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The Zenith Angle
Full disclosure forces me to mention that the publisher sent me an advance copy in the hope that I'd write a cover blurb it -- and I did. I'm really impressed. To sum it up in a single sentence suitable for a dustjacket slot, Bruce has written a Catch-22 for the Slashdot generation: a wry, cynical, informed peek at the paranoid world of the post-9/11 cyberspookerati that shines a bright light on the hidden arsenal of infowar.
So what's it all about?
Meet Derek Vandeveer: your typical shy, retiring, brilliant computer scientist working for an internet startup, married to an equally shy and retiring astronomer. And his former college roommate, Tony Carew: your typical dot-com boardroom monkey, a slick, extroverted hustler with a bizjet and a girlfriend from Bollywood. 9/11 happens, and their worlds are never going to be the same again. One of them is going to betray everything he holds precious, the other is going to dive head-first into the twilight world of internet-era espionage, and when they meet again the consequences will be explosive.
The plot romps along with ironic, discursive energy, from the Rocky Mountain hideaway of an increasingly eccentric billionaire industrialist to the bolt-hole basement where America's guardians wait out the long watch for an act of atomic terrorism -- but we're in safe hands here, because we've got Sterling for a guide. This is the future. This is now.
At this point in a normal review I'd start comparing the product to other novels. In fact, if I was Bruce Sterling reviewing this book and it was written by somebody else, I'd say something like: "this is a book that stands proudly in the tradition of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon [if Cryptonomicon was, like, a normal-length novel instead of a trilogy in a corset] and Bruce Schneier's Secrets and Lies"[but hang on, Secrets and Lies isn't even fiction -- where am I saying, here?] ..."
But I'm not Bruce (and I don't have the chutzpah to put words into his mouth because he's a better reviewer than I am). So let's just say, my take on affairs is that The Zenith Angle doesn't really stand in any kind of tradition at all (even though it does read better if you also dig Schneier and Stephenson). It's one of a kind. What we've got is one of the godfathers of cyberpunk taking a long, hard look at where we've come to. And it's a frightening place indeed. He's been tracking this territory in WIRED for several years now: from the frontiers of hacking (which he documented in 1994's The Hacker Crackdown ) to the weirdly convoluted secret history of the military-industrial complex.
By inclination and occupation Sterling is one-half journalist, one-half futurist, and one-half gonzo cyberpunk novelist -- and he somehow crams it all into this book, a 150% full-on technothriller with science fictional sensibilities, or an SF novel about a future that has imploded into the present. This is good, excellent, stuff. Trust me, you'll like it. Pre-order it from Amazon or buy it next month when it comes out -- but read it anyway. It's seminal and it's scary.
Besides Amazon, you can pre-order The Zenith Angle from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
This author has done the impossible. He has written a piece of significant length that seems to say nothing at all.
Technothrillers are nice, but I'm hoping the characters are a bit more developed instead of the stereotypical caste that they seem to come from in this guys' and everyone else's 'technothrillers'. I can understand why more of the bend is on other details, but it would really enthrall me. I will however not judge this one until I've read it, but it's just food for thought.
Others have said it, but I'll emphasize it. Sterling's characters all have motivations that derive from goals and ideals. ESPECIALLY the "evil" characters. I can't tell you how refreshing it is to have believable, sympathetic enemies in SF.
The world is far too open and transparent for pure-black bad guys to feel real in these days of global information. Those of us who read deeper than Fox News and White House spinmeisters know there are two sides to almost every conflict, and Sterling gets it right.
YMMV.
Looking for a Rails developer in Chapel Hill?
I hear ya.
I thought we were boycotting Amazon for there 1 click crap?
Of course, it's easy to boycot something when you can get better deals else where.
I can always find better deals then amazon. Often at B&N
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Look at it this way. No one gets paid to reveiw books for slashdot. So really the only reason to write a book reveiw is that you like the book so much that you want to share it, or that its such a steaming load you wish to warn the world to steer clear of it. How many books in the latter category have you read completely enough to give a thorough rational reveiw?
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Try reading Schismatrix or Holy Fire (or even Distraction) as if it was a biography. Instead of looking for plot, look at how technology transforms the protagonist and his society. Instead of looking for one amazing technological device that drives the story (an 'artifact-come-plot-device' or 'Stargate', if you will), look for a glut of radical, unbalancing technologies, each treated with unnerving casualness.
Some of Sterling's ideas are quite ambitious, almost terrifying, and utterly convincing. In Schismatrix, you can almost feel the collective human existence struggling to instantiate itself into something that's far above intelligence. Not all of his works are great, but Schismatrix and Holy Fire were triumphs; they rank at #1 and #3 on my list of all-time-best sci-fi.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
Maybe it would help to define the trailing edge first:
* Stories about interstellar empires that look and smell like the British or Roman empires.
* Yet another Civil War alternate history story.
* Any SF future which doesn't fully take into account scientific fact and technical innovation.
* . . . and other SF that seems more like comfort food than brain food.
Whether a piece of fiction is "cutting edge" or not doesn't determine whether it's well written or entertaining.
I've read plenty of really well written comfort food SF, and plenty of cutting edge stuff that just did nothing for me.
Stefan
It always amazes me how people go on and on about the "mainstream" authors (presumably applying "what's-good-for-the-masses-is-good-for-me" logic). Now I'm not trying to dis Sterling's work - mainly because I don't recall having read any of it. What I am aiming at though are the Gibson followers. I've read Mona Lisa Overdrive and Johnny Mneumonic (which was much better than the film) and didn't find that they made any sizeable dent on my mental landscape. All of the stuff I've read that was written by Greg Egan however, left virtual craters in my mind. How often is it that you get an (Australian) sci-fi author who is also a hard core computer programmer, is into philosophy, mathematics, chemistry and biology and writes beginner's guides to quantum mechanics just for kicks? Google his home page to download some stupendously inspiring short stories. As far as Pat Cardigan is concerned, her two books called "Fools" and "Sinners" make The Matrix look like a childs game and leave you spinning after the last page. Unfortuantely both of them seem to be out of print and the only current stuff you'll find written by her is a guide to the Lost in Space movie.