Visionary in Residence: Stories

I've grown quite tired of Sterling's novels. With the exception of the "Schismatrix" material (with I think is his masterpiece), his long-form fiction often degenerates into rambling narrative, inconsistent characters, and non-endings. But his short-story material is wonderful. I can't think of another writer who is so consitently imaginative, entertaining, funny, and insightful. I've enjoyed all of his collections, and none more than this.

Although he remains one of my favorite writers, it's been years since I came across a Bruce Sterling book that I've felt quite enthusiastic about (Most notably his great novels "Heavy Weather", and especially "Holy Fire", which are undoubtedly two of his finest novels.), but now I have just finished reading one of his best short story collections; "Visionary in Residence". This may be his most impressive short story collection so far, illustrating his vast interest and literary range from post-cyberpunk science fiction to alternate history and even a mesmerizing ghost story which closes the collection ("The Denial"). Sterling writes with equal passion and sympathy for near future computer hackers caught in the latest biotech dot.com craze ("The Scab's Progress", "Junk DNA") as well as Christian and Muslim warriors united in a brief crusade against an unholy, unearthly terror ("The Blemmye's Stratagem"). Among his most impressive stories are his two long tales co-written with friends and fellow cyberpunk writers Paul Di Fillipo ("The Scab's Progress") and Rudy Rucker ("Junk DNA") which mark his literary evolution from a writer of cyberpunk to ribofunk fiction. My own personal favorite is Sterling's alternate history/alien invasion tale "The Blemmye's Stratagem", which is set soon after the Muslim reconquest of Jerusalem from European Crusaders. Another enjoyable tale is "Code", a riveting boy meets girl internet saga in which a computer programmer has to deal with the deadliest creature known to male computer geeks: a lovely, smart woman. The weakest tale in "Visionary in Residence", "Luciferase", is the one which doesn't quite sound like it belongs in a Bruce Sterling short story collection; instead, it looks more like a decent attempt at writing a short story consistent with the themes covered in the Disney film "A Bug's Life". Fans of Bruce Sterling's writing - both new and old - should be as impressed as I with his latest short story collection.

I really enjoyed this collection of short stories from Bruce Sterling. Thematically the stories range all over the place from post-human to ancient history and ancient alternate history. The thing that ties all these stories together and made the book so great for me was that these tales reflect many of the futurist ideas posited in his non-fiction work Tomorrow Now. If you haven't read Tomorrow Now I highly recommend it, it's a five star read all the way. Frankly, even though I tend to read more fiction than non-fiction, his Tomorrow Now was one of the better reads I've undertaken this year and the quality of the prose was shockingly good. For a non-fiction work on ideas and what the future may hold it couldn't have been more engaging, easy to read, and mind-expanding. I read this collection shortly after Tomorrow Now and it felt to me as if they were almost complementary books. The non-fiction work describes many of things we may see in the future and the way society may change with new technologies, including fascinating ideas about the future of biotechnology and the changing nature of employment and what people may wind up doing on a day-to-day basis for work. His concept of work in the future is almost hard to grasp it is so alien, yet extrapolating from the changes over the past twenty years his ideas are entirely plausible too. The short stories take these ideas and wrap them up in engaging tales exploring how these changes affect discrete individuals; the fictional accounts cover the world changes from individual perspective rather than a general societal overview. Some of the stories are better than others naturally but there are some real gems in here, including a colloboration with Rudy Rucker and two stories set in the Middle East roughly 1200 and 1400 A.D. Don't worry, they're both still sci-fi, and expand on some of the better ideas on society and culture that Sterling comes up with. This is a great book, I enjoyed it a lot, and it's well worth the money, but for an even better appreciation I recommend reading Tomorrow Now first and then this one directly after. I am so glad that I did that way.

Visionary in Residence is a collection that unites thirteen stories (published circa 1999-2005) by Bruce Sterling under one cover; two of these yarns also happen to be collaborations with his close friends Paul and Rudy. Audiences generally regard Sterling to be an author of science fiction, but his writing (continuing to transition into more alien forms of that genre) lately seems to congeal around disparate fields such as architecture, biology, design, environmentalism, and security. "In Paradise," the lead story, is Sterling's strongest effort. Set amid a concourse of duty free shops, this narrative details the chance meeting of a nineteen year old Iranian beauty (Batool) and a twenty-six year old Texan plumber (Felix), and their subsequent love affair. Of course they can't converse with each other, without the help of two expensive Finnish cell phones that perform real-time translation on the fly, but that's the charm of the piece. Second to "In Paradise," I think "The Growthing" is remarkable in terms of its overall texture. Set in a deserted Texas energy refinery that would be unrecognizable to today's industry vets, we get to share a tender vignette between biodome caretaker Milton and his teenage daughter Gretel before she's whisked away by a passing dirigible after her latest custody visit. Seems pretty tame on first read, but there are strange legal undercurrents coursing through the tale and an odd tacked on coda that offers redemption. "Ivory Tower," is a funny squib first published in the British science weekly 'Nature.' The story revolves around ten thousand physicists self-educated by Internet, the manner in which they've leveraged their knowledge, and their formation of an academy in the Great Indian Desert. Two more 800 word pieces - "Message Found In A Bottle" and "Homo Sapiens Declared Extinct" - that are equally humorous, fill out Section Three, which is labeled as "Fiction for Scientists." Of particular praise are the co-authored stories; The Scab's Progress (with Paul Di Filippo), and Junk DNA (with Rudy Rucker). Both of these stories are so strong that Bruce should really consider finding the time to co-author separate novels with each of these talented guys. I especially enjoyed the two female characters (Janna Gutierrez and Veruschka Zipkin) in Junk DNA, so I'd like to see them in a return outing. Two thumbs up for collaboration! Now that I've encapsulated the weirder stories, let me tout one that's more mainstream. Code, set in the polished offices of Austin tech-startup Vintelix, finds Sterling taking us on a quirky romp after Employee #3 - a jumbo hippie coder named Louis - is found slumped over dead in his leather chair. The finding brings Van (a junior coder) closer to Julie (the receptionist) after the pair discovers LSD hidden in the unfortunate bloke's desk. After reading The Growthing, you should probably skip ahead to Code before back-pedaling to read the hybrid "User-Centric," which begins wit