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Loading... A Good Old-Fashioned Futureby Bruce Sterling
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. ZB4   mcolpitts | Jul 31, 2009 |  This collection starts out nicely. “Maneki Neko” is a fine example of …well, not cyberpunk, but the science fiction that takes computers and lifts them to an extreme not expected. Here, working together in the net, everyone’s life is made better. Mind you, this still manages to keep a hint of Big Brother to mar the landscape. The next story, “Big Jelly” is just about as hard science fiction as you can do, bringing it all up-to-date with the concepts of bioengineering. At this point I was quite excited about the collection and was looking forward to more. But then the stories kind of trail off. By the end of the book, with the kind-of linked stories “Deep Eddy”, “The Bicycle Repairman”, and “Taklamakan” (which all move along fine, but don’t have much to make them stand out) it had become a bit of a task to complete. Sterling is a good writer, and it shows in spots within this collection. However, it is obvious that this is just a collection of things written over a period and thrown into a book. And the writing is not strong enough to warrant every word being included. (  ) figre | Mar 9, 2008 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0553576429, Mass Market Paperback)A Good Old-fashioned Future is a paperback collection of seven short stories by former cyberpunk guru turned sociocultural prognosticator Bruce Sterling. Most of the works here come with impressive pedigrees, ranging from a Hugo Award for "Bicycle Repairman" to Hugo nominations for "Maneki Neko" and "Taklamakan." Another piece, "Big Jelly," was cowritten by Sterling's fellow cyberpunk alum, Rudy Rucker.These stories have a lot in common. They all take place in the near future, and most are action-oriented, involving colorful characters such as secret agents, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Mafioso's, and revolutionaries. But they are also personal tales that tend to focus on individuals rather than ideas, which makes them hit home more often than standard SF fare. The best of the bunch is probably "Taklamakan," a high-concept piece about two freelance spies sent to a central Asian desert called Taklamakan, where the Asian Sphere is doing some sort of secret research into space flight. "Bicycle Repairman" is set in the same world, but instead of in an Asian desert it takes place in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the spies in this story aren't the good guys. It's a less successful piece than "Taklamakan" but also a good read. Not all of the stories in this collection have the edgy, this-is-what-tomorrow-will-be-like quality that typifies Sterling's best work. But even when Sterling isn't at his best he's entertaining, and A Good Old-Fashioned Future is certainly that. --Craig E. Engler (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:37:52 -0500) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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