Compiled by Howard Waldrop (a renowned writer of deftly researched alternate-history stories and winner of both the Nebula and World Fantasy awards), Custer's Last Jump And Other Collaborations is an enthralling anthology of original short stories in which Howard Waldrop combined his talent with other skilled wordweavers such as George R. R. Martin, Bruce Sterling, and others. From a unique perspective on the saga of Troy; to a distant future in which Mankind is nearly extinct; to an alternate history when Crazy Horse uses Confederate monoplanes against Custer; Custer's Last Jump And Other Collaborations is a dazzling display of literary imagination, and a very strongly recommended read for science fiction fans enthusiasts everywhere.

John Shirley's stories never miss. Get any JS short story books. espicially this. JS is one of the most original, sick, twisted, weird, crushing, inspirational, funny and undiffinable writers working today. You know your reading John Shirley if your grossed out, inrigued, paranoid, and laughing out loud, and disturbing your friends.

Michael Swanwick is a modern writer. He writes very contemporary. His tales are strong, focused, and brilliant. Funy too -but in a dark sort of way.
They aren't suitable for everybody, I think, because of their mature themes. If you decide to buy a copy don't forget I warned you of their contents.
Many of these tales were nominated for major "literary" awards. Don't understand me wrongly: these are REAL literary stories.
Some other stories actually won awards. Left me wondering why not all of them won them. Swanwick's tales are head and shoulders above most other SF/F writing.
He writes novels too, but I urge you to start here. These stories are his best -and are better than his novels.
I have respect for this writer because he actually does write short stories after having gotten praise for his longer work. Most other writers break through with a couple of short stories -which most of the time aren't as interesting- and then start their mass-production of "novels." Fat bulks of paper written just for money. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but they do actually keep the good stuff from getting a more prominent view. Soon shoppers forget about the good books -won't buy them anymore, and shops display only things that sell. Exit the good books.
Okay, buy this book and reward this interesting author/writer.
The best of speculative fiction remains to be found in short stories. These are short and all gem-like.
That's all from me.

This collection of short stories is among the best ever written. Deeply profound, thoughtful and literary tales, these stories remind me of Franz Kafka and Philip K. Dick at their best. Swanwick utilizes science fiction in the exact way science fiction should be utilized: as a realistic and cautionary window into the future. His favorite themes include: The dangers of unfettered capitalism and emergence of corporate slave-labor; science and medical technology run amok; the nature of death, the soul, and the afterlife; and time travel and the complications involved in altering the past. He also seems to have an obsession with dinosaurs. If these themes sound like a recipe for intellectual and thoughtful literature, you are correct. Swanwick is able to convey fascinating philosophical concepts through his fiction, and does so with a clear and lucid style. Unlike some modern authors, Michael Swanwick does not try to experiment with an overly abstract or poetic style, and does not play tricks with the reader in an attempt to create a "new" style of writing prose. Swanwick sticks with a basic writing style, and invokes pioneering literary concepts through the actual content of his stories. This is mystical-realist literature at its best - realistic style and execution, combined with far-out mystical concepts.

Michael Swanwick's latest collection 'Tales of Old Earth' is masterful. The collection of stories ranges from Hard SF to the so-called Hard Fantasy (don't ask me to explain it). There are Hugo and World Fantasy Award Winners and numerous stories that were nominated for major awards.

It's unfortunate that Michael Swanwick isn't widely-recognized as the writer that he is. His work is consistently head-and-shoulders above the average work being turned out in the genre. But he writes predominantly short fiction, and short fiction never has, and never will be, recognized by the masses.

This is one of the best story collections I've ever read. There isn't a 'dog' in the bunch. Every story jumps out at the reader with its vibrancy. Michael Swanwick is a wordsmith of unparalleled talent. I have no doubt that he's the best writer of the current generation. I highly recommend this collection.

But not amazing. Sometimes it read like a history text book (ie rather flat though conveying interesting information) and other times sucked me in till I found myself 50 pages down the road and well into the wee hours of the morning ^_^

Some of the ideas have definitely not aged well (in terms of being quite as believable) but it's still a good collection. 1 220 page novel and 4-5 short stories comprise the book, plus an introduction.

I still like Heavy Weather better than any other Sterling book, but this will still be a goof addition to your scifi library.

Bruce Sterling is an author who is best known as William Gibson's sidekick. During the heady cyberpunk rebellion of the 80's, Gibson & Sterling lectured together, edited together & even co-wrote a book("The Difference Engine" which introduced the "Steampunk" genre). As can be seen from reading "Schismatrix Plus", Sterling's association with Gibson warped his writing permanently.

"Schismatrix Plus" gathers the first stories written by Sterling along with the novel inspired by them. These were written during the period when the author was a fan with a day job, not a professional writer (& not hanging with authors). It is simply one of the finest, most original examples of true science fiction to be published since The Golden Age ended. Of course, it's not classic space-opera in the Heinlein/Asimov sense, but "Schismatrix" is what most readers first loved about SF: stories that take place outside of Earth, in deep vacuum. In "Schismatrix Plus" we orbit Luna, attack with space pirates, live in the Rings of Saturn, terraform Mars & much more. We learn about Prigogenic Leaps, meet a geisha turned-banker-turned space habitat (really!) & watch humanity make cosmic choices. This is what science fiction should be, & it's very disappointing that Sterling has turned away from this early promise to deliver such non-thought provokers as "Heavy Weather" & "Holy Fire".

Maybe if enough of us read "Schismatrix Plus" & let Bruce Sterling know how much more we enjoy this type of novel than what he currently turns out, then maybe he'll return to writing them. Life is hope, so buy "Schismatrix Plus" & maybe he'll get the message!

Bruce Sterling hit his stride as a fine writer of ideas capable of writing vivid, incandescent prose with his early novel "Schisimatrix". Much to his publisher's credit, it has been combined with the other stories set in Sterling's Shaper/Mechanist future history. His saga is a novel re-invention of one of science fiction's oldest subgenres, space opera, coupled with the hip sensitivity of cyberpunk's computers and nanotechnology. Here he successfully conjurs a future where mankind has split into those interested in genetic enhancements "Shapers" versus those intrigued with prosthesics. Both factions struggle across the desolate landscapes of distant moons and space stations in the Solar System, while aliens watch with a slight degree of interest. I strongly disagree with others who think Sterling's writing is a bit dated and old fashioned. Having recently re-read "Schisimatrix", I have found his ideas, characters and setting as memorable as when I first read them years ago. It ranks with his recent novels "Heavy Weather" and "Holy Fire" as among his finest literary efforts.

When I imagined this book as I movie, I thought it would be like a futuristic movie set in the 1950's, with everything the same, the cars and clothes and hair, except for a few overdeveloped gadgets, a little bit like Minority Report. The gadgets are not attempts to master nature but very close imitations of nature, the Glass Bees of the title. They are unheimlich, to use a German word that I don't think Junger ever uses. The Zapparoni character reminded me more of Larry Ellison than Bill Gates, because Gates has a big house with lots of gadgets but Ellison transplanted an entire Japanese house and garden to America. Zapparoni shares the same Japanese perfectionism and fascination with miniatures. Junger also has some thoughts--very little happens in the book, which is almost a short story--on the connection between the perfection of technological means and dismemberment. Well worth reading.

The Glass Bees is a short novel about power, technology and nature. It's also the story of a life; the life of a veteran german captain that has lived in two very different worlds: the "old" world where words like "courage" or "pride" still meant something and a "new" world where the words have lost their meaning, where the power of the State has almost been surrended to huge high-tech transnational firms and where efficency criteria leads the behaviour of most of the peolple. The story tells the way in which the old world's man tries (unsuccsesfully most of the times)to fit himself in the new world.
In my opinion The Glass Bees is an outstanding novel althoug -I have to say it- not one of the 10 best books I have ever read as another reviewer says.

Captain Richard trained as a swashbuckling cavalry officer, but increasingly mechanised forms of warfare forced him to become a tank technician. Now, down on his luck after a life that reads like a radically compressed history of the twentieth century, he approaches the industrialist Zapparoni for a job. As the book came out in the 1950s and its author was born before the turn of the century, Zapparoni's products are called "robots" or "automata"; but they're a far cry from Asimov's Robots and Mechanical Men. As Bruce Sterling points out in his intriguing introduction, some passages from The Glass Bees, taken out of context, might easily have come from a computer magazine of the 1990s, blaring the wonders of miniaturisation and CD-ROM. The bulk of the novel comprises Richard's meditations before, during and after his interview with Zapparoni, and Junger's prescience is impressive not only in terms of the technology he envisages, but also in terms of its effect. Richard notes, for example, that the artificial bees' total efficiency in collecting nectar - not a drop left inside - will simply cause the flowers to die off through lack of cross-pollination. Written with brilliant and chilly clarity, and climaxing in an episode of restrained horror and terrifying ambiguity, The Glass Bees is an examination of the moral and cultural price of technology, from the perspective of a man who had seen plenty. However, although Sterling compares him with Celine, Junger is neither rancorous nor misanthropic. Indeed, despite the fact that Richard's wife is mentioned only a few times and never appears in person, the book is also a rather touching affirmation of human love.

Now, I'm not saying that Mirrorshades was bad. Not only did it contain one of the most definitive PR essays on cyberpunk (Sterling's introduction) but it also conains some very good stories. On the other hand, it could have been much, much, MUCH better.

Bruce Sterling, who edited Mirrorshades and similarly hand-picked the stories, clearly has his own agenda to the particular stories...at least, in some cases. Sterling assembled this almost as if it were an extension of his short-run newsletter, Cheap Truth (which he wrote under an assumed name of Omniveritas). In Cheap Truth, he attacked the existing science-fiction structure. He continues this trend in Mirrorshades.

The clearest example would be his choice of Gibson short work. Of the possible short stories, he picked The Gernsback Continuum and Red Star, Winter Orbit. Gernsback Continuum is, simply, not cyberpunk. It is Gibson's attack on Gernsbackian science fiction (Hugo Gernsback was really to blame for the "fantastic" science-fiction which used amazing gadgetry and no actual ideas). Sterling's view of the Movement (cyberpunk lit) was to erase the old Gernsbackian sf and replace it with real life rather than daydreams, so he picked this story as Gibson's contribution. This is absurd. The definitive cyberpunk short story is Burning Chrome. It is clear that Sterling chose to further his own political ends as opposed to providing a good overview-the best of the best-of cyberpunk fiction.

I could also have done without Sterling's final story, Mozart with Mirrorshades. This was, of course, an attempt to weave in the token item of the genre, the mirrored sunglasses. Sterling would have been much better off to include one of his Shaper-Mechanist stories, especially Spider Rose or Swarm. These stories are much better realized-and much more cyberpunk-than his choice. I would also have liked to see a more appropriate Rucker story...Rucker is great, but Tales of Houdini just wasn't appropriate.

Still, there are some great stories in here. Cadigan, Shirley, Shiner, Bear, Maddox, and others all contribute great works. If anything, Mirrorshades should be a starting point; find authors you like here, and then read the really groundbreaking stuff by them; John Shirley's Eclipse trilogy, everything by Gibson, Bear's Blood Music, Cadigan's Synners, Mindplayers, and Tea from an Empty cup, Rucker's Software trilogy, Sterling's Schismatrix, Maddox's Halo, and so forth.

However, if you want to simply read good cyberpunk short fiction, get the short story collections by the individual authors. As I said before, this is just a jumping-off point.

This book is a collection of cyberpunk stories assembled by Bruce Sterling. It is supposedly the definitive cyberpunk fiction collection. There are some really good stories in the book such as the Gernsback Continuum, Solstice, Freezone, Till Human Voices Wake Us, Stone Lives, and Mozart with Mirrorshades. These tales had advanced technological concepts and more importantly, good stories. The stories touched on gene engineering, time travel, cybernetics, and other popular cyberpunk themes. Some of the other stories were pretty interesting, but some just didn't seem to fit. For example, Tales of Houdini and Petra seemed out of place in this collection. Though they were both sci-fi tales, they didn't seem to be cyberpunk.

This is a collection of short stories by authors associated with the "cyberpunk movement" within the science fiction field. I enjoyed the book overall, but I wouldn't necessarily call this a representation of cyberpunk. In fact, three of the stories to me (and more among others) absolutely do not qualify as such, and two of them actually seem to be more rooted in the fantasy field than anything else. However, it's a good read, definitely worth it for the stories by Willam Gibson, both solo and collaborative. Interestingly, my favorite was "Petra" by Greg Bear, which is one of the fantasies I referred to: a very original idea and superbly written.

One final thing: if someone understands "Tales of Houdini", please contact me and explain. I just don't get it!

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.

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.

"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.

This is a fun read for geeks or anyone interested in hacker culture,or early internet culture. The book is published literally minutes before the internet explosion in the early 90's. So, most of the activity documented takes place on bbs's (bulletin boards) and not the actual internet. The internet is mentioned, but within its original academic/scientific context that we now think of as the roots of the internet.

Its interesting that this 'culture' had just reached the level of warranting an entire book right before it outgrew its own technology and expanded into the realm of the internet.

Don't expect any of Sterling's brilliant literary creativity in this one; just good journalism and documentation. He gives his rationalization for doing the project as his feeling threatened by the possiblity he would be targeted by frightened and misinformed federal agents, as was a fellow cyberpunk fiction writer and game-maker friend of his. All in all, its a fun read with a good punchline...

An exciting read - if you are in any way interested in the early development of the electronic side of our world, right the place were you read this now.

Hacking - OK, sounds like a good selling story.

But this is also about traditions of e-commerce: the phone companies. And about democracy: government vs. civil libertarians meeting on the electronic frontier, both exploring.

It is the history of the settling of cyberspace (how I hated this word until I read this book!).

Yes, history. Although it is less than a decade ago, the times of adventurous exploration are "long" ago, and books _have_ to be read about this.

Example: You read this book about people making their first unsecure steps into cyberspace, and then some day you recognize one of its main actors, Jerry Barlow, in the news speaking for the EFF, now an important organization in the world of civil liberties, but just in its early founding days, when mentioned in "The Hacker Crackdown"

Shurely our children will have excerpts from this in their history books at school :)

-Ulf

An exciting read - if you are in any way interested in the early development of the electronic side of our world, right the place were you read this now.

Hacking - OK, sounds like a good selling story.

But this is also about traditions of e-commerce: the phone companies. And about democracy: government vs. civil libertarians meeting on the electronic frontier, both exploring.

It is the history of the settling of cyberspace (how I hated this word until I read this book!).

Yes, history. Although it is less than a decade ago, the times of adventurous exploration are "long" ago, and books _have_ to be read about this.

Example: You read this book about people making their first unsecure steps into cyberspace, and then some day you recognize one of its main actors, Jerry Barlow, in the news speaking for the EFF, now an important organization in the world of civil liberties, but just in its early founding days, when mentioned in "The Hacker Crackdown"

Shurely our children will have excerpts from this in their history books at school :)

With this book, Bruce Sterling has created one of the most believable futures I have read. Most of his predictions are well-reasoned, and he doesn't overlook the social consequences of his technologies. The characters are believabler as well, although Mia/Maya is the only one fleshed out at length. Sterling's writing style is good; although he isn't exactly a poet, his sentences and paragraphs are clear and the book is quite readable. The only real problem is the plot, which is a little hard to follow. Personally, I can enjoy a good setting as well as a good plot, but if you demand plenty of action then you might not like this book.

Unfortunately, I haven't found Sterling's other novels to be as good as this one--I wasn't that impressed with 'Distraction' and didn't even finish 'Heavy Weather.' His short stories are well worth a look, though.

Holy Fire, by Bruce Sterling is pretty impressive. Sterling really packs ideas onto the page! He furnishes his setting with detail after telling detail: there is a much greater sense, seems to me, that the future being depicted is really in the future, and not just now + a few changes, as in so many SF books. And the details are cleverly backgrounded: offhandedly mentioned here, revealed by a turn of phrase there, implied by a description...(Also, he does stop and lecture on occasion: but the lectures are interesting, not distracting, and important to his story.) Anyway, the way Sterling does this stuff is great fun (in his short fiction too), and he's pretty good at little jokes on the one hand, and telling aphorisms on the other hand.

Holy Fire is set 100 years in the future, and the main character is a woman born in 2001 (a symbolic date, I'm sure; as the fact that the book opens with the death of her former lover, born in 1999, is symbolic too). This woman, Mia Ziemann, after attending her lover's "funeral", and receiving a mysterious "gift" from him (the password to his questionably legal Memory Palace) (a MacGuffin if there ever was one!) undergoes a crisis of sorts and decides that it is time to cash in her chips, as it were, and undergo the radical life-extension treatment which she has been planning. She comes out of the treatment a young woman in appearance, and a different person in attitude, and with a different name (Maya). As a result, she runs off (illegally) to Europe, trying to live the life of the late-21st century young people (it seems). The rest of the book follows her somewhat rambling adventures with a variety of Europeans, young and old, as well as eventually getting around to the meaning of the MacGuff -- er, I mean, Memory Palace.

The book is very strong on the description and rationale for the culture and economics of a future dominated by medical treatment, life-extension methods, and (as a result of the previous two), old people. Sterling knows that if people live a long time, society will be very different, and he does a good job showing us one way it might be different. His views of both young (say, up to 60 or so) and old (up to 120 or more at the time of the book) people are very well done. Part of the book is an attempt to get at what the difference between a society of very-long-lived people (like up to 150 years or so), and a society of near-immortals (up to 1500 years or more) might be: and here he waves his hand at some neat ideas but kind of fails to really convince.

Throughout it is readable, interesting, and funny. The resolution is solid, though as I have suggested, he waves at a more "transcendental" ending, and doesn't really succeed there. But Maya's story is honest and convincing, though Maya as a character is a little harder to believe. She seems to be whatever the plot needs her to be at certain times: this is partly explainable by the very real physical and psychological changes she must be undergoing: but at times it seems rather arbitrary.

Since the beginnings of cyberpunk, variations by various authors have tried putting the sci-fi back into Cyberpunk. In Holy Fire, Sterling manages to get the almost drug-induced strangeness of Stephenson for a scene or two, yet portrays a future based solidly in the events of today that is reminiscent of a modern era 1984. His characters are interesting and off-beat, but show a good bit of insight into the society of the future. The first 50 pages show the world as a terrifying future. The plot for the remainder of the book is good, but doesn't live up to the world that it portrays. His attempts at classical symbolism are interesting and intentional and thus humorous. The meaning that lies thinly veiled is an obvious warning to our generation. Perhaps we should listen before we reach his perhaps-too-distant future.

This collection contains seven stories, all previously published in magazines between 1993 and 1998. One story, "Big Jelly" was co-authored with Rudy Rucker.

I liked this anthology a lot despite the fact that a couple of the stories were rather weak. Some of the stories seem to have been written by extrapolating current events into the future and these, like "The Littlest Jackal" are the weakest in the collection. Also, in that story, the author mis-places Helsinki north of the Arctic circle and so he has the sun not setting in the summer, that was just sloppy writing. The stories such as "Maneki Neko" (my favourite) and the "Deep Eddy" series, that extrapolate technology are the ones that make the book worth while. In these, Sterling's wry view of the way that technology might change our world is both thought provoking and funny.

The last three stories are all set in the same world and they follow the largely unrelated exploits of a group of people living on the edge of a highly technological society. I felt as though the author was taking some of the people that he met while writing "The Hacker Crackdown" and then dropping them into the middle of the 21st century. These are three great stories.

As I discussed in my review of "Distraction," Bruce Sterling is a puzzling writer. At his best -- his non-fiction work, "The Hacker Crackdown" -- he is a fabulous, witty, fascinating writer. But his fiction, particularly his novels (I refer here to "Islands in the Net," "Holy Fire" and "Distraction," plus "Heavy Weather," which I started but never finished), tends to fall short of his aim.

His short stories tend to fare better. They are less ambitious but also tighter, and hence less distracting. "A Good Old-Fashioned Future" represents his latest collection of stories; the earlier works are "Globalhead" and "Crystal Express," which contains one absolute knock-out story called "Swarm."

These stories are less experimental than "Globalhead" and more successful. Most of them are set in the near future and focus on collapsing societies. The last three are set in the same world and form a loose novella; Sterling seems to like this setting.

None of the stories in here drags unacceptably, and some are quite good. It may be that Sterling has settled down to writing clean readable stories, rather than trying to write "outside the box."

Bruce Sterling rose to prominence in the 1980s as the master visionary and literary theorist of the cyberpunk movement. Although he has not left cyberpunk's sensibility behind, his newer fiction incorporates a wider range of themes, philosophical concepts, and just plain fun which is immediately engaging and entertaining as well as intellectually satisfying.

The best of Sterling's fiction- and "A Good Old-Fashioned Future" definitely belongs in that category- extrapolates current events and trends into the near future, then gives them a baroque twist. Here, Sterling's combination of a mad-cow disease epidemic and the rise of Indian cinema combine to make "Sacred Cow" a darkly humorous exploration of reverse colonialism. Likewise, cultural warfare- whether between differing intellectual movements, government and squatting entrepreneurs, or ethnic minorities against their own state and each other- invests and links the three last stories in the book in a progression that is as intricate as it is involving.

It's not all Bollywood and literary theory, though- Sterling loyalists will be pleased with the return of his irrepressible outlaw Leggy Starlitz. Scheming to free a group of islands from Danish control in order to set up a money-laundry, Starlitz's efforts are as amusing as they are, always, ultimately futile.

All in all, this collection is excellently balanced between the foreboding and the comic, the earnest and the absurd, and it's a must-have both for Sterling fans and those who just want to know how good science fiction can be.