BOOK ✓ Schismatrix Î Bruce Sterling
From world to world building empires struggling for his cause but often fighting for his lifeHe is a rebel and a rogue a pirate and a politician a soldier and a scholar He can alter the direction of man's destiny if he can surviveSCHISMATRIX Eh Hard science sci fi with a psychedelic edge Mechs versus shapers in a diplomatic battle for the something or other Covers centuries feels like it took months to slog throughI'm reading it twenty five years too late
Bruce Sterling Î Schismatrix BOOK
SchismatrixIc training and artificial conditioningBoth factions are fighting to control the Schismatrix of humankindThe Shapers are losing the battle but Abelard Lindsay a failed and exiled Shaper diplomat isn't giving up Across the galaxy Lindsay moves This book has been on my list after reading an excellent short story by Sterling dealing with this same universe Well after finally finding a copy of this and reading it I can say I wasn't missing much Like a lot of SF the characters seem like cardboard cutouts and the plot is not good to say the least Actually this book is confusing as hell Why are the characters doing what they are doing What is motivating them Sterling does present a colorful vision of the future where humans abandon Earth and live out on lunar colonies on asteroids and moons of Saturn They are divided up into Mechanists and Shapers They apparently don't like each other but it's never made clear why There is an alien race called The Investors who arrive and there is a period of détente Then the Investors go away or something Who knows This really seems like a several short story pieces that are clumsily cobbled together to make a novel The chapters are sometimes several years apart in the timeline with no decent grounding of what happened during the intervening years or why There's also dozens of characters who drift in and out of the novel at various times Like I said confusing as hell