Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling

by Bruce Sterling

Two dozen tales of future shock and twisted history from an undisputed king of cyberpunk science fiction, including Nebula Award finalists “Sunken Garden” and “Dori Bangs.”Time magazine describes Bruce Sterling as “one of America’s best-known science fiction writers and perhaps the sharpest observer of our media-choked culture working today in any genre.” Sterling’s abilities are on full display in Ascendancies, a collection of speculative fiction from a world-class world-building futurist, alternate historian, and mad prophet operating at the peak of his extraordinary powers. Here are twenty-four stories that span the illustrious career of the author who, along with William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, injected the word cyberpunk into the science fiction lexicon. These tales not only traverse galaxies and employ mind-boggling technologies, they also cut back across the centuries into a richly imagined past with style and a sharp satiric edge. Sterling’s unparalleled imagination and courageous originality carry the reader into the future universe of the warring Shapers and Mechanists, rival sects of exiled humanity with radically opposed views of human augmentation. Several stories feature the questionable adventures of the footloose con man Leggy Starlitz in a somewhat-skewed and still-dangerous post–Cold War world. Sterling explores the cyberpunk trope of technology gone wild and the resultant decline of civilization with appropriate gravity, while presenting parables of strangers stuck in very strange lands in a more whimsical vein. Whether chronicling an alien’s encounter with Crusaders in disputed Palestine, depicting the discovery of the key to immortality in a nineteenth-century Times Square magic shop, or portraying bicycles and bad guys in a near-future Tennessee, Sterling’s stories are smart, surprising, genre bending, bold, and outstanding, one and all.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Short Stories, Cyberpunk, Anthologies, Ebooks, Collections

768 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 25, 2007

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

[Peter Tillman · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent collection. Pretty much all of Sterling's best short work is here. Not to be missed. Here's the TOC: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?1...

Part 1: The Shaper/Mechanist stories: Swarm -- Spider Rose -- Cicada queen -- Sunken gardens -- Twenty evocations

Part 2: Early science fiction and fantasy: Green days in Brunei -- Dinner in Audoghast -- The compassionate, the digital -- Flowers of Edo -- The little magic shop -- Our neural Chernobyl -- We see things differently -- Dori Bangs

Part 3: The Leggy Starlitz stories: Hollywood Kremlin -- Are you for 86? -- The littlest jackal

Part 4: The Chattanooga stories: Deep Eddy -- Bicycle repairman -- Taklamakan

Part 5: Later science fiction and fantasy: The sword of Damocles -- Maneki Neko -- In paradise -- The Blemmye's strategem -- Kiosk.

Partial reread, 2019
Highlights:
• Green Days in Brunei • (1985) • novella . Canadian Engineer Turner Choi finds an unlikely romance amidst an even less-likely project. One of my favorite Sterling shorts. 5 stars!
• Dinner in Audoghast • (1985) • short story. Online: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fic... Wonderful 11th century North African historic fantasy. 4.5 stars
• We See Things Differently • (1989) • novelette. Alternate near-historic past, now, where things didn't turn out well for the USA. Online: http://www.revolutionsf.com/fiction/w... 4+ stars
• Dori Bangs • (1989) • short story. An alternate pop-music history, very nicely done. 4.5 stars
• Bicycle Repairman • (1996) • Classic Sterling story, one of his best. Hugo winner, best novelette 1997. 5 stars!
• Taklamakan • (1998) • novelette. Won the Hugo & Locus awards in 1999, a great SF thriller. 5 stars.
• Maneki Neko • (1998) • short story. Won the 1999 Locus award, Hugo nominee. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1.... A sample:
“It’s nice to meet someone from the American government,” said Tsuyoshi, bowing a bit in his chair. “I’d shake your hand, but it’s tied to the bed.” 5 star!
-- and lots more 3 & 4-star stories. And (as always) a few that are not to my taste.

Merged review:

"Bicycle Repairman":
Classic Sterling story, one of his best. Hugo winner, best novelette 1997.
GR has done a clumsy mash-up here, but this particular review/comment applies only that great story.

Here's the ISFDB info on original publication and the many reprints:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cg...
And Oleksander Zholud has an excellent detailed review here, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sterling is broad. He's most famous for techno body horror, but his historical fantasies and economic stories are distinct and equally good. In fact I think his Exotic (But Non-Japanese) Cyberpunk is probably his key style. Here’s his Balkan SF, roadside kiosk as vanguard of the future:

These strangers and foreigners expressed odd, truncated, malformed ideas of what he had been doing. Because they were the Voice of History.

He himself had no such voice to give to history. He came from a small place under unique circumstances. People who hadn’t lived there would never understand it. Those who had lived there were too close to understand it. There was just no understanding for it. There were just…the events. Events, transitions, new things. Things like the black kiosks…

To the neighborhood, to the people, he was a crippled, short-tempered old landlord. To her, the scholar-bureaucrat, he was a mysterious figure of international significance. Her version of events was hopelessly distorted and self-serving. But it was a version of events.

This stuff is harder than it looks. Witness the many laughably dated K00L stories of the 90s. (Gibson.) This is dated, but it's not the tech or the slang that does it. It's the excitement about the internet as ontological shift, about cultural hybridisation, postmodern whoah; also the urgent grappling with Islamic philosophy and politics. (I shouldn't say 'dated'; matured.)

Sterling prefigures half of recent SF. We have a grand, mindless, terrifyingly efficient foil (a la Watts), a profiteering parasite civ (Pohl, Vinge), a genetically labile bodysnatcher (Tchaikovsky, Corey), early modern magic realism (Chiang, Borges), colonialism and cosmopolitanism as the original first contact (Stephenson), Western ideology as alien (Chiang), a paean to the technician and the technologist (Stephenson, Gibson), antihuman technologies (Gibson, Stross, Watts), even boringly transcendent evaporation as natural endpoint of conscious life (Banks). Sterling feels like a skeleton key for the last twenty years.

The Shaper stories are nasty - one notch short of body horror, three notches past psychological horror, economic horror: I love it. Looking for one line to catch his essence I plumped for

Tons of predigested fungal pap went into the slick blind jaws at one end.

Then

“This urge to expand, to explore, to develop, is just what will make you extinct. You naively suppose that you can continue to feed your curiosity indefinitely. It is an old story, pursued by countless races before you. Within a thousand years—perhaps a little longer—your species will vanish.”
“You intend to destroy us, then? I warn you it will not be an easy task—”
“Again you miss the point… Do you suppose that fragile little form of yours—your primitive legs, your ludicrous arms and hands, your tiny, scarcely wrinkled brain—can contain all that power? Certainly not! Already your race is flying to pieces under the impact of your own expertise. The original human form is becoming obsolete. Your own genes have been altered, and you, Captain-Doctor, are a crude experiment. In a hundred years you will be a relic. In a thousand years you will not even be a memory. Your race will go the same way as a thousand others.”
…

Stone-faced children wandered aimlessly through suburban halls, dazed on mood suppressants. Precious few dared to care any longer. Sweating Marketeers collapsed across their keyboards, sinuses bleeding from inhalants. Women stepped naked out of commandeered airlocks and died in sparkling gushes of frozen air. Cicadas struggled to weep through altered eyes, or floated in darkened bistros, numbed with disaster and drugs.

Ranked:
1. ‘Green days in Brunei’
2. 'Twenty evocations'
3. 'Dori Bangs' (only if you love Lester Bangs like I do)
4. 'In paradise'
5. 'The little magic shop'
6. 'Hollywood Kremlin'
7. 'The Blemmye's Strategem'
8. 'Are you for 86?'
9. 'Spider Rose'
10. 'The littlest jackal'
11. 'Dinner in Audoghast'
12. 'Cicada queen'
13. 'Maneki Neko'
14. 'Kiosk'
15. 'Deep Eddy'
16. 'Swarm''
17. 'Bicycle repairman'
18. 'Taklamakan'
19. 'We see things differently '
20. 'Our neural Chernobyl'
21. 'Sunken gardens''
22. 'The compassionate, the digital'
23. 'The sword of Damocles'

All worthwhile up to "We See Things Differently".



---

'Brunei' is glorious. It contains four or five intellectual feints. It's about the communitarian appeal, and the individualist appeal.

“Here at least people really care and watch over each other…”
She gritted her teeth. “Watching. Yes, always.”

It's a presumptive decoding of Malay culture. (“The Bruneians, like Malays everywhere, adored ghost stories.”) It's a great love story, a modern romance, a particular male romance. One character, initially depicted as decrepit and ridiculous, turns out to be a revolutionary colossus. Turner makes a grand conversion to human-centred technology, Gross National Happiness kind of stuff - and then this conversion is immediately subverted. The plot is driven by conveniences and I don't care at all.

The women worked on, wrapped in the lamp’s mild glow. Innocently, they enjoyed themselves, secure in their usefulness. Yet Turner knew machines could have done the sewing faster and easier. Already, through fishing smacks, as he watched, some corner of his mind pulled the task to computerized pieces, thinking: simplify, analyze, reduce.

But to what end?… People in the West talked about the “technical elite”—and Turner knew it was a damned lie. Technology roared on, running full-throttle on the world’s last dregs of oil, but no one was at the wheel, not really… “The “technical elite” were errand boys. They didn’t decide how to study, what to work on, where they could be most useful, or to what end. Money decided that. Technicians were owned by the abstract ones and zeros in bankers’ microchips, paid out by silk-suit hustlers who’d never touched a wrench. Knowledge wasn’t power, not really, not for engineers. There were too many abstractions in the way.

(Why is eight million regarded as a fortune of global renown though? Eight million what? CAD??)

—-

‘Magic Shop’ is great fun. Initially it looks like a great gag: a fantasy protagonist with no interest in mysteries, treasures, princesses, vengeance, or Journeys.

Later:

O’Beronne gave him a poisonous glare. “You’re a hundred and forty years old. Hasn’t the burden of unnatural life become insupportable?”
James looked at him, puzzled. “Are you kidding?”

---

A couple of these stories make me queasy. This is hard to do!

Part of this is Sterling's habit of having horrible narrators. One is an Islamist assassin, and his ideology is so galling because it is not only false (e.g. Western perfidy in Iran). I realised only halfway through that the old label for Sterling was "postmodern". It says something that that label has become so marginal and forgettable in the last 10 years.

The Starlitz stories are particularly strong. Starlitz is like Stross' Manfred Macx - an agent of the future - but in a curious amoral way. He runs guns for the Russian mafia and for psychotic Finnish nationalists. He lusts over trends and capital and flashy collectibles. He embodies the future but not progress: change in a nonmoral sense.

The undergrad revolutionary Aino is very tragic. Her mind is totally consumed by post-Marxist revolutionary fervour - but Marxism without hope, the nationalist perversion of the International. I recognise her, her inhumane mind-killed purity. it breaks my heart.

I I envy her historical experience so much. There’s something so direct and healthy and physical about hijacking planes.

---

'Maneki Neko' is an exquisite portrait of networks, the gift economy, and another sweet vision of a kind of digital culture we haven't gotten yet. Replace money with a terrible god who can solve the problem of double coincidence. Also the brutality and inexorability of 'Elua'. (The cat thing is also an egregore, of course. How better to overthrow a government than to charm literally everyone and destroy its tax base?)

—-

Excellent pastiche of cranks (Prigogine is an antishibboleth):

I sniffed at the phenethylamine, the body’s own “natural” amphetamine. I felt suddenly dizzy, as if the space inside my head were full of the red-hot Ur-space of the primordial de Sitter cosmos, ready at any moment to make the Prigoginic leap into the “normal” space-time continuum, the Second Prigoginic Level of Complexity…

“We’re past the Marxist thing,” said Khoklov, warming to his theme as the pill took hold. “Now it’s different. This time Russia has a kind of craziness that is truly big enough and bad enough to take over the whole world. Massive, total, institutional corruption: Top to bottom: Nothing held back. A new kind of absolute corruption that will sell anything: the flesh of our women, the future of our children. Everything inside our museums and our churches. Anything goes for money: gold, oil, arms, dope, nukes. We’ll sell the soil and the forests and the Russian sky. We’ll sell our souls.”

“Any system of rational analysis must live within the strong blind body of mass humanity, Mr. Dertouzas. If we learned anything from the twentieth century, we learned that much, at least”

[Oleksandr Zholud · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of shorter works (from short stories to novellas) by Bruce Sterling, with several works – nominees of prestigious SF awards. The works are quite different in scope, execution and kind, from hard SF to pastiches. Their quality (for me) also differs from 1 to 5 stars. Overall, it is a nice overview of author’s works.

The book is split into several sections, some due to the common universe, other on the basis of period of writing or style. Here is the breakdown:

Introduction by Karen Joy Fowler a note about how erudite the author is, and I fully agree
Foreword by Bruce Sterling how this book came to being, the fact that due to some error its title appeared in Sterling’s bibliography in the 1990s, so he used the name of his fake book to title the real one

Part I: The Shaper/Mechanist Stories possibly the most SF part, stories about mankind split into Shapers, who change genes, trying to make gods out of men and Mechanists, who try to built a symbiotic relation with machines.
Swarm the best story. I’ve read it in Russian translation in the 90s and was awestruck by the idea, tried to find it but without a success. The Shaper is sent to a species that are a kind of bees/ants in space, to get their genes to form our own biorobots to mine asteroids and the like. 5*
Spider Rose a Mechanist that calls herself Spider Rose, lives alone in a space station. Once, she found a great rare treasure and she proposes it to Investors – an alien race that has faster than light travel and who are a kind of space merchants. They suggest to barter it for their pet… 4*
Cicada Queen a man lives in a station that united exiles from both Shaper and Mechanist factions, owned by one of the Investors. He works with lichens, trying to create one to colomnize Mars. 3*, but I’ve read it earlier in The Year's Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection and then it was 2* because without earlier stories it is hard to get into.
Sunken Gardens Mars terraforming is in full swing and there are oases, where ice was dropped on the surface. In one of such there is a competition, who will create the fastest spreading and fit life form. 3*
Twenty Evocations a collection of memories of one Shaper, given as short paragraphs connected to pivotal moments of his life. 2.5*

Part II: Early Science Fiction and Fantasy while called ‘early’, it is from the 1980s
Green Days in Brunei a guy comes to Brunei, which is disconnected from global network. He sees both bright and dark sides, fells in love. As for 1985 story the description of internet everywhere is quite prescient, but the story itself is meh. 3*
Dinner in Audoghast a historic pastiche – Audoghast was a large city in Western Africa (modern Morocco) in X-XI centuries. A group of men gathered for a dinner and wise chat. They hear that a prophet is nearby and ask him to join them. 3.5* for informing me of the city
The Compassionate, the Digital a collection of speeches from the Islamic Republic of Iran, praising their (and world’s) first successful voyage of an intelligent being (Muslim AI) into the fabric of space-time. 4* for originality
Flowers of Edo late XIX Japan, a group of Japanese discuss changes brought by opening to the West, including brick buildings – flowers in the title refer to constant fires in wooden cities, breaking of the hierarchy and demons of electricity. 4.5* for showing it in terms of magic realism
The Little Magic Shop the USA, mid-1840s, a guy comes to a shop where Oberon sells magic items. Buys a youth-returning elixir. A great quote:

“We can restore youth,” said Mr. O’Beronne in sudden desperation.
“Do tell,” said James, straightening.
“We have a shipment of Dr. Heidegger’s Patent Youthing Waters,” said Mr. O’Beronne. He tugged a quagga hide from a nearby brassbound chest and dug out a square glass bottle. He uncorked it. The waters fizzed lightly, and the smell of May filled the room. “One bottle imbibed,” said Mr. O’Beronne, “restores a condition of blushing youth to man or beast.”
“Is that a fact,” said James, his brows knitting in thought. “How many teaspoons per bottle?”
“I’ve no idea,” Mr. O’Beronne admitted. “Never measured it by the spoon. Mind you, this is an old folks’ item. Fellows of your age usually go for the love-potions.”
“How much for a bottle?” said James.
“It is a bit steep,” said Mr. O’Beronne grudgingly. “The price is everything you possess.”
“Seems reasonable,” said James. “How much for two bottles?”
The guy returns each 20 years for a new bottle, living thru XIX and XX centuries, as the world changes. 4*
Our Neural Chernobyl a review of a fictional non-fic book from the mid-2050s, written by a gene hacker: Such Pioneering Hotton papers as “The Locus Coeruleus Efferent Network: What in Heck Is It There For?” and “My Grand Fun Tracing Neural Connections With Tetramethylbenzidine” established this new, relaxed, and triumphantly subjective school of scientific exploration. The gene-hacking led to boosting a number of dendrites of neurons, which spread virus-like and not only among humans. 5*
We See Things Differently a narration by Iranian journalist, who visits America. The Great Satan, the Arsenal of Imperialism, the Bankroller of Zionism, the Bastion of Neo-Colonialism. The home of Hollywood and blonde sluts in black nylon to see how a hegemon turns into third-rate country. 4*
Dori Bangs starts with a short bio of two persons – a music critic and comics writer, both died young from a flu. Then the true story starts, ‘what if’ they lived on. 3*

Part III: The Leggy Starlitz Stories stories about a mystery man, who doesn’t show on video, maybe a CIA spy, maybe just a smuggler. In present/near future, more a thriller than SF
Hollywood Kremlin the protagonist helps smuggling consumer goods to Azerbaijan SSR in the late 1980s, sees corruption, merging of party and underground economy, as well as the conflict for Nagorny Karabakh. 3*
Are You for 86? in the US the hero helps activists to deliver drugs for abortion, who are hunted down by pro-life groups. 3*
The Littlest Jackal in Finland the hero with Russian mafia and Arab terrorists, helps to brew a revolution in Aland island to make there a place for a shadow bank. Once again, I had to Google Aland… “Much work remains to be done in the way of raising revolutionary consciousness in the Ålands. But we in the Suomi Anti-Imperialist Cells will have the resources to do that political work. Victory will be ours, because the Finnish liberal-fascist state does not have the capacity to restrain a captive nation against its will. Or if they do—” She smiled bitterly. “That will demonstrate the tenuousness of the current Finnish regime and its basic failure as a European state.” 3.5*

Part IV: The Chattanooga Stories a strange mix of stories of different people from squat community of Chattanooga
Deep Eddy a guy hires a European woman bodyguard during his visit to Düsseldorf to see a Wende – a kind of creative destruction by a mob and falls in love with her. 2*
Bicycle Repairman the guy from the previous story sent a set-top box to his friend in Chattanooga. The friend repairs and paints bicycles, and it seems someone in power want to get that box. 2*
Taklamakan an old man, who was a young ‘spider’ (skyscraper climber for fun) in the previous story is to meet a spy in Taklamakan desert. The spy is dead and he with his partner discover an underground installation made by robots. 3*

Part V: Later Science Fiction and Fantasy
The Sword of Damocles a babbling narration of a Greek story, where the narrator changes styles and jumps from one story to another and back, with pieces like Take this “Once upon a time” business I just used, for instance. It starts the story all right, but it doesn’t sound very Greek, when you come right down to it. It’s more of a Grimm Brothers fairy-tale riff, kind of a kunstmarchen thing. Using it with a Greek myth is like putting a peaked Gothic spire on a Greek temple. Some people—Modernist critics—might say it’s a bad move aesthetically, and kind of bastardizes the whole artistic effort!
Of course, real hifalutin Modernist critics must have a pretty hard time of it lately. They must find life a trial. I bet they don’t watch much MTV. 3*
Maneki Neko a strange story set in Japan, where people get tasks from an AI and follow them to help (?) others. It was referenced and then replayed (I guess much better) in Nebula nominated and Hugo winning 2015 story Cat Pictures Please by Naomi Kritzer. 3*
In Paradise a boy from the US accidently meets a girl from a Islamic country, fells in love with her. They talk with the help of phone translator. They are hunted down by both her family and CIA. 2*
The Blemmye’s Strategem a fantasy set in the Middle East shortly after the early crusades. A man (Sinan, the Old Man of the Mountain and the Ayatollah of Assassins) and a woman (Hildegart, the founder of the Hospitaller Order.), who got long lives in return for services to a mysterious Blemmye (whom Pliny the Elder describes as headless beings with their faces on their chests). 3*
Kiosk in some post-Soviet country a man has a kiosk with fabricator that makes thing people want, but which soon turn into goo. He gets a proposal of a more stable version, building unbreakable stuff from graphene. 4*

[Yates Buckley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection is not “the best” of the author’s work but there are some amazing pieces and it is representative of his work though most of these are shorter sinpler world construction than in some of his novels.

I really enjoyed some, not at all others..

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bruce Sterling, one of the best practitioners of science fiction and every kind of writing that can be presented using the tropes of sci-fi, i.e. fantasy, finally allows us to get a glimpse of his entire range of literary creativity. The stories are unlike most of the contemporary science fiction that fill up the extremely boring volumes edited by gardner Dozois, or some of the other pretenders. They are fresh, fast, driven equally by plot & characters, and very tightly told. Sterling gives too hoots about propagation of politically correct themes through fiction, and concentrates on creating stuff that you are bound to remember as "one hell of a story". The contents of this massive collection are: -

(*) Introduction by Karen Joy Fowler
(*) Foreword by Bruce Sterling

Part I: The Sharper/Mechanist Stories

1) Swarm
2) Spider Rose
3) Cicada Queen
4) Sunken Gardens
5) Twenty Evocations

Part II: Early Science Fiction and Fantasy

6) Green Days in Brunei
7) Dinner in Audoghast
8) The Compassionate, the Digital
9) Flowers of Edo
10) The Little Magic Shop
11) Our Neural Cherynobyl
12) We See Things Differently
13) Dori Bangs

Part III: The Leggy Starlitz Stories

14) Hollywood Kremlin
15) Are You for 86?
16) The Littlest Jackal

Part IV: The Chattanooga Stories

17) Deep Eddy
18) Bicycle Repairman
19) Taklamakan

Part V: Later Science Fiction and Fantasy

20) The Sword of Damocles
21) Maneki Neko
22) In Paradise
23) The Blemmye's Strategem
24) Kiosk

I can try to list some of my favourties among favourites, but that would not be very good for you, the prospective reader. These are wonderful stories, and if you feel like reading them, after you have read this incompetent review, my work here would be done. Highly recommended.

[Jaime · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sterling tiene mas de 30 años escribiendo, y aun lo hace de un modo mas fresco y original que muchos autores novatos, todas las ideas que se te ocurren Sterling ya las desarrollo hace 20 años

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bruce Sterling, on his birthday April 14
A bizarre and hilarious absurdism, full of original ideas and strange insights,
vivid oddball characters filling wonderful stories, Bruce Sterling's fiction is as great as we might expect from the cofounder of cyberpunk, but it is great because it is built of technological, historical, and economic facts of our real world , disciplines of which he is a master theorist. It is as if Hegel had a sense of humor and wrote for his mates at the pub.
As a speculative historian he has a concern with power and its origins and consequences; linked to a vision of economics as the master science which determines everything else in sociopolitical and cultural terms as it coevovles with technology and material culture to shape our environment and ourselves.
Of his nonfiction and quasifictional works, all are worth reading if you have even a passing interest in technology and its impact on our lives: Spasm: Virtual Reality, Android Music and Electric Flesh, exploring the impact of Virtual Reality on our culture , the 30 page essay The Epic Struggle of the Internet of Things, the speculative design manifesto Shaping Things, Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years, and the histories The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier , and possibly Zenith, billed as a fictional story about our post 911 cybersecurity world but I think maybe not that much fiction.
After reading his short fiction collection Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling , there are the three must-read novels Holy Fire, exploring immortality and memory, the hilarious Zeitgeist, and the now classic Islands in the Net.
Schismatrix Plus, his inarguable Great Book, in which several possible posthuman civilizations collide in absurd and vividly imaginative ways, a bizarre dark satire of free market economics densely layered with startling ideas.
In Pirate Utopia, we have an all too possible near future pushing this economics-driven speculation even further. This is actually one of my favorite books, because I think its very possible we will see something like it as a reaction to the global rise of nationalist fascism, and I'm not sure if I find that idea terrifying or wonderful. For now I'm keeping my pirate flag in the wine cellar- but I do have one, in case of future need.

[Dmitry Verkhoturov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Очень крепкий сборник фантастики Брюса Стерлинга, составленный из рассказов 1976 - 2007 годо��. Как давний и преданный фанат Филипа Дика, не могу не снять шляпу перед автором - Sci-Fi, научная фантастика, здесь представлены не ради двуголовых инопланетян и облагороженного жилыми кварталами Марса (хотя не без этого), а ради обыкновенного человека, живущего своей жизнью в средневековой Африке в одном рассказе, Таджикистане восьмидесятых в другом, или посреди Солнечной системы 2386 года в третьем.
Рассказы очень сильно разделены по времени и месту происходящего, каждый из них держит довольно высокую планку качества, из интересного - очень много локальной специфики - интересно прочесть и про древнюю Сирию, и про современную Малазию, а уж описание Таджикистана последних лет СССР позволит оценить уровень проработки материала любого русскоговорящего челове��а.

Когда-то я задумал прочесть всего Брюса Стерлинга, заочно влюбившись в него по отзывам читающих друзей, некоторый из которых (привет, Дугвин!) выучили английский, чтобы прочесть Схизматрицу в оригинале. Я случайно набрёл на этот сборник и купил его в Амазоне, и кажется, что лучшего претендента для знакомства с творчеством Стерлинга не найти - малая форма и большой разброс по времени написания и сеттингам дают все карты в руки тому, кто хочет составить своё мнение об авторе. Это не самая простая для чтения книга, прийдётся поскрипеть мозгами, однако моё мнение - однозначно читать!

К сожалению, перевода сборника на текущий момент не существует - при необходимости вам прийдётся искать рассказы на русском по одному.

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wide-ranging collection of Bruce Sterling sci-fi and spec-fi short stories. I came across SUNKEN GARDENS in OMNI Magazine back in the mid-eighties and the story always stuck with me. I'm surprised at how timely and fresh these stories still seem - they have not dated badly at all. In fact a lot of Sterling's themes and topics are still fresh and current (trouble in the Middle East, Russian corruption, GMO issues and complications). I had not come across the Leggy Starlitz stories before, very enjoyable, great tone of voice, loveable rogue mercenary storylines.

[Blanka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tak tahle povídková sbírka o bezmála 560 stranách mi dala pěkně zabrat. Od povídek očekávám spíš kratší formát, čtivost a silnou pointu; tady se budovala spíš atmosféra a svět. Ale těch pár povídek, které pointu měly, mi utkvělo - vypíchla bych Pavoučí růži, Blemmyho lest a asi Kiosk. Zbytek mi popravdě spíš splývá, i když bych pořád řekla, že to bylo dobrý.
Takže za mě kvalitní kreativní SF s horší čtivostí.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unsurprisingly, I liked the two sets of linked cyberpunk tales best and the experimental pieces the least. The Shaper/Machinist pieces were interesting but did not really click for me. Same with the fantasy, except for the one set in Japan, that was rather fun.

[Melinda QV · Rating 5 out of 5]

Smart and beautiful stories

Every story a gem, some more glittery than others, but all thought-provoking and imaginative as only this master of speculative fiction can produce. Even the older stories are not dated but merely alternative. Highly recommend.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great stories; off beat and eccentric in what to me was an appealing way. A couple of dories not so much, hence four not five stars.

[Emily E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I only read "Maneki Neko" (but it doesn't have its own page on here.)

[Earl Truss · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've read some of his novels and liked them. However I thought this short fiction was mostly terrible.

[Jonathan D McMillan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection, visonary

Sterling is a treasure, this is such a great collection. My favourite stories were the Leggy ones. Such a cool character

[Marwan AbdElrahman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess u have to be an already established fan of the world of bruce sterling in order to like this book

[Ladislav Vitouš · Rating 5 out of 5]

Výborný průřez tvorbou Bruce Sterlinga. Pro mě potvrdil scou pozici cyberpunkové ikony, ale ještě výrazněji mě nadchl jako autor hard sci-fi. Pokud milujete hard sci-fi a zároveň si chvete vychutnat literárně hodnotné kousky, vřele doporučuji.

[Kristýna Obrdlíková]

Bylo to mrtě výživné, i když hlavně haldou písmenek. Pro mě autor psal hlavně o lidech - a ty charakterizoval s báječným smyslem pro detail. Myslím, že jsem ze všech postav neměla ráda ani jednu, ale jejich příběhy mě zajímaly. Sterling taky dovede psát o ničem - o jakémsi existování v čase a prostoru, ačkoli z toho nekouká žádná epika. Situační psaní. Obraz společnosti, která vyrostla na skutečných lidských charakterech. Jak by to mohlo být.

[Andrew Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of the

Best stories is right. I read more than a lot, but only in a few genres. Unfortunately it's pretty exceptional to run across stories that are really good. To me those are the ones that I recall clearly by the titles. Then the really good stuff, the best stuff, is what I recall when I am NOT reading... Several of them are in here.

[Ashkan · Rating 3 out of 5]

ژوئن ۲۰۳۷ است. لایل شویک در مغازه تعمیر دوچرخه‌اش بسته‌های پستی ادوارد درتوزاس را تحویل میگیرد که دردسرهایی دارند. کیتی کیسی، ماموری که برای پس گرفتن ویدیو رکوردر می‌آید. سناتوری که ماکش بر اون غلبه کرده و حالا معلوم نیست خودش است یا منشی رباتیکش

[Stacey Douglas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stopped reading but will return to this collection of stories.

[Erik Zhivkoplias · Rating 5 out of 5]

The great example how to break the rules and make the end of the story right. With no end at all.

[Norman Howe]

Science-Fiction

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved it, just wish it was longer!

[Sheri Williamson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Hugo winner and one of my favorite SF short stories of all time. It's been years since I last read it, and I still chuckle recalling certain passages.

[T. Justin White · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection of Sterling stories.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bruce Sterling is sublime.