Globalhead

Rating:
Summary: Third World Posse
Review: "Apocalypse is boring," so spaketh Chairman Bruce, in his mission to overcome the faux-Terminator after-the-bomb scenarios which typify so much contemporary SF hack-work. It's been a long time coming since J. G. Ballard's classic planetary-disaster novels; those who do SF in his wake must write their way to new levels of subtlety and informed speculation, become a legitimate participant in the great Futurological Debate, rather than just another cynical doomsdayer-cum-road-warrior writing in the megalomaniacal glare of Oppenheimer's bomb-God. In light of Sterling's admonition, it is peculiar to admit that the stories in *Globalhead* have an inescapable post-Nuke groove to them, symptomatic of Sterling's coxcomb-jingling portrayal of disaffected Third World spaces. A far subtler apocalypse, but still great fun.

"Our Neural Chernobyl" (my personal favorite) is a stunning hybrid of high comedy, dead seriousness, and throat-grabbing economy which the remainder of this collection will never surpass. The old-school SF theme of intelligence-maximization is treated with breezy hep-cat irony and panache, a counterculture of renegade "gene-hackers" riding the god project of biotechnology. Cagey, brilliant, underhanded, hilarious, dead-on modern fiction.

The last twenty pages of "Storming the Cosmos" reaches a pinnacle of revisionist SF, in the glassed-in detention cell of a Soviet gulag for dissident rocket-scientists, the purveyors of a protean technology that *actualizes* the subjective imagination of its observer (i.e. an experimental substance that changes shape and function according to the minds which possess it). When the conservative, obstructionist members of blackguard Soviet science abduct the item, the device *becomes* an antique rocket, replete with hoary, mind-blowing (literally) repercussions. Just read the story.

"Jim and Irene" hits a tender note, the possibility of trans-cultural romance in a dingy, saturated, postmedia world. It goes a long way towards justifying the travails of relationship-related stress and paranoia, the feasibility of making human connections at the heart of a Baudrillardian desert, postmodern Nothingness encroaching upon our air-conditioned havens of glass and steel.

"The Gulf Wars" points to the cyclical barbarism of Middle East violence and warcraft, in a brash little comedy about two hapless army engineers sucked into an Arabian time-warp to die the good death. But by now Sterling in beginning to lose his edge....

"The Shores of Bohemia", notable for its extrapolation of animal-empathy cults in the future, simply does not pay the reader back for his/her efforts, as the arch-narrative of Gaia vs. Artifice and the propaganda-value of Titanic architecture (see Sterling's *Wired* travelogue "The Spirit of Mega") comes on a bit conventional and, well, conceptually worn-out.

Things pick up with "The Moral Bullet", the precursor to Sterling's superb *Holy Fire*(1996), where a pharmacological fountain-of-youth corners the black market run by paramilitary Mafioso competing for urban territory, a lawless after-the-Fall wastelander fantasy. Sterling grooves hard for about twenty pages, but the story's denouement seems rushed, desperate, unsatisfying.

In the hackneyed genre of Lovecraftian satire, "The Unthinkable" is a rare triumph. The military-industrial complex has assimilated the necromancy of the Great Old Ones in a new arms race for weapons that attack the very dreams and souls of the enemy. Despite my weighty paraphrase, the piece is really quite funny.

"We See Things Differently" offers a very intelligent, very wily indictment of monotheistic Islamic culture, while providing a convincing scenario for the survival of such religious traditions in the total-media zone of Western tech-wealth. An Islamic secret agent journeys to the heart of American rock culture to reap the whirlwind of his martyrological devotion to Allah.

"Hollywood Kremlin" introduces Leggy Starlitz of *Zeitgeist*(2000), the pragmatic middle-aged worldweary go-getter trying to help a grounded Russian aviator complete his sortie. Like so many Sterling protagonists, Starlitz is an inspiring blend of cool optimism and brute adaptation to the caterwauling world around him, largely forsaking acid-spray cynicism for the ethos of pragmatic global cooperation. (Until the very end of the story, that is.) The Starlitz double-feature continues with "Are You For 86?", where Leggy becomes a smuggler of do-it-yourself abortion pills (a drug called RU-486), pursued by fundamentalist Christian soldiers (in death's-head masks, black robes, and wielding plastic scythes no less!) across the Utah desert. The story's climax at the State Capitol and Museum is both intellectual and action-packed, Sterling's trademark double-play.

And finally, there's "Dori Bangs," a pseudo-mainstream fantasy of star-crossed Beatniks coming to terms with their artistic mediocrity in a commodified universe of death....

Suffice it to say, my summaries don't do justice to level of intelligence at work in these narratives. So much of what matters here is contained in the brilliant minutiae which hang on every descriptive passage, which color every extended dialogue. (Sterling's in the details.) While not as ambitiously original as the Shaper/Mechanist cycle of the mid `80s, these stories are all satisfying in their own brash, silly, madcap, populist way; even the boring ones are worth reading, as "meta-journalism" or political satire. Though a part of me hesitates to recommend them to non-SF enthusiasts. There are simply too many in-jokes.

Rating:
Summary: Third World Posse
Review: "Apocalypse is boring," so spaketh Chairman Bruce, in his mission to overcome the faux-Terminator after-the-bomb scenarios which typify so much contemporary SF hack-work. It's been a long time coming since J. G. Ballard's classic planetary-disaster novels; those who do SF in his wake must write their way to new levels of subtlety and informed speculation, become a legitimate participant in the great Futurological Debate, rather than just another cynical doomsdayer-cum-road-warrior writing in the megalomaniacal glare of Oppenheimer's bomb-God. In light of Sterling's admonition, it is peculiar to admit that the stories in *Globalhead* have an inescapable post-Nuke groove to them, symptomatic of Sterling's coxcomb-jingling portrayal of disaffected Third World spaces. A far subtler apocalypse, but still great fun.

"Our Neural Chernobyl" (my personal favorite) is a stunning hybrid of high comedy, dead seriousness, and throat-grabbing economy which the remainder of this collection will never surpass. The old-school SF theme of intelligence-maximization is treated with breezy hep-cat irony and panache, a counterculture of renegade "gene-hackers" riding the god project of biotechnology. Cagey, brilliant, underhanded, hilarious, dead-on modern fiction.

The last twenty pages of "Storming the Cosmos" reaches a pinnacle of revisionist SF, in the glassed-in detention cell of a Soviet gulag for dissident rocket-scientists, the purveyors of a protean technology that *actualizes* the subjective imagination of its observer (i.e. an experimental substance that changes shape and function according to the minds which possess it). When the conservative, obstructionist members of blackguard Soviet science abduct the item, the device *becomes* an antique rocket, replete with hoary, mind-blowing (literally) repercussions. Just read the story.

"Jim and Irene" hits a tender note, the possibility of trans-cultural romance in a dingy, saturated, postmedia world. It goes a long way towards justifying the travails of relationship-related stress and paranoia, the feasibility of making human connections at the heart of a Baudrillardian desert, postmodern Nothingness encroaching upon our air-conditioned havens of glass and steel.

"The Gulf Wars" points to the cyclical barbarism of Middle East violence and warcraft, in a brash little comedy about two hapless army engineers sucked into an Arabian time-warp to die the good death. But by now Sterling in beginning to lose his edge....

"The Shores of Bohemia", notable for its extrapolation of animal-empathy cults in the future, simply does not pay the reader back for his/her efforts, as the arch-narrative of Gaia vs. Artifice and the propaganda-value of Titanic architecture (see Sterling's *Wired* travelogue "The Spirit of Mega") comes on a bit conventional and, well, conceptually worn-out.

Things pick up with "The Moral Bullet", the precursor to Sterling's superb *Holy Fire*(1996), where a pharmacological fountain-of-youth corners the black market run by paramilitary Mafioso competing for urban territory, a lawless after-the-Fall wastelander fantasy. Sterling grooves hard for about twenty pages, but the story's denouement seems rushed, desperate, unsatisfying.

In the hackneyed genre of Lovecraftian satire, "The Unthinkable" is a rare triumph. The military-industrial complex has assimilated the necromancy of the Great Old Ones in a new arms race for weapons that attack the very dreams and souls of the enemy. Despite my weighty paraphrase, the piece is really quite funny.

"We See Things Differently" offers a very intelligent, very wily indictment of monotheistic Islamic culture, while providing a convincing scenario for the survival of such religious traditions in the total-media zone of Western tech-wealth. An Islamic secret agent journeys to the heart of American rock culture to reap the whirlwind of his martyrological devotion to Allah.

"Hollywood Kremlin" introduces Leggy Starlitz of *Zeitgeist*(2000), the pragmatic middle-aged worldweary go-getter trying to help a grounded Russian aviator complete his sortie. Like so many Sterling protagonists, Starlitz is an inspiring blend of cool optimism and brute adaptation to the caterwauling world around him, largely forsaking acid-spray cynicism for the ethos of pragmatic global cooperation. (Until the very end of the story, that is.) The Starlitz double-feature continues with "Are You For 86?", where Leggy becomes a smuggler of do-it-yourself abortion pills (a drug called RU-486), pursued by fundamentalist Christian soldiers (in death's-head masks, black robes, and wielding plastic scythes no less!) across the Utah desert. The story's climax at the State Capitol and Museum is both intellectual and action-packed, Sterling's trademark double-play.

And finally, there's "Dori Bangs," a pseudo-mainstream fantasy of star-crossed Beatniks coming to terms with their artistic mediocrity in a commodified universe of death....

Suffice it to say, my summaries don't do justice to level of intelligence at work in these narratives. So much of what matters here is contained in the brilliant minutiae which hang on every descriptive passage, which color every extended dialogue. (Sterling's in the details.) While not as ambitiously original as the Shaper/Mechanist cycle of the mid '80s, these stories are all satisfying in their own brash, silly, madcap, populist way; even the boring ones are worth reading, as "meta-journalism" or political satire. Though a part of me hesitates to recommend them to non-SF enthusiasts. There are simply too many in-jokes.

Rating:
Summary: Uneven collection of hard to find Sterling stories.
Review:

None of the stories in this anthology are duds, but a few ("Are You for 86?") have an indulgent, smug flavor to them. But all are worth reading, and a few are truly wonderful. "Our Neural Chernobyl," a fictional book review about a popular science tome recounting a plague of increased intelligence, is hilarious. "The Shores of Bohemia" is a mind-bender set in what _seems_ like a low-tech future, but is actually something far more wonderful and terrible.

-Stefan Jones

Rating:
Summary: An Intriguing Mix Of Sterling's Short Stories
Review: Admittedly this isn't Sterling's best short story collection, yet it does contain an intriguing set of 11 tales which run the gamut from slightly hard science fiction ("Storming The Cosmos") to humor ("Hollywood Kremlin"). Sterling is at his finest writing lean, lyrical cyberpunk prose in the tales I mentioned. Yet anyone expecting a literary classic comparable in quality to William Gibson's "Burning Chrome" may be disappointed. Still, Sterling, as always, is intriguing to read for his ideas and his uncanny knack at conjuring plausible near future scenarios, as well as his fine writing.

Rating:
Summary: An Intriguing Mix Of Sterling's Short Stories
Review: Admittedly this isn't Sterling's best short story collection, yet it does contain an intriguing set of 11 tales which run the gamut from slightly hard science fiction ("Storming The Cosmos") to humor ("Hollywood Kremlin"). Sterling is at his finest writing lean, lyrical cyberpunk prose in the tales I mentioned. Yet anyone expecting a literary classic comparable in quality to William Gibson's "Burning Chrome" may be disappointed. Still, Sterling, as always, is intriguing to read for his ideas and his uncanny knack at conjuring plausible near future scenarios, as well as his fine writing.

Rating:
Summary: A mixed bunch of stories
Review: In this book, you will find 11 stories by Bruce Sterling and two collaborations. All but one of the stories has prviously appeared in magazine form between 1985 and 1991.

Most of the stories here are well worth reading. Especially "Hollywood Kremlin" and "Are You For 86?" which introduce Leggy Starlitz, one of Sterling's enduring characters. Also, the two collaborations, "Storming the Cosmos" and "The Moral Bullet" respectively with Rudy Rucker and John Kessel, are very good.

There are also one or two stories here which quite fankly should not have seen the light of day. "The Sword of Damocles" is the sort of exercise often tackled in writer's workshops and that is where is should have stayed.

There is not as much hard science in here in some of Sterling's other books but that does not detract from this collection. Indeed, a number of the best stories would escape all but the broadest definition of SF.

In the Leggy Starlitz tales, Sterling lays out lots of technical trivia in the same style as do many thriller writers. His facts are often wrong and self contradicting. Often laughably so and that does detract from the writing.

This is not the best collection to introduce you to Sterling's short fiction. I would recommend "A Good Old Fashioned Future" as an introduction but if you read and enjoy that and want more, you will not be disappointed by this book.

If you enjoy this book and want to read something in the same vein, I'd suggest William Gibson's collection "Burning Chrome" or the anthology "Mirrorshades" edited by Bruce Sterling.

Rating:
Summary: Hit and Miss, but the Good Ones Are Outstanding
Review: There are some definite losers here, like "The Sword of Damocles," an experiment that, well, failed. However, there are some incredible stories here--"Our Neural Chernobyl" is outstanding, and the incredible "We See Things Differently," about a future in which Islam is in ascendance and America is in decline, still gives me chills just thinking about it.

Rating:
Summary: Hits and Misses
Review: This collection of short stories contains some interesting "hits" (Hollywood Kremlin, Storming the Cosmos, We See Things Differently, Are you for 86?) and some disappointing "misses" (The Sword of Damocles).

Sterling is at his best when he is discussing alternative futures close to our own, and he has done his homework in studying two rival cultures that play roles in his alternate universes -- the Muslim world and the world of the old Soviet Union. He creates memorable characters (the international arms dealer/hustler Leggy Starlitz, for instance) and generates a lot of thought-provoking ideas (Will Turing-conscious AI's embrace Islam? Was the Tunguska blast really caused by an alien speacecraft? Will Islam become the dominant superpower -- threatened only by American rock and roill? Will genetically engineered pets capable of human-like thought and speech exist?).

Sterling's prose here is not of the quality of William Gibson's, or indeed, as good as Sterling is in other works, such as Schismatrix, or The Difference Engine. It is a good collection of stories, for the most part, and makes a good companion on a trip to the beach.

Rating:
Summary: A collection of cyberculture-infused short stories
Review: While not every story is a masterpiece, Bruce Sterling shows his understanding of cyberculture in stories like "Our Neural Chernobyl," a fictitious review of a book about the history of DNA manipulation. Sterling integrates this understanding with the "beat" culture as well, creating enjoyable and meaningful works such as "Jim and Irene," the story of a drifting phone-phreak and a widowed Russian lawyer, and "Dori Bangs," a what-if fiction based on the lives of two real-life hip-culture tragedies. This collection is a must-read for any cyberfreak or beat poet.