Sterling, Bruce 1954-

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STERLING, Bruce 1954-

PERSONAL: Born April 14, 1954, in Brownsville, TX; son of M. B. (an engineer) and Gloria (a registered nurse; maiden name, Vela) Sterling; married Nancy Adell Baxter, November 20, 1979. Education: Attended University of Texas at Austin, 1972-76. Politics: "Green." Religion: None.

ADDRESSES: Agent—Writers House, Inc., 21 West 26th St., New York, NY 10010.

CAREER: Texas Legislative Council, Austin, proofreader, 1977-83; writer, 1983—.

MEMBER: American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science Fiction Writers of America, Electronic Frontier Foundation.

AWARDS, HONORS: Hugo Award for Best Novelette, Mystery Writers of America, 1997, for Bicycle Repairman, and 1999, for Taklamakan; three stories, "Swarm," "Spider Rose," and "Cicada Queen," have been nominated for Hugo and/or Nebula awards.

WRITINGS:

SCIENCE FICTION

Involution Ocean (novel), Berkley Publishing (New York, NY), 1977.

The Artificial Kid (novel), Harper (New York, NY), 1980.

Schismatrix (novel), Arbor House, 1985.

(Editor and contributor) Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, Arbor House, 1986.

Islands in the Net (novel), Arbor House, 1988.

Crystal Express (story collection; includes "Swarm," "Spider Rose," and "Cicada Queen"), illustrated by Rick Lieder, Arkham House, 1989.

(With William Gibson) The Difference Engine (novel), Bantam (New York, NY), 1990.

Globalhead (story collection), Ziesing (Shingletown, CA), 1992.

Distraction: A Novel, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1998.

Zeitgeist, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 2000.

The Zenith Angle, Del Rey (New York, NY), 2004.

Also author of the novelettes Bicycle Repairman and Taklamakan.

NONFICTION

The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier (nonfiction), Bantam (New York, NY), 1992.

(With Hans Moravec and David Brin) Thinking Robots, an Aware Internet, and Cyberpunk Librarians: The LITA President's Program (collected essays), edited by R. Bruce Miller and Milton T. Wolf, Library and Information Technology Association, 1992.

Globalhead: Stories, Mark V. Ziesing (Shingletown, CA), 1992.

Heavy Weather, Bantam (New York, NY), 1994.

Schismatrix Plus, Ace Books (New York, NY), 1996.

Holy Fire: A Novel, Bantam (New York, NY), 1996.

The Artificial Kid, HardWired (San Francisco, CA), 1997.

Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years, Random House (New York, NY), 2002.

(Writer of introduction) Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island, Signet (New York, NY), 2004.

Work represented in anthologies, including Universe 13, edited by Terry Carr, 1983; Heatseeker, edited by John Shirley, compiled and with a foreword by Stephen P. Brown, Scream/Press, 1989; Semiotext(e) SF, edited by Rudy Rucker, Peter Lambourne Wilson, and Robert Anton Wilson, Autonomedia, 1990; Universe 1, edited by Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber, Doubleday, 1990; When the Music's Over, edited by Lewis Shiner, Bantam Spectra, 1991. Has written extensively online, including blogs and articles. Also contributor of numerous speculative fiction stories to periodicals, including Omni, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Interzone.

SIDELIGHTS: Bruce Sterling is "the standard bearer of the cyberpunks, a loosely grouped cadre of science-fiction hotshots who have taken the genre by storm during the past few years," according to Village Voice critic Richard Gehr. The "cyberpunk" movement, described by Sterling as "an unholy alliance of the technical world of pop culture, visionary fluidity, and street-level anarchy" in his work Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, seeks to examine the benefits, as well as pose the troubling questions, that result when scientific discoveries push the boundaries of human knowledge.

Mirrorshades, edited by Sterling, collects twelve stories, including works by William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, and John Shirley, among others. "Gaze into a pair of mirrorshades and what do you see?" asks Gehr. "Yourself, and the world you live in. Slip a pair on and what happens? Instant anonymity, outlaws, police, and thieves. This metaphor is something a culture addict can get behind, and no one has gotten further behind it than Bruce Sterling." Though Gehr praised Sterling's introduction, calling it "a dazzling, eye-opening ride through the modern world," he later cautioned: "the remainder of the book barely justifies its claims." Referring to the final story, "Mozart in Mirrorshades," cowritten by Sterling and Lewis Shiner, Gehr declared that it "drags history's major youth icon kicking and screaming (for joy) into the present, summing up the cyberpunk aesthetic in a torrent of wild action and virtuoso speculation." Gerald Jonas, writing in New York Times Book Review, summarized: "What we find [in the stories] is a science fiction that takes the runaway power of science and technology for granted, that plays paranoia straight and finds comic relief in anarchy, and gives center stage to characters who ask of the future not, 'What's new under the sun?' but 'What's in it for me?'"

Sterling's next work, Islands in the Net, pits protagonist Laura Webster, a resort manager, against a complex web of conspiracy when she discovers her corporate employer's collusion with information pirates in this novel of intrigue set in the near future. In Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, Tom Easton explained that "the world is growing ever more tightly linked by computerized data exchanges, summing up to the 'Net' of the title, but there are a few places—islands—that parasitize the Net as data pirates (e.g., Grenada, Singapore). There is also Africa, so beset by ecological and political disaster that it is a metaphorical island totally surrounded by the Net, but not part of it."

Roz Kaveney, reviewing Islands in the Net in the Washington Post Book World, stated: "Sterling has a real gift for turning ideas from the science pages of newspapers into entertaining science-fictional conceits." Kaveney further noted: "There is nothing cold or heartless about Sterling's hip portrayal of the early 21st century" and terms the novel "a series of gaudy but information-packed tourist maps of a future." Gerald Jonas, in the New York Times Book Review, remarked that Sterling "reveals himself . . . to be a serious and insightful futurist" and added that although "the always surprising plot jumps around the world," the author "remains in firm control throughout." In the Nation, Erik Davis wrote: "Bruce Sterling does not have Gibson's visual imagination nor his infectious style, but he fleshes out his cyberpunk imaginings with more concentrated thought." "Sterling himself is steeped in cutting-edge technologies," Davis continued, "and the knowledge shows itself." He concluded that the book "is like an intelligent computer simulation of global politics."

Crystal Express comprises twelve stories, including the Nebula and Hugo Award-nominees "Swarm," "Spider Rose," and "Cicada Queen." Gregory Feeley, in the Washington Post Book World, commented that Sterling's writings are "characterized by intellectual playfulness, a careful, almost mannered style and a flamboyant virtuosity in matters of formal invention." Dan Chow, reviewing the collection in Locus, judged, "If anything is repetitive in Crystal Express, it is the author's remarkable knowledge of his characters and settings, no matter how diverse they might be. . . . Taken as a whole, they form a meditation greater than the sum of the stories themselves." Chow declared that "the cyberpunk label is far too restrictive for this author" and deemed Sterling a writer "of dazzling range and insight."

The Difference Engine, cowritten with Gibson, is a novel falling into the "alternative history" subgenre of science fiction. The book, observed Paul Delaney in London Review of Books, "belongs to the thriving Postmodern genre of historical pastiche" and "shuffles the cards of history in order to prove by example the 'Wiener thesis' of recent years: that Britain's ambivalent response to the Industrial Revolution has led to its relative economic backwardness today." The "difference engines" are steam-driven computers, threatened by the Modus, a terrorist-wielded computer virus. Delaney summarized the political scenario: "The Industrial Radicals have made Britain a richer and more egalitarian country; but they have also turned their information system into a political weapon. . . . Herein lies a favourite theme of Gibson and Sterling: the official institutions of a society always work on yesterday's agenda, while the future is being made by an underground of anarchists, criminals and fanatics."

The onset of a new century found Sterling, like many people, pondering the what the future could bring. Using the seven ages of humanity outlined in Shakespeare's As You Like It, he explored this topic in Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years, with thoughtful essays that do not try to scare readers to death with horrific predictions. The book was well-received, Booklist, reviewer Margaret Flanagan wrote, "Often surprising, always humorous, Sterling's individual slant on what may evolve serves as a visionary overview of the twenty-first century."

Sterling's novel The Zenith Angle uses fiction to look at life in a post-9/11 world. The novel's protagonist Derek Vandeveer, leaves the private sector to work for the government, trying to keep cyberspace secure. It is a frustrating job as Vandeveer tried to find out who has attacked a top secret satellite. A Library Journal reviewer hailed the book as "highly recommendable" because it incorporates "up-to-the-minute technology with engaging characters and a clear vision of tomorrow."

Sterling once commented that his writing is concerned with "technological literacy, imaginative concentration, visionary intensity, and a global, twenty-first-century point of view. I want to bridge the gap between the two cultures, or at least shout loudly from the bottom of the gulf."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 72, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1992.

McCaffrey, Larry, editor, Across the Wounded Galaxies: Interviews with Contemporary American Science Fiction Writers, University of Illinois Press (Bloomington, IL), 1990.

Spinrad, Norman Science Fiction in the Real World, Southern Illinois University Press (Carbondale,
IL), 1990.

PERIODICALS

Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, December, 1988, pp. 163-165.

Booklist, October 15, 1996, p. 408; November 15, 1998, p. 574; November 1, 2002, p. 456.

Entertainment Weekly, January 31, 1992, p. 54; April 23, 2004, p. 86.

Fortune, October 9, 2000, p. 323.

Kirkus Reviews,September 15, 2002, p. 1373; April 1, 2004 p. 304.

Library Journal, October 15, 2000, p. 108; May 15, 2004, p. 118

Locus, September, 1989, p. 27.

London Review of Books, August 29, 1991, p. 22.

Nation, May 8, 1989, p. 636.

New York Times Book Review, January 18, 1987, p. 33; October 2, 1988, p. 30; December 20, 1992, p. 18; December 27, 1992, p. 22.

PC Magazine, May 25, 1993, p. 85.

Popular Science, June 1, 2004, p. 116.

Publishers Weekly, September 7, 1992, p. 87; September 5, 1994, p. 97; August 5, 1996. p. 435; November 9, 1998, p. 60; September 23, 2002, p. 62-63; April 5, 2004, p. 46.

Reason, January, 2004, pp. 42-50.

Texas Monthly, December, 1992, pp. 98-100; December, 1995, p. 28; December.

Time, December 21, 1998, p. 66.

Village Voice, February 3, 1987, p. 50; January 17, 1989, p. 58.

Village Voice Literary Supplement, December, 1992, p. 5.

Washington Post Book World, June 30, 1985, p. 6; June 26, 1988, p. 10; February 26, 1989, p. 12; August 27, 1989, p. 11.

Whole Earth Review, summer, 1993, p. 27.