Slashdot Mirror
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.
I'm definitely looking forward to this book.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
"In fact, if I was Bruce Sterling reviewing"...
And if I were the person who suggested I read "The Difference Engine" to introduce me to Sterling, I'd feel pretty dumb for suggesting this book. It would have been my very own suggestion which made me waste my time reading half of a novel.
I think I actually brought that one back to the store and demanded a refund. If he does do better work, I'm afraid this little gem will prevent me from ever reading it. If you want good, intelligent sci fi, try Phillip K Dick.
After reading William Gibson's Neuromancer I wanted to read more science fiction like it. At the time there was a sort of boomlet of "cyberpunk" authors. In addition to the master, Gibson, some of them were pretty good. I liked Walter Jon Williams' book Hardwired. K.W. Jetter wrote some pretty interesting stuff. Jon Shirley wrote the Eclipse books which were a sort of cool combination of rock, drugs and cyberpunk distopia. And then there was Bruce Sterling. I've always seen Sterling as a wana-be Gibson. Unfortunately for Sterling he does not have Gibson's brilliance as a writer or Gibson's unique world view. Of the writers listed above, Sterlings has always seemed to me to be the weakest. I've found Sterling's writing in WIRED equally empty. Sterling might be viewed as a science fiction Tom Clancy (he even seems to share Tom Clancy's right wing political views).
William Gibson has written one really weak book, The Difference Engine and this was co-authored with Sterling. It is interesting to note that they have not written anything together since. Gibson must have come to realize that he is far weaker with Sterling than without.
I just finished Charles Stross' Singularity Sky (which I think was reviewed on Slashdot). I thought that it was excellent and I look forward to reading more of Stross' work. I rate Stross far higher than Sterling. Where Sterling is a techno-wana-be, Stross is the real thing. The author I would compare Stross to the most is Ken MacLeod (who I also like).
I have not had a chance to read Sterling's latest (which I think I'll get from the library). But if you're spending money, I'd spend it on Stross, Ken MacLeod, Dan Simmons (his latest book Illium is interesting). Or if you have not read Ian MacDonald, try his book Terminal Cafe which is one of the great speculations on the implications of nanotechnology.
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling wrote it together.
Bruce Sterling has a adaptive vocabulary, and a sharp wit, but there's something beautifully barren about William Gibson's prose.
Bruce Sterling also focuses a bit more on "the big picture", while Gibson seems to be more intimately familiar with his characters. Sterling's books seem more positive, and Gibson's more dark. (I've read them all).
Overall, they're both great authors, and if you like one, you'll almost certainly like the other.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
Sterling actually likes technolgy, Gibson doesn't. Gibson is a better word-smith, Sterling has more interesting ideas. Gibson is a pessimist, Sterling is an optimist. Sterling understands Science, Gibson understands Poetry. That being said, if you like Gibson, you will almost certainly like Sterling, though perhaps for different reasons
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"Sterling has his fingers on about a hundred different pulses in this book, which vibrates with fantastic in-jokes and insights from Bollywood to dot-bomb, from mil-spec gear-pigs to earnest cybercops. The story rockets along like a hijacked airliner heading straight at you, like a flash-worm compromising every unpatched Windows box on the net at once. I read it in one sitting, and I'll read it again before the month is out. Lots of books are called "thrillers" but very few are this thrilling."
BTW, Sterling called this kind of writing "Nowpunk" at his SXSW talk last week: http://craphound.com/sterlingsxsw04.txt
I've always loved Sterling more than Gibson. Both had soem really good ideas back int eh day but things like the Shapers and Machinists, e.g. 20 Evocations, really just hit the spot with me. Especially when you could read half a dozen stories and see them all play out independantly in the same world and see the differences in world with the passage of time. Other books such as The Artifical Kid and Holy Fire were similarly really fun to read with ideas that I just enjoyed. In comparison, Gibson just seems to drift further and further from my intrests and enjoyablity. It took me four attempts to get through Pattern Recognition, although it was still a good book it just never grabbed me. Still, Sterling, Gibson, Stephenson, etc. all seem to be tryign to get away from Sci Fi and neat ideas and bring their stuff closer to the persent day. I don't know if they're trying to break into "respectable writing" or what but I don't like it. I finished Cryptonomicon and felt like I'd just read the latest Crichton or Clansey. If I wanted to read Crichton or Clansey, I'd be reading them. I want Sci Fi. I want fantastic worlds and technology. Want neat ideas in what might be. If I wanted technothrillers, i'd be reading techno thrillers to begin with. It was sad enough for Stephenson to put out uninspired stuff, but now that Sterling is joining him, there's no longer any authors for me to eagerly await books from (except for Rudy Rucker).
No, I disagree. Gibson may not like tech, but he at least has the foresight to see where it's going. I received 'Pattern Recognition' as a gift and I was blown away. Granted, the googling crap was cliche, but a story based around a video being released anonymously over the web, complete with watermarks. That's such a brilliant story for us.
I have an English degree and I work in IT. I've written a few scifi stories myself, but some of Gibson's stories absolutely floor me--especially for someone that didn't even use a computer at the time he was writing these stories. I've read a few of Sterling's books, and I haven't gotten much out of them. If nothing else, he's playing on topics that have already been used. The whole idea of scifi (and fiction) is to create a story that makes one think. I read to escape the crap that happens on a day-to-day basis, not to hear the same story/idea I heard earlier in my office.
Bruce Sterling's "The Hacker Crackdown" got released a bit back as a free e-text. Copyright's in the header, and it's a great read, so go get it :).
You're reading Slashdot. Of course you like Linux and pc hardware
...But if Charlie Stross makes the time to write a review for us (and if Cory Doctorow takes the time to chip in) I think it's deserving of a little less cynicism on our behalf. (While Stross (and Doctorow, perhaps) *might* have received some kind of reimbursment for writing the dustjacket blurb, I think it's safe to assume he is/they are not working on a sales commission...)
The comparison being made between Sterling, Gibson and Stephenson are interesting to me.
I agree with those who don't rate The Difference Engine very highly. It's clear to me that both Stephenson and Sterling are deeply interested in the social history of technology, but their partnership on this novel didn't work (for me) because while the book was bulging with details and ideas, there was no story. A lot of detail, a lot of people and places, but nothing resembling a plot, character development, thesis, or anything else that keeps me turning the pages until the end. In my imagined reality I see the two of them furiously exhanging emails and drafts, the signal inexorably swamped by the noise of two people who have a lot to say, but who can't agree on a way to say it.
I don't agree with those who follow the "if you like X you'll love Y" formula with Sterling, Gibson and Stephenson. But... if I could assemble an author with Sterling's understanding of our world, Stephenson's interest in how we got here, and Gibson's talent for metaphor and wordplay, *then* we'd have a novelist who would either change the world or cause it to implode.
As an English major, I'm sure you relize that Gibson's characters are flat and stereotypical. Sterling's character's have depth and realistic motivations, even the 'evil' ones. Gibson's plotlines and characters would translate well to movies, or comic books for that matter. Sterling's complexities would be lost in those media.
IMHO, Gibson is the one who plays on topics that have already been used. He may have coined the phrase cyberpunk, but he certainly didn't invent the genre. In fact, I can't think of a single idea that Gibson has had that I haven't read someplace else first. Gibson is a virtuoso with the English language. He is a true poet. But an Idea Guy?!? You don't read much older Sci-Fi, do you?
Gibson is certainly a more comfortable read for people who like to think of the world as black and white. Sterling is more for people who realize that it isn't.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton