Customer Reviews

Holy Fire

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

In recent years Bruce Sterling has been trying too hard to be 'hip' and ahead of the game (one of the problems of cyberpunk and near-future sf in general). Globalhead was very unneven, some of the stories didn't work at all, Heavy Weather was entertaining but nothing more; Sterling seemed to be losing his political edge too. After this Holy Fire is something of a return to the form of Islands in the Net or Crystal Express. It drifts and meanders its way across a safe, comfortable and boring world dominated by the old and dotted witht the failed experiments of the past. Not a lot happens, except the gradual emotional and (rather faster) physical rebirth of the heroine. At the end you are left with a sense of greater understanding for having read the book; Sterling seems to be maturing into a thoughtful and challenging writer. The only reason I give this 4 rather than 5 stars that there are some weak sections, and also Maureen F. McHugh (China Mountain Zhang, Half the Day is Night) does this stuff a little better.

This book was a big surprise to me. I have been a fan of the Cyberpunk or Movement genre since the 80's, and while Gibson and Rucker have captivated me with almost every book they write, Sterling's work has always... lacked something for me. I've enjoyed his short stories more than I have his novels, and have given them a fair shot. Most of them I would rate about a 3.

This novel however, I place squarely in the full 5 star category. The best works of fiction, be they SciFi, Horror, Literature or what have you, are those which make one reflect upon oneself and the nature of existence. This book falls into such august company. A few of the reviews here mention the lack of action or resolution, but I think that they have missed the point. Mia/Maya is discovering both what it means to be an individual and what the nature of life is. She is both an observer and a participant as she is neither truly old or young. Her "wanderjahr" is an exploration and evolution of self and as such, despite the futuristic trappings resonates with the individual quest for the self and what lies beyond it in all of our lives no matter where we are on life's journey. I would hope that everyone makes such a journey in their lives (whether literally or metaphorically), or better yet, experiences life as a continuous unfoldment of same. Highly recommended, in my opinon Sterling's absolute best.

_____________________________________________

Mia, a 94-yr old woman at the close of the 21st C., tries a new life-

extension treatment. She emerges in the body of a thrill-seeking

20-yr-old. . . you say you've seen this story before? Not as

related by master extrapolationist, storyteller & all-around fine

writer Bruce Sterling.

Let's go into the polity, the medical-industrial complex that rules the

world, where "the whip-hand of coercive power is held by

smiling & stout-hearted medical rescue personnel. And by social

workers. And by very nice old people. . ."

"There were, of course, some people who disagreed with

the entire idea of life extension. Their moral decision was

respected & they were perfectly free to drop dead."

The story-line is simple: a bildungsroman, the wanderjahr of a

95-yr-old girl thru 21st C. Europe.

We're at a fashion show in fin-de-siecle Roma. Mia is getting ready:

..they put the wig on & she left human perfection for a

higher realm. It was a very smart wig. This wig could have leapt from

her scalp like a supersonic octopus & flung its piercing tendrils right

thru a plaster wall... It was a staggeringly pretty wig, a wig in rich,

solid, deeply convincing, faintly luminescsent auburn, a wig as

expensive, as cozy & as well-designed as a limousine... When it

curled lustrously about her neck & shoulders it behaved the way a

woman's hair behaved in daydreams...

The models were old women, and they looked the way that modern

old women looked when they were in truly superb condition ...

They showed none of the natural signs of human aging, but they were

just a little crispy, a little taut. The models were solemn and sloe-eyed

and dainty and extremely strong...

Their clothes were decorative and columnar and slender hipped and

without much in the way of a bustline... The clothes were

splendidly cut... Rather ecclesiastical, rather bankerly, rather like the

court dress of high-powered palace eunuchs from the Manchu

Forbidden City...

Well. I could go on, & probably would if I had a scanner, or was a better

typist.... but you should be picking up the flavor of the book, the

richness and density of invention. Sterling at his best reads something

like a collaboration between Tom Wolfe & John McPhee. Folks, I've

been reading this stuff for 40 years. and I'm hear to tell you, it don't get

much better than this.

Highly recommended.

Review copyright 1996 by Peter D. Tillman

Bruce Sterling ( and William Gibson) has almost abandoned plot in their novels. There is a plot in this book but it is of the most perfunctory " Macguffin" type.
If you are looking for a book where you will be grabbed by the plot and pulled through the book desperate to finish it, then look elsewhere.
Sterling writes wonderfully in this book of the ennui of age. This is one of his best themes, and can be traced back to his earliest work. The extrapolations he makes are great such as the Fashion industry consisting of the eternally cosmetically altered young are great.
If you liked "Involution Ocean", "The Artificial Kid", or "Distraction" then you should love this book. Otherwise especially if you are more a fan of the more plot driven SF books
you may be a little baffled and disappointed by this book.
Still one of my favourites though.

Bruce Sterling's ("Aristoi", "Islands in the Net", "Mirrorshades" editor) new novel "Holy Fire" is very good.

The novel postulates a gerontocracy developing through the perfection of geriatric medicine. As old people live longer, they hold onto the positions of responsibility and power longer. Since old people are inherently conservative, innovation and societal evolution slows down. Resources are funneled into geriatrics medical technology. In addition, the young (under 60 years old) become an underclass.

The story is about an old women who becomes young. The fountain of youth responsible for this is a revolutionary, rejuvenating medical procedure. The conflict is between her new, "vivid" (novel slang for hip), hormonally driven, post-op self (Maya) and the asexual, "posthuman", pre-op, personae's (Mia's) memories and habits. Call her Gen-X with grandma lurking in the back of her mind.

The book was good, right down to the nuances of potential 2070 tech. Maybe he should have cranked back and set the novel a little closer to the present. About the only problem I have is "how well can a male author write a female main character?". It could be argued that a posthuman female is asexual, but Stirling's 20-something Maya had the fingerprints of a 40-something male on her.

Recommended.

"Holy Fire" is unquestionably Sterling's finest novel to date. Not only is it a fine novel of ideas percolating on virtually every page, it is also a powerful, extremely well written mediation on aging and the role of the elderly in a post-modern society. Mia Ziemann is one of Sterling's most intriguing creations, though admittedly, as one previous reviewer noted, her actions seem quite arbitrary, as though they were written just to move the plot along. And I was a bit dismayed with how Sterling reintroduces a major character towards the very end of "Holy Fire", after allowing her to vanish without a trace for most of the tale. Still, these criticisms are minor in stark comparison to the richly conceived future and intriguing characters Sterling has wrought. His vision of an early 22nd Century Europe is among the most plausible I have yet read. Fans of Sterling's previous work won't be disappointed. Without a doubt, it is one of the most important science fiction novels published in the last decade of the 20th Century.

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.