried your level best to be a real-life, fully true human being, and it just plain couldn't work? It wasn't even possible. Period." That, in my experience, is timeless.
'Code',...very mainstream, the makings of a depressingly conventional rom-com, the guy reading off cards, using the manual, laughs ensue?
'The Scab's Progress', colab with my new fav DiFilippo, a nod to Bunyan, as two doofuses may grow up... Particularly like how Fearon & Malvern's bio-cool adventure is show as an adolescent comic book power fantasy....like much of the cyber-punk genre, and to be fair much sci-fi... and hey, I like some of it, but as I get to be an old fart a lot of it annoys me. One of them grows up, so maybe there is hope.
'Junk DNA', a colab with Rucker, two masters of the start-up IPO sci-fi story. Reminiscent of Rucker's "*-ware" series, not as wacky
'Necropolis of Thebes', who says the remorseless march of technology is new?
'The Blemmye's Stratagem', quite different from what I expect from Sterling, a historic-sf story, could be a big thumping novel!
'The Denial', ghost-story with a good twist, small village fable feel in Europe à la Isaac Bashevis Singer - cool!
I quite liked this collection there are some pieces that are just... pieces and not really stories, a few exercises, but there is 'User-Centric' which is Sterling working at his best, and his collaborations with Di Filippo and Rucker are really good, though hew closely to his collaborators' styles. The last two stories are interesting in that they show Sterling's chops away from his trademark style, perhaps future possibilities?
The following are notes on the stories I made along the way.
""In Paradise", cell phone as universal translator, but other than that..."
"'Luciferase': Holy anthropomorphization Mr. Disney! Though I did learn much about bug sex. Walt did have a didactic point.."
"'Homo Sapiens Declared Extinct': Wow, crap articles even in 2380, cockroaches and news reporters..."
'Ivory Tower', sad to see that females aren't any more welcome in physics in the future, but still room for sexy camp followers! Sad.
'Message Found in a Bottle', yeah Nature didn't run it, will we take heed either? I don't know if this kind of cautionary piece is all that effective.
'The Growthing', a companion piece without the companion...
'User-Centric': Yes!!!! This is Sterling connecting the knowledge tech with the knowledge of spirit. At first my heart sank with his intro where he is all on about how designers are the coolest folk. The memos of the first half are very gee-whiz, we're Dr. Frankensteins happily grooving in our crack-unit building a better tomorrow. But THEN... the memos break down into private messages between the anthropologist and team coordinator and their failure to have a relationship and the inappropriateness of one and the way "I've never made a man happy in my whole life" disrupts this fantasy.
And the memos are torn (electronically) in two and the marketing story of Albert and Zelda, suddenly becomes real life. And wow, this is not a bright glossy marketing brochure life, this is fucked up life. BUT its not necessarily the technologies fault. Sterling says, yeah, tech is fine, but it is a tool, not the be-all-end-all panacea, or the evil soul sucker: its just the tool. Its the toolmakers and the users who are fucked. Fucked on a pretty fundamental, existential level. But hey, that's life. "What if the story was all about this, instead: What if you tried your level best to be a real-life, fully true human being, and it just plain couldn't work? It wasn't even possible. Period." That, in my experience, is timeless.
'Code',...very mainstream, the makings of a depressingly conventional rom-com, the guy reading off cards, using the manual, laughs ensue?
'The Scab's Progress', colab with my new fav DiFilippo, a nod to Bunyan, as two doofuses may grow up... Particularly like how Fearon & Malvern's bio-cool adventure is show as an adolescent comic book power fantasy....like much of the cyber-punk genre, and to be fair much sci-fi... and hey, I like some of it, but as I get to be an old fart a lot of it annoys me. One of them grows up, so maybe there is hope.
'Junk DNA', a colab with Rucker, two masters of the start-up IPO sci-fi story. Reminiscent of Rucker's "*-ware" series, not as wacky
'Necropolis of Thebes', who says the remorseless march of technology is new?
'The Blemmye's Stratagem', quite different from what I expect from Sterling, a historic-sf story, could be a big thumping novel!
'The Denial', ghost-story with a good twist, small village fable feel in Europe à la Isaac Bashevis Singer - cool!
January 7, 2017
I have that sense that in these stories, the author was stretching beyond his comfort zone. As such, some of the stories work and some don't.
February 21, 2011
Finished reading Visionary in Residence (2008) by Bruce Sterling yesterday, a collection of 13 short stories by “one of the founders of the cyberpunk movement” (according to Wikipedia) Well, strictly speaking 2 of the stories are collaborations; one with Rudy Rucker and one with Paul Di Filippo.
It’s a pretty good collection, with a fair number of SF sub genera. Sterling has arranged the stories into 8 categories: Science Fiction (1 story); Fiction about Science (1); Fiction for Scientists (3 very short stories); Architecture Fiction (1); Design Fiction (1); Mainstream Fiction (1); Cyberpunk to Ribopunk (the 2 collaborations); and The Past Is a Future That Already Happened (3).
As a group, I think enjoyed the ribopunk stories the least, although the first one, “The Scab’s Progress” (2001) with Paul Di Filippo, was pretty amusing in the beginning (it’s rather long and the jokes became somewhat tedious).
My three favorite stories are probably “Code” (2001), “In Paradise” (2002) and “Luciferase” (2004). I think I must be a romantic at heart, because all are “boy meets girl” stories; although not typical of the type, even for science fiction.
“Code” is from the Mainstream section. It’s about two junior employees discovering of the body of a key employee in a small company. It reads like SF, but all the technology used in the story is current; although Sterling does points out that if it had been published as recently as 1975 it would have nearly completely science fictional.
“In Paradise”, the first story in the collection, is from the Science Fiction section. This story uses a standard SF device: a real-time voice translation gizmo, in this case embedded in a cell phone. This probably won’t be SF for much longer. In the story the translator worked between English and Farsi and it allowed two kids without a common language to fall in love.
In “Luciferase”, from the Fiction about Science section, the main characters are two different species of fireflies who overcome their natural predator/prey roles.
I haven’t many of Sterling’s other works. I’ve read an earlier short story collection Globalhead (1992); The Difference Engine (1991) with William Gibson, considered a classic example of steampunk; and his recent The Caryatids (2009) mostly a novel of straight up clones in a post-apocalyptic world.
It’s a pretty good collection, with a fair number of SF sub genera. Sterling has arranged the stories into 8 categories: Science Fiction (1 story); Fiction about Science (1); Fiction for Scientists (3 very short stories); Architecture Fiction (1); Design Fiction (1); Mainstream Fiction (1); Cyberpunk to Ribopunk (the 2 collaborations); and The Past Is a Future That Already Happened (3).
As a group, I think enjoyed the ribopunk stories the least, although the first one, “The Scab’s Progress” (2001) with Paul Di Filippo, was pretty amusing in the beginning (it’s rather long and the jokes became somewhat tedious).
My three favorite stories are probably “Code” (2001), “In Paradise” (2002) and “Luciferase” (2004). I think I must be a romantic at heart, because all are “boy meets girl” stories; although not typical of the type, even for science fiction.
“Code” is from the Mainstream section. It’s about two junior employees discovering of the body of a key employee in a small company. It reads like SF, but all the technology used in the story is current; although Sterling does points out that if it had been published as recently as 1975 it would have nearly completely science fictional.
“In Paradise”, the first story in the collection, is from the Science Fiction section. This story uses a standard SF device: a real-time voice translation gizmo, in this case embedded in a cell phone. This probably won’t be SF for much longer. In the story the translator worked between English and Farsi and it allowed two kids without a common language to fall in love.
In “Luciferase”, from the Fiction about Science section, the main characters are two different species of fireflies who overcome their natural predator/prey roles.
I haven’t many of Sterling’s other works. I’ve read an earlier short story collection Globalhead (1992); The Difference Engine (1991) with William Gibson, considered a classic example of steampunk; and his recent The Caryatids (2009) mostly a novel of straight up clones in a post-apocalyptic world.
November 20, 2014
Bruce is one of those authors I always approach hesitantly. When he’s good, he’s very good, but when he’s not, he’s . . . well, not terrible, but certainly uninteresting. That goes for both his novels and his short stories. As I’ve noted elsewhere, he’s a kick to listen to in person at a con, but his ideas and enthusiasms and social concerns don’t always translate well into print. This collection of thirteen stories which first appeared in the past five or six years is divided thematically -- “Fiction for Scientists,” “Design Fiction,” “Architecture Fiction,” etc. And there are several here that are great fun: “In Paradise” (love by means of real-time language translation in your cell phone), “Code” (boy-nerd meets girl-nerd), “The Necropolis of Thebes” (a very thoughtful look at “the old days” -- really old), and “The Denial” (actually a ghost story set in Ottoman times). One of the best, under the heading of “Ribofunk,” is “Junk DNA,” written with Rudy Rucker, which is about a high-tech start-up built around genomics instead of software; it’s damaged, though, by the rather silly ending which makes me think Bruce simply got tired of writing it. The least-readable story, as it happens, is also about biotech -- “The Scab’s Progress,” with Paul Di Filippo, which made almost no sense at all to me. Also, if the author would just learn to write endings for his stories instead of just stopping his typing, I wouldn’t have to keep turning the page, wondering if the rest of the story had been omitted.
May 14, 2009
I tend to rate Bruce Sterling as one of my favorite authors because he has a very unique voice ... something lacking in much sci-fi/fantasy (in my opinion). I know that when I pick up a Sterling book, it will be unlike anything else out there.
And of course it's no secret that I really enjoy short fiction. A short story or a one act play are personal favorites. To tell a story, efficiently and succinctly, is a challenge, and I enjoy being the voyeur into these efforts.
WIth that out, I must say that this collection is sorely lacking. Not all novelists are great short story writers, and not all short story authors can put together a great novel. Bruce Sterling is NOT a great short story writer. As I thumb through the book (it's been about a month since I read it, now), only one story stands out as being a memorable read. "Junk DNA" is unlike anything I've read -- really good stuff.
"User-Centric" takes a classic idea (telling a story through letters [this time, email:]) with a modern theme. It certainly reminds me of a 'Dilbert' cartoon.
But over-all, these stories are just fair. Nothing outstanding, nothing horrible. I'll stick to Bruce Sterling novels for the time being.
And of course it's no secret that I really enjoy short fiction. A short story or a one act play are personal favorites. To tell a story, efficiently and succinctly, is a challenge, and I enjoy being the voyeur into these efforts.
WIth that out, I must say that this collection is sorely lacking. Not all novelists are great short story writers, and not all short story authors can put together a great novel. Bruce Sterling is NOT a great short story writer. As I thumb through the book (it's been about a month since I read it, now), only one story stands out as being a memorable read. "Junk DNA" is unlike anything I've read -- really good stuff.
"User-Centric" takes a classic idea (telling a story through letters [this time, email:]) with a modern theme. It certainly reminds me of a 'Dilbert' cartoon.
But over-all, these stories are just fair. Nothing outstanding, nothing horrible. I'll stick to Bruce Sterling novels for the time being.
November 5, 2007
“The Leather-Jacketed High Druid of Cyberpunk.” That’s what is written on the back of the book… so I picked it up. I was a little disappointed.
This book is a collection of his short stories; I like short stories when I’m investigating an author that I’ve never read before, because… if you don’t like the current story, you can skip it and go to the next. I skipped a lot of the stories. What I did finish, however, I liked a lot, so it wasn’t a complete waste.
I’d read something else by Sterling.
This book is a collection of his short stories; I like short stories when I’m investigating an author that I’ve never read before, because… if you don’t like the current story, you can skip it and go to the next. I skipped a lot of the stories. What I did finish, however, I liked a lot, so it wasn’t a complete waste.
I’d read something else by Sterling.
January 13, 2012
Bruce Sterling has a steady hand when it comes to short stories (his novels tend to spin apart, possibly on purpose). None of these stories floored me but each was an interesting little meditation. One story collaboration with Paul DiFillipo, "The Scab's Progress", bothered me with its plot about soulless posthuman African "natives". The last two stories in the collection show Sterling really stretching himself: one is a love story set during the Crusades and the other set in an Ottoman village feels like it's on the Isaac Bashevis Singer tip.
March 14, 2012
This probably rated a 2.5. In the end I have to agree with the reviewer that said that these pieces were written for spec, and largely that's the way they read.
Mildly entertaining, but there are no ideas here that will cause you to really pause.
Mildly entertaining, but there are no ideas here that will cause you to really pause.
December 26, 2007
As in Neuromancer
April 1, 2008
Not uniformly excellent, but the better stories make the whole book worthwhile.
July 22, 2008
Some lousy stories but some good ones too. The Rudy Rucker and Paul Di Fillipo collaborations are worth the price of admission alone.
October 25, 2009
A couple of weak stories, but overall, definitely a great read.
February 5, 2011
Lots of great Sterling stories, sometimes very imaginative, other times surprisingly charming. Great stuff.
August 9, 2014
good collection of stories
October 4, 2024
Not too impressive. His novels are much better.
March 19, 2019
Cute, but the sexism is of course ridiculous... maybe the whole thing is meant to be a parody? But some of the stuff is plausible....
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews