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The Caryatids: A Novel
Alongside William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling stands at the forefront of a select group of writers whose pitch-perfect grasp of the cultural and scientific zeitgeist endows their works of speculative near-future fiction with uncanny verisimilitude. To read a novel by Sterling is to receive a dispatch from a time traveler. Now, with The Caryatids, Sterling has written a stunning testament of faith in the power of human intellect, creativity, and spirit to overcome any obstacle–even the obstacles we carry inside ourselves. The world of 2060 is divided into three spheres of influence, each fighting with the others over the resources of fallen nations and an environment degraded almost to the point of no return. There is the Dispensation, centered in Los Angeles, where entertainment and capitalism have fused with the highest of high-tech. There is the Acquis, a Green-centered collective that uses invasive neurological technology to create a networked utopia. And there is China, the sole surviving nation-state, a dinosaur that has prospered only by pitilessly pruning its own population. Products of this monstrous world, the daughters of a monstrous mother, and–according to some–monsters themselves, are the the four surviving female clones of a mad Balkan genius and wanted war criminal now ensconced, safely beyond extradition, on an orbiting space station. Radmila is a Dispensation star determined to forget her past by building a glittering, impregnable future. Vera is an Acquis functionary dedicated to reclaiming their home, the Croatian island of Mljet, from catastrophic pollution. Sonja is a medical specialist in China renowned for selflessly risking herself to help others. And Biserka is a one-woman terrorist network. The four “sisters” are united only by their hatred for their “mother”–and for one another. When evidence surfaces of a coming environmental cataclysm, the Dispensation sends its greatest statesman–or salesman–John Montgomery Montalban, husband of Radmila, and lover of Vera and Sonja, to gather the Caryatids together in an audacious plan to save the world.
306 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
35 people are currently reading
796 people want to read
About the author
Bruce Sterling
356 books1,201 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 - 30 of 109 reviews
February 17, 2010
“Brain candy” – I had Presidents’ Day off this year – i.e., a three-day weekend – and was looking forward to not thinking too much while reading a couple of SF I’d picked up from the library. I’d just come off of reading some pretty weighty tomes about religion and a couple of novels that deserved serious attention and my brain needed the rest. I like Sterling’s early work, especially the stories and novels set in the universe of the Mechanist/Shaper cultures. I haven’t seen anything recently of his that I was interested in but I was hoping that this novel would pass an enjoyable afternoon of mental somnolence.
The Caryatids - It’s 2065 and Earth is attempting to recover from the excesses of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Most nation-states have fallen by the wayside (with the exception of China) and the world is divided between two states of mind (rather than states of nation): The Dispensation, which is centered round Los Angeles and is a parodic extrapolation of Hollywood’s entertainment culture, and the Acquis, centered in Europe and focused on restoring the planet’s habitats. Our story is centered round “the Caryatids,” originally seven sisters and one brother cloned from the widow of a Balkan dictator (herself something of a Lady Macbeth, though we never see her or get any real idea of her atrocities before her orbital St. Helena is fried by a solar flare). At the time our story opens, only four of the girls survive and their brother, George, an up-and-coming businessman in Vienna. Vera works with the Acquis on the island where she was born, Mljet, restoring it. Radmila is a major star in Los Angeles and married to one of the Dispensation’s premier diplomats and troubleshooters, John Montalban. Sonya is a Chinese soldier. And Biserka, the other surviving sister, is a sociopathic terrorist, who kidnaps Radmila and attempts to take her place.
Meh…I may just be losing (or have lost) my interest in this particular flavor of the SF genre. I still like particular authors – Walter Jon Williams, Alastair Reynolds, Tony Daniel, for example – but I couldn’t muster much interest in this story. I didn’t care for nor was interested in any character, there wasn’t any new technology on display, and Sterling’s extrapolations of present events fell flat.
If you’re a Sterling or cyberpunk fan (post-cyberpunk? – I’m not up on what the latest genre this type of story falls into), you’ll probably like the novel.
The Caryatids - It’s 2065 and Earth is attempting to recover from the excesses of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Most nation-states have fallen by the wayside (with the exception of China) and the world is divided between two states of mind (rather than states of nation): The Dispensation, which is centered round Los Angeles and is a parodic extrapolation of Hollywood’s entertainment culture, and the Acquis, centered in Europe and focused on restoring the planet’s habitats. Our story is centered round “the Caryatids,” originally seven sisters and one brother cloned from the widow of a Balkan dictator (herself something of a Lady Macbeth, though we never see her or get any real idea of her atrocities before her orbital St. Helena is fried by a solar flare). At the time our story opens, only four of the girls survive and their brother, George, an up-and-coming businessman in Vienna. Vera works with the Acquis on the island where she was born, Mljet, restoring it. Radmila is a major star in Los Angeles and married to one of the Dispensation’s premier diplomats and troubleshooters, John Montalban. Sonya is a Chinese soldier. And Biserka, the other surviving sister, is a sociopathic terrorist, who kidnaps Radmila and attempts to take her place.
Meh…I may just be losing (or have lost) my interest in this particular flavor of the SF genre. I still like particular authors – Walter Jon Williams, Alastair Reynolds, Tony Daniel, for example – but I couldn’t muster much interest in this story. I didn’t care for nor was interested in any character, there wasn’t any new technology on display, and Sterling’s extrapolations of present events fell flat.
If you’re a Sterling or cyberpunk fan (post-cyberpunk? – I’m not up on what the latest genre this type of story falls into), you’ll probably like the novel.
July 21, 2009
I really liked this book, after a slow start. Though I notice that most books I have read lately do not get going until 60-100 pages in.
What the other reviewers say here has merit-- the book is choppy, the main characters not so sympathetic, the ending weak or just not fleshed out enough, with either threads dangling or too hard to figure out, the dialogue very manifesto-like, the future rather bleak.
Not Sterling's best? That's fair to say. I'd recommend Distraction. But this is far superior to his next most recent Zenith Angle, and I enjoyed it more than Holy Fire or Islands in the Net.
This book also has the virtue of not being ridiculously overlong and under-edited, which is a true rarity these days.
What the book really has to offer are LOTS of different competing post catastrophe high technology alternate economy social systems all mixed together crazily, with a different take on clone psychology. The weak ending in this case conceals strength-- the book is not about telling how it's all going to wind up in the end, but depicting an era of rebuilding, a period of instability, turning some of our current concepts on their head, and saying that things will go on, the human race will continue, things are just going to be strange.
But yeah, read as a traditional novel of plot and protagonist and tidy ending it falls short.
What the other reviewers say here has merit-- the book is choppy, the main characters not so sympathetic, the ending weak or just not fleshed out enough, with either threads dangling or too hard to figure out, the dialogue very manifesto-like, the future rather bleak.
Not Sterling's best? That's fair to say. I'd recommend Distraction. But this is far superior to his next most recent Zenith Angle, and I enjoyed it more than Holy Fire or Islands in the Net.
This book also has the virtue of not being ridiculously overlong and under-edited, which is a true rarity these days.
What the book really has to offer are LOTS of different competing post catastrophe high technology alternate economy social systems all mixed together crazily, with a different take on clone psychology. The weak ending in this case conceals strength-- the book is not about telling how it's all going to wind up in the end, but depicting an era of rebuilding, a period of instability, turning some of our current concepts on their head, and saying that things will go on, the human race will continue, things are just going to be strange.
But yeah, read as a traditional novel of plot and protagonist and tidy ending it falls short.
April 29, 2010
Bruce Sterling, like the statues referred to in the title of “The Caryatids” (Del Rey, $25, 297 pages), has broken under the pressure of expectations – at least in terms of producing quality science fiction.
Sterling is a competent writer, and he had some great moments way back when cyberpunk was new in the world, but his novels have declined into what reads like deadline-meeting efforts without much substance. “The Caryatids” is no exception, as the setup is fine, but then Sterling goes absolutely nowhere with it, leaving the characters, and reader, completely at loose ends. Despite both an epilog and an afterword, “The Caryatids” spins into pointlessness because Sterling didn’t take the time to construct a meaningful narrative.
There are some nice ideas, and some skilled writing, but “The Caryatids” is a waste of money, even for the most devoted Sterling fans.
Sterling is a competent writer, and he had some great moments way back when cyberpunk was new in the world, but his novels have declined into what reads like deadline-meeting efforts without much substance. “The Caryatids” is no exception, as the setup is fine, but then Sterling goes absolutely nowhere with it, leaving the characters, and reader, completely at loose ends. Despite both an epilog and an afterword, “The Caryatids” spins into pointlessness because Sterling didn’t take the time to construct a meaningful narrative.
There are some nice ideas, and some skilled writing, but “The Caryatids” is a waste of money, even for the most devoted Sterling fans.
July 26, 2016
Man-made ecological disasters, reality stardom run amok, super-rich businessmen empowered to make world-changing decisions . . . No, it's not the newest on the NYT non-fiction list, it's a scifi novel that is all about now. Holding up a near-future glass, Sterling's novel reflects back to the reader a vision of our current times. With wry wit and complex characters, the author draws a completely believable picture of what the world could become in a few short decades. What makes this picture different from a lot of scifi is that it is not so much about whiz-bang technological advances (although there is some of that) as it is about the social and governmental evolution of the world. This future world is described in fairly complete detail, with the ideas coming so furiously fast that one sentence could become an entire book. For instance, concepts such as nuking the Himalayas to solve a fresh water crisis, or preserving the culture of the world through theme parks, or using surveillance to solve world hunger, are dashed off as mere sidelines to the main action. Thinly veiled commentary on everything from NeoCons to Greenpeace to Communism and Consumerism is couched in accessible and often funny language. Any author who can write a character who can say "Well, just take it from me, the theme-park business can be a very steady, long-term earner, as long as it's got a solid heritage connection and a unique value proposition" with a straight face is an author from whom I want to read more.
September 11, 2009
Fail.
Interesting in concept, but failed in execution. Classic sci-fi writing issue where the ideas overshadowed the people and character development was extremely weak. I skimmed the last third of the book, just to finish it.
Interesting in concept, but failed in execution. Classic sci-fi writing issue where the ideas overshadowed the people and character development was extremely weak. I skimmed the last third of the book, just to finish it.
May 23, 2012
Bruce Sterling is the 3rd in my triumvirate of distopian, cyber-punk-ish authors, the others being William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. While I've read most if not all of his work he's never really grabbed me by the collar and shaken my mind as the other two have. Nonetheless, he has some merit.
This particular work is full of Big Ideas, as others have mentioned, but those ideas are presented in a way that distracts from the point. Perhaps the style is intended to reflect the condition of Sterling's world of 2060 - broken, unsettled, randomly energetic, and divided into three main camps that are not exactly mutually antagonist but are not entirely mutually neutral either. That makes for a certain incoherence that distracts from the story.
Still, those Big Ideas are really Big Ideas with, perhaps, some basis in his self-extinguishing Viridian Design movement. It's almost (almost,mind you) impossible to argue with an ecological disaster in the near future. It's almost impossible to argue with a political and economic world system teetering on the brink of implosion. What genetic experiments will go awry in the future is anyone's guess but go awry they will as have nearly all of them in the past.
So, in sum, Big Ideas presented in a skittering, jump-cut manner makes for a work that is difficult to love. Ah well . . . there's always a re-read of Ananthem.
This particular work is full of Big Ideas, as others have mentioned, but those ideas are presented in a way that distracts from the point. Perhaps the style is intended to reflect the condition of Sterling's world of 2060 - broken, unsettled, randomly energetic, and divided into three main camps that are not exactly mutually antagonist but are not entirely mutually neutral either. That makes for a certain incoherence that distracts from the story.
Still, those Big Ideas are really Big Ideas with, perhaps, some basis in his self-extinguishing Viridian Design movement. It's almost (almost,mind you) impossible to argue with an ecological disaster in the near future. It's almost impossible to argue with a political and economic world system teetering on the brink of implosion. What genetic experiments will go awry in the future is anyone's guess but go awry they will as have nearly all of them in the past.
So, in sum, Big Ideas presented in a skittering, jump-cut manner makes for a work that is difficult to love. Ah well . . . there's always a re-read of Ananthem.
May 8, 2009
all the usual Sterling goodness, which I read as an ode to Southern Slav women
September 27, 2019
One of those sloppy projects where the author has an idea and hasn’t any clue, at all, about how to write it in a clear and present way,
What the hell is going on for 90% of this book? No idea at all! Bunch of dumb gibberish, obtuse actions, vague concepts the author presumes you understand.
Whatever. This is some eco-punk, climate-scare apocalypse book; dime a dozen these days, and any other must be at least more readable than this dump.
It’s a 200 page book also, and it took me 3 months to. Get through this. I read a book every two days; this one is just so boring, so unconvincing, so meaningless that time after time I chose to read a new book instead of go back to this.
Skip!
What the hell is going on for 90% of this book? No idea at all! Bunch of dumb gibberish, obtuse actions, vague concepts the author presumes you understand.
Whatever. This is some eco-punk, climate-scare apocalypse book; dime a dozen these days, and any other must be at least more readable than this dump.
It’s a 200 page book also, and it took me 3 months to. Get through this. I read a book every two days; this one is just so boring, so unconvincing, so meaningless that time after time I chose to read a new book instead of go back to this.
Skip!
March 29, 2012
I enjoyed this book right up until the end, when it kicked me in the shins and laughed in my face.
Bruce Sterling is a good writer--the prose is excellent at times, and there are a lot of clever and wry observations. The dialogue can get a little weird (and exclamation-point heavy) but it is pretty good most of the time. Sterling's ravaged future earth is fascinating and well-realized. The characters are all crazy--every one of them--but it fits, because their world has gone completely off the rails.
Unfortunately, the plot is a mess. My friend--the bastard who handed me this book saying I should read it--did not warn me that the plot is as wombly as everything else in the book. Maybe it's supposed to be a train wreck like the rest of it, form fitting function, but I didn't like it.
The random events described in the book are only tenuously tied together. And the epilogue is horseshit. I imagined Sterling's editor standing over him with a gleaming battle axe, threatening to chop off his nuts if he didn't make an attempt to at least tie things up. So he did. Badly.
I'd recommend this book anyway. It's fun, just don't expect things to follow a traditional plot.
Bruce Sterling is a good writer--the prose is excellent at times, and there are a lot of clever and wry observations. The dialogue can get a little weird (and exclamation-point heavy) but it is pretty good most of the time. Sterling's ravaged future earth is fascinating and well-realized. The characters are all crazy--every one of them--but it fits, because their world has gone completely off the rails.
Unfortunately, the plot is a mess. My friend--the bastard who handed me this book saying I should read it--did not warn me that the plot is as wombly as everything else in the book. Maybe it's supposed to be a train wreck like the rest of it, form fitting function, but I didn't like it.
The random events described in the book are only tenuously tied together. And the epilogue is horseshit. I imagined Sterling's editor standing over him with a gleaming battle axe, threatening to chop off his nuts if he didn't make an attempt to at least tie things up. So he did. Badly.
I'd recommend this book anyway. It's fun, just don't expect things to follow a traditional plot.
August 18, 2010
Hopelessly muddled hash of dull, inconsistent, irritating characters, a plodding storyline that meanders in a disjointed, stuttering pace, and a conclusion that dribbles to its end. I have enjoyed a lot of Bruce Sterling's other books. This one left me cold, and was a chore to finish.
March 29, 2009
I got to page 55 and gave up. I'm sure this is a good book and there are people out there who would really like it, but it's not grabbing my interest.
October 16, 2009
Four ladies screwing around saying NO! Bad for the environment! Then a horrible, bland ending that makes no sense at all.
November 28, 2018
“The Caryatids,” by Bruce Sterling (Del Ray, 2000). In a near future where most of the world has been ravaged by climate change and other environmental disasters. There are three warring powers: The Dispensation, purely capitalist, based in the remnants of Los Angeles; the Acquis, a green collective that uses invasive neurogical technology to create a networked utopia; and China. In this world, a mad scientist created seven cloned sisters, and scattered them around the world. Three have already been killed; the remaining four, in the different powers, know of and hate each other. The story starts well: Vera works with divers who are mining toxic poisons deep in the rock around the Croatian island of Mljet. She is constantly aware of everything happening, because of the technology in her brain. She learns of Radmila, who has become a technological entertainment superstar; Sonja is a medical specialist in China renowned for risking herself for others; Biserka is a one-woman wrecking machine. They are all full of passion, and often rage at each other and their crazy mother, safe in an orbiting habitat. They are Caryatids, holding the world on their heads. Gradually the reader becomes aware that this is not some alien planet, but our own earth in a not-too-distant dystopia. They think they can ultimately rescue the planet. I enjoyed it.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...
October 27, 2019
I did not finish the book. I stopped around 2/3 (audio). There was not enough dramatic arc to keep me interested. There are a lot of descriptions of the future world (some of them, like augmented reality, have aged badly) which can be interesting for a while, but not much "happened".
Also, the main characters are sisters and they hate each other (this is explained early in the book), but the reason of this hate was not clear, at least to me.
So I gave up.
I compare this with William Gibson and notably Count Zero, where the descriptions of the future are also great but only used as a support for a nail-biting arc.
Also, the main characters are sisters and they hate each other (this is explained early in the book), but the reason of this hate was not clear, at least to me.
So I gave up.
I compare this with William Gibson and notably Count Zero, where the descriptions of the future are also great but only used as a support for a nail-biting arc.
September 15, 2019
Las cariátidas son las estatuas de chicas con los brazos en alto, como si soportarán el peso del edificio. En la novela son 7 clones de una war lord, quien en su inmenso ego, decide crearlas para salvar al mundo de la catástrofe ecológica.
SPOILER: No lo logran.
Las novelas de Sterling son pobres en trama y ricas en contenido e ideas, deschavetadas, juguetonas, el fin de la civilización como la conocemos, chicos. Hacia allá vamos y no hay freno. ¿Será el canto del cisne o algo nuevo y extraño y emocionante saldrá arrastrándose entre los escombros?
Wer weiß? Who knows? ¿Quién sabe?
SPOILER: No lo logran.
Las novelas de Sterling son pobres en trama y ricas en contenido e ideas, deschavetadas, juguetonas, el fin de la civilización como la conocemos, chicos. Hacia allá vamos y no hay freno. ¿Será el canto del cisne o algo nuevo y extraño y emocionante saldrá arrastrándose entre los escombros?
Wer weiß? Who knows? ¿Quién sabe?
May 5, 2019
There were a ton of great big ideas in this book, but the story wrapped around them was hard to follow. Each section was difficult to get invested in, and then it switched perspective to a new character. I was never quite sold on any of the characters by the time their section was done, and even with the book completely finished I still have a lot of unanswered questions. I feel like I could really love a TV or film adaptation, but as it stands I feel ambivalent about this one.
December 13, 2018
Eh, this book just felt like such a SLOG for me. It took me forever to get through it, and nothing about it was enjoyable? It wasn't terribly written, but I also didn't find myself marveling at the prose at any point. Also, for a book where so much happens, it felt like nothing never really happened.
February 5, 2024
"Women are basically men, yeah? But with feelings... and they cry a lot and sometimes have fits, right? Great! And I'm pretty sure they like to be sister wives... I can definitely write women. This will be easy!"
July 25, 2017
Five word review: Not my cup of tea
April 20, 2021
Some interesting ideas on climate change and its impacts. Story keeps your interest, but at the end I could not see the author's point.
December 7, 2023
Overall I found this to be a bit confusing.
December 14, 2024
Eh, so so.
January 4, 2025
New Year New Book
What a great start to a new year.Looking forward to many fantastic reads. When you start with a home run, makes one think it’s going to be a stellar year.
What a great start to a new year.Looking forward to many fantastic reads. When you start with a home run, makes one think it’s going to be a stellar year.
April 14, 2009
Sterling had me at the title - I was eager to pick up this book. But... it's disjointed. Jittery. Fragmented. And far too given to exclamation marks in dialog. And grim. Did I mention grim?
There's nothing wrong with the future-building, unfortunately. The outlines of Sterling's scenario are all too plausible; climate change has drowned and dislocated 21st-Century civilization until there are no countries left. Well, there's one - China still has boundaries, and about half of its population, by dint of ever-more-draconian efforts. The rest of the world, though, is just trying to hang together under the red, gray, brown and black dust clouds that have replaced the sky.
The two other major powers are transnational in nature. The Acquis are environmentally-conscious techno-peasants who use advanced tools to try to rebuild the shattered parts of nature, and use 'everyware' to monitor and enforce consistency of viewpoint on their members. The Dispensation are cheerful anarchic capitalists who see profit in pushing through the current bad times to a glorious high-tech future. Kinda. The Dispensation and the Acquis are in "coopetition" which is mostly friendly but at times seems indistinguishable from outright war. It's difficult, if not impossible, to tell from the book alone where Sterling's sympathies might lie between the Acquis and the Dispensation; both are abhorrent to the outside eye but both are plausible inspirations for their members' loyalty.
Of course, humanity has not put aside all of its ethnic and nationalistic impulses, either. If nothing else, it's still fun to devastate Los Angeles in new and interesting ways, just as it has been all along; Sterling indulges in an entertaining catalogue of the neighborhoods that've turned into slums (Beverly Hills, Malibu) vs. those that are up-and-coming.
I also appreciated his attempts to convey the fragmentation that had occurred - as one of his characters explicitly points out, things never fall apart all at once; there are always enclaves and pockets of surviving wealth and placidity even in the midst of what may look like total anarchy. Sterling also puts his global perspective to good use, setting parts of the story on an island in the Adriatic, in L.A., and in Mongolia.
But all this razzle-dazzle is background, and distracting background at that. His focus is on the surviving siblings of a septuple clone family raised in secret to be superior beings who would take over the world. Kinda. These are the Caryatids of the title, born to hold up the world, and each has broken in her or his own way.
Sterling shows each of the surviving Caryatids in turn, switching viewpoints to show their individual perspectives with passionate intensity. And they are, without doubt, individuals - Sterling doesn't fall into the trap of thinking of clones as being some sort of identical xerographic copies. They're genetically identical, sure, but their experiences, which diverged rapidly once their island fortress was breached, make Vera, Sonya, Radmila, and Biserka into radically different people.
And as for how Sterling manages to weave all these threads together... Well, he doesn't quite succeed. There's just too much going on here - The Caryatids often feels rushed, as Sterling tries to convey decades of detailed social, technological and geographical change in a scant number of pages. This novel could have been twice as long and, perhaps, better for it. But it is still a book full of wonders, even if it isn't an unequivocally wonderful book.
There's nothing wrong with the future-building, unfortunately. The outlines of Sterling's scenario are all too plausible; climate change has drowned and dislocated 21st-Century civilization until there are no countries left. Well, there's one - China still has boundaries, and about half of its population, by dint of ever-more-draconian efforts. The rest of the world, though, is just trying to hang together under the red, gray, brown and black dust clouds that have replaced the sky.
The two other major powers are transnational in nature. The Acquis are environmentally-conscious techno-peasants who use advanced tools to try to rebuild the shattered parts of nature, and use 'everyware' to monitor and enforce consistency of viewpoint on their members. The Dispensation are cheerful anarchic capitalists who see profit in pushing through the current bad times to a glorious high-tech future. Kinda. The Dispensation and the Acquis are in "coopetition" which is mostly friendly but at times seems indistinguishable from outright war. It's difficult, if not impossible, to tell from the book alone where Sterling's sympathies might lie between the Acquis and the Dispensation; both are abhorrent to the outside eye but both are plausible inspirations for their members' loyalty.
Of course, humanity has not put aside all of its ethnic and nationalistic impulses, either. If nothing else, it's still fun to devastate Los Angeles in new and interesting ways, just as it has been all along; Sterling indulges in an entertaining catalogue of the neighborhoods that've turned into slums (Beverly Hills, Malibu) vs. those that are up-and-coming.
I also appreciated his attempts to convey the fragmentation that had occurred - as one of his characters explicitly points out, things never fall apart all at once; there are always enclaves and pockets of surviving wealth and placidity even in the midst of what may look like total anarchy. Sterling also puts his global perspective to good use, setting parts of the story on an island in the Adriatic, in L.A., and in Mongolia.
But all this razzle-dazzle is background, and distracting background at that. His focus is on the surviving siblings of a septuple clone family raised in secret to be superior beings who would take over the world. Kinda. These are the Caryatids of the title, born to hold up the world, and each has broken in her or his own way.
Sterling shows each of the surviving Caryatids in turn, switching viewpoints to show their individual perspectives with passionate intensity. And they are, without doubt, individuals - Sterling doesn't fall into the trap of thinking of clones as being some sort of identical xerographic copies. They're genetically identical, sure, but their experiences, which diverged rapidly once their island fortress was breached, make Vera, Sonya, Radmila, and Biserka into radically different people.
And as for how Sterling manages to weave all these threads together... Well, he doesn't quite succeed. There's just too much going on here - The Caryatids often feels rushed, as Sterling tries to convey decades of detailed social, technological and geographical change in a scant number of pages. This novel could have been twice as long and, perhaps, better for it. But it is still a book full of wonders, even if it isn't an unequivocally wonderful book.
August 10, 2011
The best scifi book by Sterling that I've read yet. I believe it is set in the 2060s, after a global environmental disaster destroys the economy and most nation-states. The world is not subdivided into three main categories: The Dispensation, The Acquis, and China. The Dispensation is a network based out of Los Angeles (the capital of the world, primary refugee city) and focuses on business and profits. The entertainment sector is still dominant however it revolves around live stage performances and short films rather than massive Blockbuster hits. Actors are a small yet vital part of a digital set/environment. Kinetics are heavily incorporated into elaborate costumes - set design is digitally based and laser controlled. It reminds me of a performance I saw in Vegas of the Blue Man group - how they incorporated sound and lighting and digital projections in the show. The Acquis are project based restoration group. They focus primarily on restoring destroys habitats and cultures. At project base sites, they set up Attention camps that train workers how to use neural gear that reads their brain waves and exoskeletal body suits that empower mere humans to replace heavy construction equipment. They seek to remove isolated and secretive technologies in an attempt to restore a sense of authenticity and transparency to humans and business. The Dispensation and Acquis are often at odds with one another - the Acquis cleaning up the wistful yet abandoned projects of the Dispensation. The Dispensation is always pushing against the limitations Acquis officers try so hard to enforce. The third main category introduced in the book is China - the only surviving nation-state. China maintained its control on the shoulders of it's massive population. Millions of Chinese people have died at the hands of their own government as they are mere pawns in the hands of the officials. The country has been plagued by four sets of dust - named by the general colors that carried with them. Black, yellow... (I can't remember the others). Each relate to the consequences of a certain catastrophe embraced at one time by the Chinese. Toxins, pollution, acid rains, desert expansion, severe famine and drought... Rather than reflect on the mistakes of the past, China stubbornly charges into the future. The remaining cities are protected in bubbles that are carbon neural or carbon zero. They have sub-bubble experiments that focus on establishing life on Mars. They invest heavily in space travel and the building of space launch pads and refuges. To take it even one step further, China has cloned all of it's top officials and hidden them deep within the desert - to preserve their rule far beyond death.
Each of these three groups are connected through the lives of a set of clones - identical in genes, DNA, and programming, yet so very different in personality and character. I like how Sterling did bring some sense of closure to the story - though the book hints at a second environmental catastrophe far greater than the first - and not caused by human interactions in any way. I like seeing how technology augmented each environment and character.
Each of these three groups are connected through the lives of a set of clones - identical in genes, DNA, and programming, yet so very different in personality and character. I like how Sterling did bring some sense of closure to the story - though the book hints at a second environmental catastrophe far greater than the first - and not caused by human interactions in any way. I like seeing how technology augmented each environment and character.
May 12, 2015
The Caryatids: So... I'm still thinking "what?" the characters seem a little retarded.. It's making me think of Paranoia -where each successive clone is a bit dumber than the last. the world so far seems post literate and peopled by brainwashed floozies controlled by pre-programmed self loathing.
Why do the sisters hate each other so much? What was with the obsessive fear of non-manmade global catastrophe? Was the weird stilted dialogue just supposed to reflect the sisters nationality?
I suspect I might have missed an important point, but so did all the other reviewers I read.
I do like the ideas in this novel, and would like to further explore the tech, and the history of the world and the characters.. It felt like picking up the third novel of a series without having read the first two, but it's possible that was intentional too. Perhaps the reader isnt meant to understand or identify with the sisters to show how different they are from normal people, but in that case, why did the people love them all so much individually? And in any case I can't see how being clones would make them so different, though maybe being raised in a sensor web might do that... We're they cyborgs?
I think it's a plausible vision of a future world, and it could have been totally immersive and quite scary, except that there were too many questions unanswered, and the time spent wondering where this was all heading kept breaking the spell.
Perhaps there will be a prequel to this one that gives us the background and the details to make sense of it.
Why do the sisters hate each other so much? What was with the obsessive fear of non-manmade global catastrophe? Was the weird stilted dialogue just supposed to reflect the sisters nationality?
I suspect I might have missed an important point, but so did all the other reviewers I read.
I do like the ideas in this novel, and would like to further explore the tech, and the history of the world and the characters.. It felt like picking up the third novel of a series without having read the first two, but it's possible that was intentional too. Perhaps the reader isnt meant to understand or identify with the sisters to show how different they are from normal people, but in that case, why did the people love them all so much individually? And in any case I can't see how being clones would make them so different, though maybe being raised in a sensor web might do that... We're they cyborgs?
I think it's a plausible vision of a future world, and it could have been totally immersive and quite scary, except that there were too many questions unanswered, and the time spent wondering where this was all heading kept breaking the spell.
Perhaps there will be a prequel to this one that gives us the background and the details to make sense of it.
July 27, 2016
I like and dislike this book. As a narrative, I dislike it. There isn't really a plot, though for the first section it sure seems like there will be one. This is a book about its characters, and what brings them together...which isn't so much the events going on in the story, the pseudo plots we're given, as it is John Mary Sue Montalban. YMMV, but I hated this guy from the introduction. Thought I was supposed to, but I suppose not. Regardless, his presence is tolerable and seems like it may be going somewhere interesting until the last third of the book. Not to spoil it, but of the four sisters, it only makes sense for two to be acting how they are acting, given the details the story lays on us by the end. One of those is the only sister who isn't examined in detail (why did this book have only three sections?). One of the ones who really demands more explanation was oriented the exact opposite way when her chapter ended.
As a narrative, this book is kind of terrible. As an exploration of a possible future, it isn't. I am thinking of Jules Verne's In The Year 2889, or AC Clarke's 3001. I see why Libertarians like this book, as it depicts a future without nation states. But it also paints a pretty grim picture of anarcho-capitalism, so they must be pretty desperate. Anyway, if you go into this book wanting a plot or characters that make sense, or for any seeds planted early on to bear fruit by the end, forget it. If you want a somewhat wanky bit of futurism, by all means read The Caryatids.
As a narrative, this book is kind of terrible. As an exploration of a possible future, it isn't. I am thinking of Jules Verne's In The Year 2889, or AC Clarke's 3001. I see why Libertarians like this book, as it depicts a future without nation states. But it also paints a pretty grim picture of anarcho-capitalism, so they must be pretty desperate. Anyway, if you go into this book wanting a plot or characters that make sense, or for any seeds planted early on to bear fruit by the end, forget it. If you want a somewhat wanky bit of futurism, by all means read The Caryatids.
August 13, 2012
(8/10) It's almost hard to know where to start with The Caryatids -- it's a big messy novel, overflowing with ideas and characters, and one could quickly get lost in plot recap. Bruce Sterling offers up a vision of a post-apocalyptic, almost post-governmental future, set in a ruined but not wothless world.
The titular Caryatids, a set of identical clones, are the viewpoint characters that allow us to see the different aspects of this society, but they're also more than that. Each character is developed enough that by the end of her section you're nodding along about how all of the others are terrible people. Their status as clones also suggests a kind of perfect-world nature-versus-nurture experiment: the clones, in all of their messed-up glory, reflect their different cultures perfectly.
Like I said, it's big and messy, with some of the ideas not fully thought out and a lot of overly-cute or overly-dramatic writing. But it's also pretty damn interesting. If you're the type of science-fiction fan who babbles on and on about what the world's going to be like in a hundred years, you might like a nice chat with Bruce Sterling.
The titular Caryatids, a set of identical clones, are the viewpoint characters that allow us to see the different aspects of this society, but they're also more than that. Each character is developed enough that by the end of her section you're nodding along about how all of the others are terrible people. Their status as clones also suggests a kind of perfect-world nature-versus-nurture experiment: the clones, in all of their messed-up glory, reflect their different cultures perfectly.
Like I said, it's big and messy, with some of the ideas not fully thought out and a lot of overly-cute or overly-dramatic writing. But it's also pretty damn interesting. If you're the type of science-fiction fan who babbles on and on about what the world's going to be like in a hundred years, you might like a nice chat with Bruce Sterling.
July 6, 2010
Overall I find myself glad that I'm finished with the story and not unglad that I read it. It would be difficult to say that I enjoyed this book though. The story, even after the afterword of the novel attempts to frame it in a certain way is simply disjointed and feels very much unfinished. The characters are all feel like paper dolls being moved around in some charade of reality. Many reviews discuss the big ideas contained in this novel. I for one, found nothing particularly new in this novel. Perhaps some interpretations of older ideas were tweaked but nothing really made me stop and think about them. And even the namesakes of the story, the 3/7 clone sisters who are known only at the end as the Caryatids, seem to be nearly forced into their positions of importance. This was likely intentional but it just broke me away from the story more. Its set in an arguably plausible eco-disaster of a future of which we know and learn little and while being terribly important to the people seems more like a plot-point to myself.
November 27, 2023
With the world undergoing disastrous disintegration from man-made causes, who better to bring together the man-made solutions than three female clones as damaged and traumatised and dysfunctional as the world they're supposed to save? Most of their sisters are dead, their mother/sister is out of reach from the forces of law and order in orbit and the four surviving clones are scattered over the world, engaged in various morally dubious projects of reclamation, amelioration, sterilisation and terrorism. One man sets out to bring them together and hopes by doing so to mend the ideological divisions hampering the task of global salvation.
Well, I liked it. Sterling is too optimistic to let the world die screaming, but too much of a realist to make survival easy or cost free. The clones are like a fractured human psyche, half-mad and self-hating, to the extent that getting anything useful other than tragedy and heartbreak out of them seems impossible. Whether they succeed, and whether Sterling succeeds, is for the reader to decide.
Well, I liked it. Sterling is too optimistic to let the world die screaming, but too much of a realist to make survival easy or cost free. The clones are like a fractured human psyche, half-mad and self-hating, to the extent that getting anything useful other than tragedy and heartbreak out of them seems impossible. Whether they succeed, and whether Sterling succeeds, is for the reader to decide.
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