Distraction - Softcover

Sterling, Bruce

3.71

2,020 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1857989287 ISBN 13: 9781857989281

Publisher: Gollancz, 2000

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

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 Valpariso, spin doctor to possibly the next president ,is only half human but if he can straighten out his love life and solve a worldwide crisis that only he has noticed, America should be ripe for the taking . . .

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of 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 title" may belong to another edition of this title.