Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... Islands in the Net (original 1988; edition 2000)by Bruce Sterling (Author)
Work InformationIslands in the Net by Bruce Sterling (1988)
Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Surprisingly prescient Sterling from 1988; at a time when cyberpunk was the rage, Sterling was actually guessing at the political effect of a networked world and the growth of pirate enclaves. Not as self-assured as Distraction ten years later, but (allowing for the 1980s trappings of video chat and faxes) not too different in flavour from the world of 2023 in which it's actually set. ( ) This was an interesting reading experience for me. Bruce Sterling published this novel in 1988 with the setting in the early 2020s which is when I read it (2022). As a result, much of the “science fiction” has become reality and so the novel read to me like a thriller rather than a science fiction novel. Which was fine once I realized this was the situation. As someone wrote over in the Sci Fi community of LibraryThing my expectation of the novel being science fiction was the paratext that I brought to the book as a reader. Once I adjusted my paratext to a thriller, I enjoyed the novel just fine. What I found interesting is that the heroine is works for a multinational collective that uses the language of being a benign helpful entity, yet is still looking for the angle in which to make a profit. So I wonder if Sterling did not write a hidden subtext that perhaps the “good guys” and the “bad guys” are not as black and white as initially written. It reminded a little of The Business by Iain Banks which was written a decade after Islands In The Net. Did Sterling’s novel influence Banks? I like this rating system by ashleytylerjohn of LibraryThing (https://www.librarything.com/profile/ashleytylerjohn) that I have also adopted: (Note: 5 stars = rare and amazing, 4 = quite good book, 3 = a decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful.) Ho letto questo libro alla fine dell'estate del 2001 e l'ho terminato 6 giorni prima dell'11 settembre. Nella settimana che seguì all'attacco al World Trade Center, moltissimi avvenimenti internazionali mi convinsero che il lungo libro che avevo appena finito di leggere non era un libro di fantascienza come invece era scritto nel retro copertina, ma una vera e propria analisi geopolitica di ciò che stava succedendo in quei giorni... Certo, l'equivoco era comprensibile perché questo romanzo fu scritto nel 88 e molte delle cose che erano descritte, all'epoca, erano veramente fantascientifiche..ma non all'inizio del XXI secolo. Sterling aveva previsto tutto e lo aveva messo nero su bianco... Isole nella rete è un libro da leggere assolutamente se si vuole capire cosa diavolo sta succedendo oggi al mondo! no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesGallimard, Folio SF (110) Heyne SF - Warp 7 (7034) Présence du futur (508-509) AwardsNotable Lists
In a near-future new age of corporate control, hacker mercenaries, and electronic terrorism, a public relations executive on the rise finds herself caught in the violent epicenter of a data war Two decades into the twenty-first century, the world's nations are becoming irrelevant. Corporations are the true global powers, with information the most valuable currency, while the smaller island nations have become sanctuaries for data pirates and terrorists. A globe-trotting PR executive for the large corporate economic democracy Rizome Industries Group, Laura Webster is present when a foreign representative is assassinated on Rizome soil during a conference for offshore data havens. Dispatched immediately on an international mission of diplomacy, Laura hopes she can make a difference in a volatile, unsteady world, but instead finds herself trapped on the front lines of rapidly escalating third-world hostilities and caught up in an inescapable net of conspiracy, terrorism, post-millennial voodoo, and electronic warfare. During the 1980s, science fiction luminary Bruce Sterling envisioned the future . . . and hit it almost dead-on. The author who, along with William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and Rudy Rucker, helped create and define the cyberpunk subgenre imagines a world of tomorrow in Islands in the Net that bears a striking--and disturbing--resemblance to our present-day information-age reality. Nominated for the Hugo and Locus Awards and winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, Sterling's extraordinary novel is a gripping, eye-opening, and remarkably prescient science fiction classic. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |