Distraction - Hardcover

Sterling, Bruce

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1857988302 ISBN 13: 9781857988307

Publisher: Gollancz, 1999

Synopsis

Near future Earth and a new cold war is in full swing - the Dutch Cold War. The US is a shadow of its former self and in hock to Europe, its infrastructure falling apart at the seams and with nomadic tribes roaming from state to state living according to no one's rules but their own. Oscar and his krewe are on newly elected Senator Bambakias's campaign bus making their way home to Washington when they are halted on the Texas/Louisiana border. It is the beginning of a new life for the Senator's campaign manager. He finds himself one on one with Govenor Green Huey who wants to turn Louisiana into the centre of the USA, making a political move on the Nobel Prize winning Greta - a scientist at the one facility that all factions within US politics see as a prime gambling chip - only to fall in love with her, and suddenly after maneouvring for power on the behalf of others, National Science Council advisor to President Two Feathers. But Oscar will always be moving according to his own agenda, because unlike those he works for he is truly non-affiliated - he has no tribe, nomad or Hispanic, because he was genetically engineered over the border in Mexico. Though Oscar doesn't suspect it, meeting him, loving him, gives Greta the key to making America great again, the biggest scientific breakthrough that man might ever make.

About this title

Review:

Politics is the art of the possible, the do-able, 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 turn the genetically anomalous Oscar and the scientist he has fallen for into attractive acquisitions. Having a senator he has just help get elected go stark mad, and finding himself on the Net-wide hit list of every nut with a grudge, are the sort of things with which Oscar copes 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 make this 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 sf novel from the acclaimed author of Cyberpunk standard MIRROR SHADES and the award winning ISLANDS ON THE NET

About this edition

• Publisher: Gollancz
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1857988302
• ISBN 13: 9781857988307
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 439