Distraction - Softcover

Sterling, Bruce

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553576399 ISBN 13: 9780553576399

Publisher: Bantam USA, 1999

Synopsis

Essef - Distraction begins in 2044, and its plot revolves around Oscar's political battle with the mad governor of Louisiana, Green Huey, who is one of Sterling's most entertaining if least subtle creations. This gets started with a hilarious scene where an Air Force base is conned/forced by Huey into holding a bake-sale/road-block shakedown; Oscar is among the shaken. This sort of thing happens in broken-down empires with hyper-inflation, terminal political stagnation, and a collapsed economic base. But Sterling isn't just reflecting his recent travels in Russia; no, this is a high-tech information society, so instead of being run by the Organizatsiya, the country is run by networked permanent State of Emergency committees, media spin, pork-barrel spending, and the personal ``krewes'' of members of the overclass. There are better ways for Oscar to attack Huey than to have him shot, or than to have somebody run against him. These center around the Buna National Collaboratory in Buna, Texas, a huge self-contained biological research station, ``funded, created, and built in an age when recombinant DNA had been considered as dangerous as nuclear power plants'' (p. 24). Huey seems to be trying to subvert its administration, so Oscar engineers a laboratory revolution which puts Greta in charge of the Collaboratory. (The depiction of scientists' politics and mores at large research facility is dead-on, though it may be more funny if you grew up in and around the NIH. Giving bit characters at the Collaboratory the names of present-day neuroscientists is a bit heavy-handed, however.)

About this title

Review:

Politics is the art of the possible, the "doable", as Sterling's skewed hero, Oscar Valparaiso, keeps calling his wild improvised plans as if saying the word made them so. Oscar's usually successful schemes are as cobbled together as his own genetics--Oscar is not quite human. Investigating a genetic research facility for a Senate committee, he finds a potential power base, and an enemy worth his attention--the Governor of Louisiana has taken to conquering federal facilities using gangs of the homeless as his deniable mercenaries, and his interest in biotech makes the genetically anomalous Oscar, and the scientist he has fallen for, attractive acquisitions. Having a senator he has just help get elected go stark raving mad, and finding himself on the Net-wide hit list of every nut with a grudge, are the sort of things that Oscar copes with all the time--love and other altered states of consciousness are a bit more of a problem. Endless witty extrapolations of social and scientific paradoxes and a constant cheeky elaboration of already convoluted plot lines give this the brio of Sterling's best short fiction--if there is a more entertaining near-future SF novel this year, we will be in luck. --Roz Kaveney

Book Description:

Latest full length novel from the key, award-winning author of ISLANDS ON THE NET

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam USA
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0553576399
• ISBN 13: 9780553576399
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 532