Review: Schismatrix+ by Bruce Sterling

Bruce Sterling is, together with William Gibson, one of the godfathers of the Cyberpunk genre.

Oddly enough, while I love the aesthetic and the themes, I have not actually read many books in the genre, possibly because the ones I read (e.g. Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy) weren’t much to my liking (see my notes on The Peripheral).

So it’s not surprising that I had not read anything (or if I did, I forgot it) by Sterling, and I decided to give it a try.

Mild spoilers ahead.

The Shaper/Mechanist universe

Schismatrix+ is a book compose of a novel, Schismatrix, and a few short stories set in the same universe, a future where humankind has fractured (see, that’s where the schism in the title comes from) into sects, micro-countries, corporation-states etc, and the major split is between shapers, aka post-humans who believe in improving themselves through genetics, and mechanists, those who prefer cybernetics and a merge of homo sapiens and machine.

There’s more schisms, like in everything, and people drift between one and the other over time so the boundaries are less fluid than the universe would have you believe, but it’s an interesting setting (and not an uncommon one, tbh).

(Sidenote: the Italian translation of the title is “la matrice spezzata”, or “the broken matrix”, which is quite different from the original but it’s quite good)

The place where this happens is the solar system, cause post-humans have not yet achieved interstellar travel, but at some point alien races do appear, the first and chief of which is the investors, a race of space-faring economic-minded reptilians/insectoids.

I really like the concept of the investors, which are, in some sense, a more grounded version of Star Trek’s Ferengi. They are obsessed with wealth, not particularly bright nor threatening, but they are scary in the way that someone far more powerful than you can always be, even if they play by some legalistic and deal-oriented rules.

I also really enjoyed the fact that in this future world there’s a general societal collapse, but we still have patents. Truly a dystopia.

Is this cyberpunk?

I am not sure what cyberpunk is. I thought the core concepts are the fragmentation of society, a lot of computers, the death of traditional nations and rise of corporations. I didn’t expect aliens. By this point of view this is a lot less cyberpunk than, say, Neuromancer or Burning Chrome.

TVTropes says that “Schismatrix is to Neuromancer what Gormenghast is to The Lord of the Rings“, and I honestly have no idea what they mean.

I don’t know, drawing lines hardly ever work, let’s just say this is a book about post-humanism and human societies which got too complex for their own good.

Prigoginic what?

Ilya Prigogine was a Nobel prize winner chemist, who, among other things, studied complex systems.

Sterling heard of him and made up the “prigoginic levels of complexity”. This is akin to old science fiction where “the fourth dimension” was a parallel universe, i.e. it uses some of the vocabulary but fundamentally ignores the actual meaning.

Anyway, in this universe, systems will sometimes make a leap from a level of complexity to another. So, the primordial chaos of the pre-universe made a leap into space-time and matter; matter made a leap into primordial life; life beame intelligent and self-conscious, and here is where we, and the shaper/mechanist universe is.

But the beauty of this post-humanist universe is it’s constantly running, and on the verge of, the fifth prigoginic leap. Something which we cannot describe, since it’s beyond what we can even conceive of.

Here’s an interesting on prigogine and science fiction, written better than I ever could.

Fun trivia: Bruce Sterling in the intro says Prigogine read the stories and said they had nothing to do with what he said, and Sterling agrees.

The stories

Before I forget them completely, these are the specific details about each story.

Here are more spoilers.

Schismatrix

The original novel which got “expanded” in this book. It’s a sort of picaresque adventure following Abelard Lindsay through various adventures, changes of identities, meeting with friends and enemies and so on, across the whole solar system and a span of decades (centuries?). The novel reads lightly even when it touches difficult topics, and it was very enjoyable for me.

It ends in an interesting way, and I particularly enjoyed the irony built into imagining of the various quasi-states, such as the Mare Tranquilitatis People’s Circumlunar Zaibatsu or the Czarina-Kluster People’s Corporate Republic.

7/10

Swarm

Probably the most beautiful story, which has also been made into a very nice animation in Netflix’s Death Love & Robots anthology. It explores the common sci-fi theme of “social insects in space”, but it puts a beautiful spin on it, embracing the idea that the Swarm not only prospers without something analog to our intelligence, but explicitly chooses to avoid it: from its point intelligence is a trait that leads to species fizzling out in a few millennia.

10/10

Spider Rose

Another one used for Death Love & Robots, tho they changed it slightly. I’d argue the original version is better, but the animation is good too. Basically: lonely mechanist receives a pet.

6.5/10

Cicada Queen

We revisit (tho originally this was written before the main novel) the Cicada Kluster, where a mixed community has developed around an investor queen. A Shaper named Landau invents a new kind of jewel, and decides what to do with his new riches. We also get to know the lobsters, a kind of mechanist post-human which wraps themselves in an exoskeleton which allows them to live in the void of space, becoming more and more self absorbed and detached from the human race.

7/10, mostly because of the lobsters.

Sunken Gardens

The people of Terraform-Kluster have been terraforming Mars for a while, and there are regular tournaments/battle between factions of “vassal” tribes to show their skills.

7/10, tho I had to go through it twice to appreciate it

Twenty Evocations

Some experimental post-modernist writing; basically we see the life of a Shaper named Nikolai Leng through fragments of his life in the form of “evocations”: singulat titles like “ECLECTIC EPILECTIC” or “CHILD INVESTMENT” followed by a sentence or a couple paragraphs. Kind of like you could imagine seeing flashes of your life before dying. Surprisingly moving.

7/10.

Conclusion

I think this was well worth the read. I didn’t love everything about it, but I liked a lot of it. This was not the book I expected, but it’s good.

Vote: 7/10, the book is a classic for good reasons.

Review: Greatest Hits by Harlan Ellison

I did not know Harlan Ellison until some time ago. I had read some his work in anthologies or magazines, but I never really pay attention to names.

But then I noticed this collection of short stories, and I realized he’s the author of “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”, and thought I’d give it a chance.

Mostly, I’m convinced short stories are the format for speculative fiction.

Sure, I enjoyed the whole saga of Herbert’s Dune, or Asimov’s Foundation cycle. but I mostly like ideas, and a short story gives you that in a few pages instead of hundreds.

Anyway, this is an interesting collection; Ellison is an author of his time, and he perfectly embeds the New Wave style of science fiction (experimental writing, social critique, a penchant for shocking the reader). You may like this or not, but I think it’s worth reading it just to get yourself acquainted.

The Stories

I forgot to write this review soon after the book, so by this point I’ve already forgotten some of them… so these are some I do remember.

“Repent, Harlequin,” Said the Ticktockman (1966)

A classic tale of The Fool fighting against the establishment, the broken cog in the perfect machine, the rebel, the joker. I think this is written in an interesting way, but not particularly interesting plot-wise. Stephen King recycled the Ticktockman in his Dark Tower saga (book 3, “Wastelands”), and I think he did it mostly cause it’s just a cool name.

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1967)

One of the most famoys SF short stories, probably in the top 5 of most memorable ones (I’ll let you pick the others, but I have my choices, if you ask).

It’s harsh, and depressing, and everybody should read it.

The Deathbird

I think the author wanted to tell me something and I didn’t understand it. This one won a ton of awards, but for me it was “meh”.

Jeffty Is Five

Without too many spoilers, the story follows a kid who’s friend with Jeffty, and, well, Jeffty is always five years old. I cannot express how good this story is. It’s deeply moving and by far the better in the collection IMO, even tho the idea is so simple it is completely contained in the title. A masterpiece.

Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes

A great short “amazing stories” kind of tale, palate cleanser.

Mefisto in Onyx

This one also won some awards, also a fun “amazing stories” kind of tale. Follows a telepath who goes to visit a mean on death row, to actually confirm whether he’s guilty or not. Good story.

The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World

Look, the title is better than the story. It’s a deeply experimental composition with no linear narrative, and while I can agree it’s good literature, I’m not convinced it’s good SF. Wikipedia has the whole plot so you can go read it.

How Interesting: A Tiny Man

Another wonderful simple idea: a scientist creates a tiny man, which is initially considered a fun novelty, and then a target of hate. Very good story, very good writing.

Conclusion

I listened to this in audio form, and Harlan Ellison himself narrates most of it. Ellison was an odd person, and he reads the stories with so much emphasis as to almost be distracting. which in some ways compounds the effect of the stories, and in some others is just, well, annoying.

Still, he’s the author, so that’s how they should be read, perhaps.

I feel some of the stories have lost their power over time, and on the other side some may seem uncouth to modern readers, but I think anyone who claims to like SF should read them.

Also, again, the Jeffty story is wonderful and worth the price of the book by itself.

Vote: 7.5/10, Solid book, plenty of good stories, some iconic ones.

Micro Review: Fragile Things

I started listening to this audiobook around the time Vulture’s article about Neil Gaiman came out.

This book contains some of my favourite stories, not just by the author, but among all stories I’ve read and I remember, such as A Study in Emerald, which is probably my favorite fanfiction of both Sherlock Holmes and the Cthulhu mythos.

But the behaviour described in the article is so fowl I cannot in good honesty recommend the experience of listening to the author’s voice reading his own words after knowing of the accusations.

I’m no prude, I’m no judge, I’ve got my own opinions and I’ll bite my tongue and keep them to myself.

But I can say this felt like a punch in the gut. The folks over at Fumettologica (in Italian, use some translation service) have a very nice article on why this is so upsetting. We thought Gaiman was one of the good ones, this feels like betrayal (and I am in no way trying to say the fans’ feelings are comparable to the victims’).

Anyways, I’d suggest if you want to experience the stories, maybe get the Dark Horse collection via Humble Bundle, or pick the book at a library.

He’s rich enough and won’t suffer from this either way, but it may make your soul feel a bit better.

Micro Review: You Like It Darker

Following up on my summer trend of reading short stories, I got this recent collection of Stephen King’s short fiction.

I remember reading Night Shift when I was a kid (my dad loved King, and we had plenty of his books around) and it’s probably one of the things that stayed with me the most from that era.

I mostly forget everything I read, but I can still remember most of the stories in tt. I like to think it’s because they were really, really, good.1

Quitters, Inc may be my favorite short story after Asimov’s The Last Question and Brown’s Sentry, it’s just so powerful.

Anyway, when I noticed there was a new short story collection I decided to give it a go. And well, Stephen delivers.

If you haven’t read a lot of King and you’re only familiar with It or Cujo, you may think he’s mostly an horror writer. But he’s not, in fact his best fiction (see Quitters, Inc) is speculative fiction at it’s best.

It’s our world but a little off . A little something that makes it uncomfortable, scary, or just makes you think harder. Just like in Night Shift, some stories have zero paranormal and are just unsettling. Unlike Night Shift, many (most?) stories seem to have a positive ending.

I guess Stephen got softer with age, just like me.

Vote: 7-/10, not all stories are great, and overall this is not as good as some of his older collections, but it’s still good.

  1. . Rather than think my memory was better 20+ years ago. ↩︎

Micro Review: Trigger Warning

Some time ago I listened to Neil Gaiman’s short story collection Smoke and Mirrors and I liked it and thought I should read more like it. So I did, and I listened to Trigger Warning.

This collection is just as good as the other one: a few stories are fantastic, most are good, some are meh. It’s been a few months since I went through this, and like for most short story collections I have since forgotten most of them.

Still, I recommend it. There are occasional poems in it. Many stories refer or happen in worlds by other authors, so you may enjoy them more, or less, if you are familiar with the source material. But this is just normal for Gaiman stuff.

There’s also a short story where we meet again Shadow Moon, the protagonist of the (wonderful) novel “American Gods”. But somehow stuff happened to him between that novel and this short story. That’s cause there was another collection between this and the other one I read, and for some reason I skipped it.

It is one of the blessed rights of readers, to read books out of order.

Vote: 7/10, I need to get more of his other short story collections, possibly in order.

Micro Review: Smoke and Mirrors

This is the first collection of Neil Gaiman’s short stories.

I knew many of these already, having experienced them in various formats (I highly recommend you the Neil Gaiman Dark Horse comics collection on Humble Bundle) and I listened to this on Audible, read by The Author Himself.

He’s quite good at reading his own stuff.

Like many short stories collection, it’s a mixed bag: some are good, some are great, some are hard to evaluate, and some are just meh.

But it’s quite fun overall, and I would, and probably will, read it again.

Vote: 7/10, I need to get his other short story collections.