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Sci-Fi Books Media United States Book Reviews

The Zenith Angle 110

Posted by timothy from the they-made-tvs dept.
charlie writes "Bruce Sterling has been writing on the cutting edge of SF for close to thirty years now. After 2000's Zeitgeist he took some time out to write a non-fiction book, Tomorrow Now -- but it's nice to see he's returning to fiction with a new novel, The Zenith Angle, due out in hardcover on April 27th. While his first novels were set in the far future, his recent novels have approached ever closer to the present moment, so it's not too surprising to see that The Zenith Angle is being marketed as a technothriller." Read on below for the rest of Stross' review.
The Zenith Angle
author Bruce Sterling
pages 320 pages
publisher Del Rey
rating 10
reviewer Charles Stross
ISBN 0345460618
summary High-impact infowar technothriller for the technoliterati

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.
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The Zenith Angle

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  • Authors (Score:5, Informative)

    by HeghmoH ( 13204 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @07:07PM (#8639570) Homepage Journal
    I've never read anything by Stirling, and I was going to skip the review until I saw who wrote the review. There's something oddly ironic about reading a review just because it was written by one of your favorite authors.

    • Re:Authors (Score:3, Interesting)

      by IO ERROR ( 128968 )
      You're missing out. Bruce Sterling is definitely one of the classic writers of our times. If nothing else read The Hacker Crackdown. Then goto your local library and check out everything with his name on it. You remember libraries, right? The place where they have all those dead trees with ink on them? :-)

      I'm definitely looking forward to this book.

    • Re:Authors (Score:4, Informative)

      by maxentius ( 603949 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @07:34PM (#8639861)
      Indeed. It's good to see Mr. Stross's name once in a while.

      Hey Charlie, remember D. West?

      For those of you who aren't familiar, Charles Stross is one of Britain's hot young SF writers. Check out the novel "Singularity Sky," from Ace Books.

      For more instant gratification, try this. [infinityplus.co.uk]

    • Sterling not Stirling Re:Authors (Score:4, Informative)

      by StefanJ ( 88986 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @07:49PM (#8640017) Homepage Journal
      Not being picky about spelling; there's an SF author Stirling who writes very different stuff.

      Suggestion: Start with bruces' short fiction. There are a couple of collections out there. Globalhead is uneven, but the good stuff ("Our Neural Chernobyl", "The Shores of Bohemia") is really, really good.

      A Good Old Fashioned Future has more consistently good stories, including a doozy ("Maneki Neko") about a network-enabled gift economy.

      Stefan

      • Globalhead -- uneven but with gems (Score:4, Informative)

        by handy_vandal ( 606174 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @10:56PM (#8641338) Homepage Journal
        Globalhead is uneven, but the good stuff ("Our Neural Chernobyl", "The Shores of Bohemia") is really, really good.

        Agreed -- not all of the Globalhead stories make the grade -- but don't miss "We See Things Differently" [revolutionsf.com] -- my God, that's a great story!

        Sterling has an amazing gift for writing political fiction -- he writes American characters, Arab characters, Russian characters ... and man, you are there, you become an American, an Arab, a Russian.

        Also not to be missed: "Red Star, Winter Orbit" [lib.ru] -- short story, collaboration with William Gibson, appears in Gibson's "Burning Chrome" collection.

        -kgj

    • Re:Authors (Score:5, Informative)

      by Wellspring ( 111524 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @07:51PM (#8640031)
      Bruce Sterling is phenomenal.

      I'm actually one of those guys who loved his early work more than his more recent stuff. I find alot of what I read lately a little on the preachy side. He's still a very smart guy-- and a brilliant writer.

      Read The Hacker Crackdown-- it's literary freeware, and so there's no excuse not to.

      Then, go buy Schizmatrix Plus [amazon.com]. This is one of my all-time favorite science fiction books. I can't find the words to tell you how great this book is. It manages to be both epic and intensely personal.
  • This author has done the impossible. He has written a piece of significant length that seems to say nothing at all.

  • Niiice... (Score:3, Funny)

    by ErikTheRed ( 162431 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @07:19PM (#8639710) Homepage
    Get us all hyped up over a book that won't be out for a month... Evil!!! :)
  • 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.
    • 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'

      Sterling delivers the goods -- the man knows how to create characters. A label like "techno-thriller" doesn't mean a thing -- all I know is that Sterling has got the right stuff, time and again.

      Note that Harlan Ellison raved about Sterling's first novel ("Involution Ocean"). I'm not saying Harlan Ellison is always right, but man, it's da
    • I was about to agree with the comments about his tech being better than his characters, but I remembered Heavy Weather [amazon.com], a novel about a group of storm chasers in the near future. The scientific premise of the book is that all of the extra energy available from global warming won't be delivered with a nice even one degree all around, but will result in monster storms.

      The book was very well-written, and the characters were even more interesting than the tech.

  • Fellow Slashdotters, prepare to be dazzled! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 22, 2004 @07:25PM (#8639780)
    Well, as Timothy already mentioned, the name of the book that I read was The Zenith Angle. It's about these ... angles. Angles ... with computer programmers ... and ... plots that romp on ... and Bollywood ... Did I mention this book was written by a guy named Bruce Sterling? And published by the good people at Del Rey. So, in conclusion, on the Slashdot scale of eight to ten, ten being the highest, eight being the lowest, and nine being average, I give this book ... a ten. Any questions? Nope? Then I'll just sit down.

  • If only I were me (Score:2, Interesting)

    by modder ( 722270 )
    "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
    • Did you even read any of his other books? They are nothing like The Difference Engine(well a little). I'd recommend any of these in no order what so ever: Holy Fire, Zeitgeist and/or Heavy Weather.
    • 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.

      Of course, "Difference Engine" was a collaboration with William Gibson.

      That said -- I didn't like Difference Engine a hell of a lot. (Only the last third, really -- each third is a separate story -- the first was boring, the second okay, the third rocked.)

      For a

  • Parallel to William Gibson (Score:5, Informative)

    by OblongPlatypus ( 233746 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @07:29PM (#8639821)
    William Gibson has been doing the same thing; also a sci-fi writer, his latest novel Pattern Recognition is set in the present just like The Zenith Angle.

    Personally I'm a big fan of Gibson, but have read very little by Sterling. Can anyone who's read both comment on similarities and differences between the two?
    • 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 Difference Engine_ is quite possibly the most disappointing book I've ever slagged through. I honestly only spent the last month with it to say I read it, and to never have to think about it again. I had a lot of excitment for a "steampunk" (uh, ok) book from two great SF writers, but it rivals Hardy Boys #102 for "worst book ever."

        I like Sterling most of the time, and love Gibson (huge plug for _Pattern Recognition_), but that book was just f'in horribly long and dichotically written. It's pretty

        • > (ObBookPlug for Peter F. Hamilton too.. with a
          > negative for John C Wright to balance it out
          > in the space opera subgenre.)

          Unless you're like me and don't like Deus Ex Machina endings.
          Granted, that's only for the 'The Night's Dawn' trilogy. His other stuff is ok.

          But I'm still rather upset by having a reasonably good space opera trilogy unravel after a few thousend pages into a 'Poof, and a wand was waved and everybody lives happily ever after'.

    • Re:Parallel to William Gibson (Score:5, Interesting)

      by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary&yahoo,com> on Monday March 22, 2004 @07:40PM (#8639921) Journal
      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
      • 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
        • 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
          • <pedant>Gibson coined "cyberspace [reference.com]," not "cyberpunk." SF editor extraordinaire Gardner Dozois" came up with "cyberpunk [reference.com]" to describe the 80s sub-genre which included Gibson, Sterling, John Shirley, and others.</pedant>

            I definitely agree Sterling is the Big Idea man and Gibson is the poet. I wouldn't be so harsh about the depth of Gibson's characters though, especially not in his later books.
    • Gibson -> Hienlien
      Sterling -> Azimov

      For the over 30 crowd... =)

    • 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.

      Y
      • I agree with you bobetov. The world is painted in shades of gray, not black and white. Real people have real motivations, and 'evil' is based on point of view. Moderators who mod things like this down are just afraid of the fact that the world is really this complex. It is, and modding people down isn't going to make it black and white again. Deal with it.
    • There's a lot of overlap in their subject matter (near future to distant future, high-tech worlds full of mindboggling creatures and machines you can see slowly gathering on the current horizon), but ...

      Sterling's style is more "serious" (IMO) and therefore easier to parody :) Gibson seemingly has more fun, though much of his work is anything but lighthearted. I have (somewhere) the unabridged audio version of "Neuromancer," and Gibson's voice (he's the narrator, unusual and good for audio books) has a cyn
    • I find Sterling to be a much better overall writer; Gibson, like Stephenson, has some great ideas and comes up with some neat characters, but they expand all too rapidly until the author has to suddenly wrap it all up in 30 pages because the book is getting too long. Someone once told me that this is a common problem with "cyberpunk" authors, so I attributed it to the fact that they simply aren't good writers. :)

      "Islands In The Net" and "Heavy Weather" are both great reads, IMO. I'm looking forward to this
  • Then it will be bad. Very bad. Terribly bad.

    (Did that fact that he used that same sentence every 3 pages drive anyone else insane?)

  • Amazon link (Score:3, Funny)

    by Burgundy Advocate ( 313960 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @07:36PM (#8639885) Homepage
    For those of us who don't want to use Barnes and Nobel for ethical reasons, use this Amazon link:

    The Zenit Angle [amazon.com]

    I'm amazed Slashdot doesn't add this by default.
    • thanks for the amazon link. I must ask however, what _exactally_ do you mean "for ethical reasons". What are they doing that is so bad?
      Is it just that they are another large corporate entity? I am not trying to troll, I really am just curious.

      • Re:Amazon link (Score:3, Insightful)

        by geekoid ( 135745 )
        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
      • > What are they doing that is so bad?

        The following was provided to me by someone in the industry, specifically for me to post here, to answer this precise question. Chain stores are not a positive thing, and ultimately do NOT foster the capitalist/free market ideals that benefit them so much. Please read:

        This article [codysbooks.com] -- is very, very old (1999), but a number of the points the author wrote about then are very applicable when you're talking about online chain/mega stores. The sales tax issue is perhaps m

    • Link by default? Well some of us go to .co.uk so it would waste my time to follow the .com link.
    • Better yet, order the book from a local, non-chain bookstore. Chances are you'll pay the same or close, and you'll be helping a bookstore that doesn't engage in ethically questionable pricing, supporting local business, and generally bumping up your Karma score.

      For instance, if you lived in the Rocky Mountain region, I'd suggest The Tattered Cover [tatteredcover.com]. If you lived in Portland & the Northwest, I'd suggest Powell's [powells.com], and if you live in California I'd point you towards my personal favorite Bay Area bookstore,

  • Bruce Sterlings previous work has been weak (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wintermute42 ( 710554 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @07:38PM (#8639899) Homepage

    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.

    • Re:Bruce Sterlings previous work has been weak (Score:4, Interesting)

      by bluetrident ( 665406 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @07:49PM (#8640008)
      I agree. Oh course, Gibson will remain supreme, but i think that Pat Cadigan is another author worthy of reading. She (yes, she's a female) is a great storyteller and her use of 'porn' in her stories is quite interesting.

      And we have all read Neal Stephenson, and I think his move to more of a fiction-based story is quite interesting. Since 'Cryptonomicon', he's basically telling a normal story with a bunch of tech/crpyto stuff thrown in.

      I always thought Sterling was a bit weak in his storytelling and writing skills. Even 'The Difference Engine' was a struggle for me to make it through. Stephenson's psuedonym, Stephen Bury, reminds me of Sterling, but with a much better writing ability.

      Enjoy.
      • I always thought Sterling was a bit weak in his storytelling and writing skills.

        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 Sterlin

        • I'll be honest, I haven't read Schismatrix or Holy Fire (I've picked them up many a time), but, by that point, I was already discouraged with Sterling and I didn't feel like wasting my money. He also reminds me of Greg Bear (but on a tech slant). I enjoy reading both Sterling and Bear, but I just don't think they've got the ability to tell a Good story. They both have amazing ideas, they just don't capitalize on them.

          But hey, that's just me. I enjoy any writer that can tell a story and make me think fo

      • Gibson supreme? Based on a criticism of Sterling as a techno wannabe? Did you actually read Neuromancer?

        There are technical clinkers scattered all through Gibson's work. Embarassing ones in the early stuff especially (I recall something about a modem being referred to in completely bizarre context).

        Now, Gibson is still a fantastic prose stylist, and has some cool ideas too, but he definitely fits, or at least at one time fit, the profile of the techno wannabe.

        As far as it goes, I wasn't much impressed wi

    • William Gibson has written one really weak book, The Difference Engine and this was co-authored with Sterling.

      Gibson wrote one weak book all by himself, too. IMHO, 'Mona Lisa Overdrive', the third book in the Sprawl trilogy, suffered from the fact that it was the first experience Gibson actually had with a computer. His previous works, including 'Neuromancer' and 'Count Zero', were created with an old-fashioned manual typewriter and one of the hallmarks of both novels is the magical aspect to computers

      • I agree that Mona Lisa Overdrive was not the best in the Sprawl trilogy. I have to confess that when I wrote about weak Gibson books, this came to mind. I still own a copy of MLO, but I gave away my copy of The Difference Engine. I found The Difference Engine more or less unreadable.

        Since I've outed myself as a William Gibson groupie (I guess "Wintermute42" might give it away too), I'll also mention that he speaks in the same way that he writes. I don't know if this is rare with authors or not.

        Year

    • > Sterling might be viewed as a science fiction Tom Clancy >(he even seems to share Tom Clancy's right wing political views) Dude, you have no idea what you're talking about. You should have a look at the Viridian newsletter (http://www.viridiandesign.org) to get a fix of Bruce Sterling's political views. They are anything but right wing, maybe not as far left as Ken McLeod but I'd definitely term him at least "progressive". Except for _The Difference Engine_, I liked everything he wrote. And then s

  • My blurb (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mouthbeef ( 35097 ) <doctorow@craphound.com> on Monday March 22, 2004 @07:40PM (#8639922) Homepage
    I got an advance copy for blurbage at the same time as Charlie (Me: "What's a technothriller?" Sterling: "It's like a science fiction novel, but it's got the President in it."). Here's my dustjacket take:

    "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 [craphound.com]

  • "Bruce Sterling has been writing on the cutting edge of SF for close to thirty years now."

    Ok, what is cutting edge in sci-fi ??
    • 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 wri

  • New SciFi (Score:3, Interesting)

    by painandgreed ( 692585 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @08:38PM (#8640425)
    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).
    • Yeah, but Rudy got old and quit taking drugs. Maybe it turns around toward the end, but Realware is too preachy for me. And what's with the IP rights stuff? If everyone has a magic wand, who gives a shit if people can reproduce what you've made? If he's actually trying to point out that even if people are given the world they will still compete and withold things from others in order to feel special, he's doing a poor job, because it sounds like he's actually concerned with upholding those views. The protag
  • their closing </i> tag.

  • Hacker Crackdown Free E-Text (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Inhibit ( 105449 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @10:03PM (#8641025) Homepage Journal
    Bruce Sterling's "The Hacker Crackdown" got released a bit back as a free e-text [villa-straylight.net]. Copyright's in the header, and it's a great read, so go get it :).
  • ...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 D
    • Nobody gets paid for writing dustjacket blurbs. It's a gift economy, pure and simple. (Off to write a blurb for the new Sean Stewart novel, which is a corker).
      • Dustjacket blurbs are also self-advertising. I don't think I'm unusual because I make note of the names on blurbs. If someone writes a blurb for an author I like, that makes me more interested in the blurb writer's work. Likewise, if an author I like writes a blurb for an author I don't know, that's a pretty important recommendation.

        Blurbs don't get an unknown author on an Authors-To-Buy whitelist but they add a couple of points to the scoring which may push a book over the To-Buy threshhold.

        It works beca

        • Unfortunately, the system eventually breaks down because a mutual admiration society develops and you see the same names again and again on each other's books. It seems to take too long for new blood to show up on the jackets.

          How long do you expect it to take? I don't recall seeing Cory's name attatched to any of the blurbs for Distraction or Zeitgeist, for instance; and I'm sure that in five years we'll be seeing someone we haven't heard of yet on the cover of Cory's latest. Seems to me the turnover in

  • 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

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