Holy Fire (Bantam Spectra Book) [Paperback]

Bruce Sterling (Author)

Book Description

Series: Bantam Spectra Book | Publication Date: October 1, 1997

The 21st century is coming to a close, and the medical industrial complex dominates the world economy. It is a world of synthetic memory drugs, benevolent government surveillance, underground anarchists, and talking canine companions. Power is in the hands of conservative senior citizens who have watched their health and capital investments with equal care, gaining access to the latest advancements in life-extension technology. Meanwhile, the young live on the fringes of society, ekeing out a meagre survival on free, government-issued rations and a black market in stolen technological gadgetry from an earlier, less sophisticated age.

Mia Ziemann is a 94-year-old medical economist who enjoys all the benefits of her position. But a deathbed visit with a long-ago ex-lover and a chance meeting with a young bohemian dress-designer brings Mia to an awful revelation. She has lived her life with such caution that it has been totally bereft of
pleasure and adventure. She has one chance to do it all over. But first she must submit herself to a radical--and painful--experimental procedure which
promises to make her young again. The procedure is not without risk and her second chance at life will not come without a price. But first she will have to
escape her team of medical keepers.

Hitching a ride on a plane to Europe, Mia sets out on a wild intercontinental quest in search of spiritual gratification, erotic revelation, and the thing she missed most of all: the holy fire of the creative experience. She joins a group of outlaw anarchists whose leader may be the man of her dreams...or her undoing.  Worst of all, Mia will have to undergo one last radical procedure that could cost her a second life.

In Holy Fire, Bruce Sterling once again creates a unique and provocative future that deals with such timeless topics of the human condition as love,
memory, science, politics, and the meaning of death. Poginant, lyrical, humorous, and often shocking, Holy Fire offers a hard unsparing look into a world that could become our own.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In an era when life expectancies stretch 100 years or more and adhering to healthy habits is the only way to earn better medical treatments, ancient "post humans" dominate society with their ubiquitous wealth and power. By embracing the safe and secure, 94-year-old Mia Ziemann has lived a long and quiet life. Too quiet, as she comes to realize, for Mia has lost the creative drive and ability to love--the holy fire--of the young. But when a radical new procedure makes Mia young again, she has the chance to break free of society's cloying grasp. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Humanity's ancient dream of immortality is on the verge of becoming reality in the challenging new novel from erstwhile William Gibson (see below) collaborator Sterling (Heavy Weather, 1994, etc.). In Sterling's late 21st century, advances in cybernetics, nano- and virtual technology and medicine have transformed Earth into a near paradise. Vice and illness still exist, but they're largely voluntary or self-created, the result of not controlling one's appetites and not using the medical facilities provided free to those who live socially acceptable lifestyles. Mia Ziemann is a 94-year-old medical economist in a world ruled by a "post-human" gerontocracy. Life-extension technology is the world's major growth industry and Mia, like many of the elderly, has invested everything into qualifying for new and experimental rejuvenation techniques. After undergoing one of the most radical such procedures, Mia can now pass for 20 but is borderline psychotic. She trades her careful, upscale existence for life on the streets with the restless young, wandering through Europe in search of stimulus and meaning. There, she finds herself surrounded by artists, anarchists and bohemians who, frustrated by their powerlessness, want to involve her in a radical scheme to change the world. Sterling is never an easy writer, especially for casual fans of SF. Here, as usual, he offers intellectual rather than action fare, as discussions of the morality of immortality alternate with debates over aesthetics and the future of high fashion. The future Sterling traces is plausible and provocative, particularly his consideration of several contrasting cultures, and of the disenfranchised who are unable to become "post-human." Those interested in serious speculative conversation set within a very strange near-future will find this much to their taste. Major ad/promo.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Spectra (October 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 055357549X
• ISBN-13: 978-0553575491
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #412,405 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not your typical science fiction., November 21, 1999

By 

frumiousb "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Holy Fire (Bantam Spectra Book) (Paperback)

This book has a lot of the trappings of science fiction-- life extending technology, genetically engineered pets, virtual reality games-- but the center, in the end, is the search for emotional completion engaged upon by Mia Ziemann, the protagonist of the book.

Ziemann goes through a radical life extension procedure that pushes her past the life of the young and vivid and out the other side through to the Holy Fire. She embarks on a quest for completion that is not aided by hidden magical talents, destiny, or instant success. Instead, she becomes a person who can live her own life with will and sustained follow-through.

Many things impressed me about this book, and I found it very hard to put down, but one of the things I liked the most was the high quality of the characters, and their very real emotional responses. I have some minor quibbles-- there were some loose ends in the book (I felt like the memory palace and the Plato sequences were never developed fully enough) but the book itself was strong enough to carry them. Definitely recommended.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sterling's best; one of the all-time great sf novels, September 10, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Adelphi, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Holy Fire (Bantam Spectra Book) (Paperback)

Holy Fire is Sterling's best book and occupies a place on my small shelf of sf classics. The compelling hook is Mia's psychological journey in search of satisfying life, in both the physical and creative sense. The choices she makes lead to an explosively unstable mix of anguish and pleasure, horror and contentment. The book's structure is episodic, with little or no plotting (a quality Sterling himself has commented on). The descriptions of future technology are unfailingly inventive and convincing; I particularly enjoyed the "obsolete" computers which would be wondrous to the present age. A heroine with zest and adaptability, Mia is a sublimely bittersweet and engaging central character.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book that makes you THINK at every page, August 28, 2000

By 

Igor Birsa (Trieste, Italy) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Holy Fire (Bantam Spectra Book) (Paperback)

One of the best books I ever read.

In the long run, the author poses to the readers a question that cannot have an unique answer: Above all, who's right, the young or the elder? We can say: obviously none, and both, it depends of your point of view. So what's the final answer?

According to Sterling, the social role of the elder (the medically treated people, who live VERY long) is to mantain the status quo, to control the crazyness of the young, to *CONTROL* the society, by means of the fortunes and political strenght they accumulated. The young instead can 'follow the rules' or be repressed, and indeed the brighthest of them, the 'artists' (those who possess the 'Holy Fire', the capacity to *create* art and ideas) must hide and go in the underground. Here they try to add some new flesh to the human culture, and obviously the elder constantly try to stop them. But sometimes a new idea is good enough, and nothing can stop it, so it eventually becomes part of the status quo, along with their creators. Those same creators will then become elder with time, and will not allow any variation of this idea, acting effectively in the same way the elders of his young age did.

The book goes through all this gradually, showing the elder, the young geniuses, and also the not-so-brilliant wannabe-genius youngsters. As Maya travels across Europe, she matures from an elder, to a newborn young, to a prominent figure in a underground movement.

As always the reading is pure intellectual joy: Sterling's insights in the very nature of human culture, the differences between the old world and the new, the fantastic scenarios of future European cities and so much more.

If you are searching pure action and special effects, you will not find them here. But if you want to *think* when reading a book, this is definitely a good choice.

Worth every page.