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Zeitgeist
"Bruce Sterling" and "seminal" never seem to be too far apart. His name is one of the great peaks of cyberpunk, not least as the editor of Mirrorshades, and he is renowned in the online world for his work in writing The Hacker Crackdown. Neither can Sterling be accused of standing still, having initiated the Viridian movement. An effect of this may yet be to repeat H.G.Wells, where his fiction becomes a servant of his increasing interest in adjusting the social fabric.
Sterling's latest novel, Zeitgeist, is set in a recognisable 1999 and filled with recognisable twentieth-century character types: the hobo, the drug smuggler, the secret agent, the enforcer. In fact, its twentieth-century characteristics are at the heart of this novel. Sterling has written a requiem for a dirty, rotten century; a description of a planet gorging on its own filth, stumbling from the bizarre, to crisis, to senselessness. It is a portrait of a world in turmoil told from the perspective of Leggy Starlitz, a latter-day man of a thousand faces.
Starlitz previously appeared as a rather opaque figure in the short stories such as 'The Littlest Jackal.' He slips through the edges of an increasingly regulated world, "rewriting his own narrative" to suit the circumstances. At the start of the book, he manages G-7, an all-girl marketing troupe. The satire of a band created solely to move merchandise -- and this is no synonym for records -- could easily be lost when the pop charts seem to be full of such arrangements, but Starlitz is there as part of a bet. This doesn't work terribly well as a plot driver, but Starlitz's involvement with a Turkish pop promoter who wants to control the group lights the touchpaper, and the appearance of Starlitz's family breaks open the storyline. Involvement with his daughter deepens Starlitz's character and pushes him into much greater connection with the ordinary world.
The book is a whirlwind tour through the dominant images of late twentieth-century society and a slingshot into the potential of the twenty-first. A central idea is that after Y2K everything must change -- the new century will have different characteristics and we must adapt to survive. Starlitz's own close identification with the twentieth century seems destined to hold him back, whilst he sees his daughter as a natural denizen of the next era. To an extent, this is a reflection of Sterling's own Viridian manifesto, contrasting the dark heart of the Atomic age with the new, clear era in front of us, which will be populated by people for whom 1999 will only ever be history. His message of hope is that we can transform ourselves, but his use of a literal interpretation results in a centrepiece for the book which sounds very much as if Sokal's application of pseudo-science is accepted as reality. This is as close as the book comes to science fiction -- it is more likely to find itself marked "magic realism," or possibly even "literature."
Though slow to start, Zeitgeist has a lot to offer -- locations from Cyprus to Hawaii and Istanbul to Colorado, a glancing blow from (at?) ECHELON, and discussions on the nature of pop and the malleability of reality. Setting the book in our own world and time gives it a curious edge for an SF reader reading an SF writer -- it is framed by events recognisable from news broadcasts but already part of history. The transformations in this book must be personal, or located at the edges of consensus reality, rather than a complete inversion of society. The message floats at or near the surface and the book concentrates significantly on its own style. It is sometimes overly clever but remains taut, interesting and, occasionally, amazing. As such, Zeitgeist catches the ghost of that remarkable century we have just escaped from.
You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.
Cyberpunk tends to have that full-speed-ahead, throw-the-random-facts-at-you, technique that you either love or hate. But when it's set in the future, it's a lot easier, because you get to make up the facts.
In Zeitgeist you keep wondering--is this really true? Is that what Turkish Cypriot is like? What's real, what isn't? And then every once in a while you come across yet another obscure and fascinating view of something that you happen to know about it, and damned if he didn't get it right. I read my (Iranian) wife the section on the Las Irangeles pop scene and we both cracked up, because it was dead on. And likewise, the descriptions of Hawaii, where I just vacationed.
When someone sets a story in the recent past, full of so much fascinating stuff that you can't tell the fact from the fiction, you know they've got their writing act together, and this book definitely has got it.
The central character of Zeitgeist , Leggy Starlitz, also appears in two short stories in Globalhead (Hollywood Kremlin and Are You For 86?) and one in A Good Old-Fashioned Future (The Littlest Jackal). If you hate amazon, don't follow those links.
Just last night, I finished re-reading The Difference Engine, that Sterling co-wrote with Bill Gibson.
Earlier yesterday, I had a minor social-political epiphany, which manifested itself as a (horribly spelled) slashdot post
And now, I find this speech by M. Stirling which ties the two together.
Mostly.
Innit funny how the world works?
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Another Bruce Sterling initiative on-line is the Dead Media Project, qv. It's an attempt to write "a naturalist's field guide for the communications paleontologist." Worth taking a look.