Customer Reviews

Islands in the Net

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

 

 

This is one of the gutsiest SF novels I know of. Bruce Sterling has set his novel in one of the most incredibly detailed, well thought out futures ever developed. He's thought about his world geopolitically, economically, ideologically, and on a host of other levels, including how people live on a day to day basis. His people have internalized genuinely different ideas because of the world that has shaped them. In this sense it is most like some of the best Heinlein novels.

The world Sterling creates alone would make this worthwhile reading, but his characterization is strong and unconventional, and he tells an extremely interesting story that travels all over the world. This isn't really a fast-paced pageturner, and it isn't immersed in hard-science details about how things work in the future--it's more like real life for most of us, where technology is part of the background, and just works. So if those are the kinds of things you value in a SF novel, this may not be your book. But the traditional virtues of plot, characterization, and setting make this an outstanding novel.

I found Laura, the protagonist, not at all a stock character. Certainly she was an ordinary everywoman, as intended, but this is exactly the type of character you almost never see in science fiction. She's not a technical uber-guru or a speed-freak street-warrior, but those stock types are hardly a benchmark for realism in characterization. As for the settings, I've lived most of my life in Texas, and could sense how comfortable Sterling was with Texan characters in the first few pages. While I've never been to the other settings, I found the story evocative, and especially felt like he was working from a substantial map of Singapore in his head from having spent a fair amount of time there.

The most cogent and well-realized examination of power--in all its forms--that I've read. Sterling presents a dense future. Readers can squabble about minor technical mispredictions, but the overall effect is timeless; this is a very unsettling and very prescient novel.

...I found value in this work by Sterling. I don't remember a whit of the plot machinations or the characters ten years after reading it. I do remember, however, the author's gift for thoughtfulness about the mechanisms of the future--the "sunglasses" in particular are something I think about often, being used to confer with "board members" all over the globe.

I think Islands in the Net is a valuable read in that the author put a lot of thought into the technology itself of his "future." It's regretful that the book itself is turgid, but an awful lot of cyberpunk at the time was plot- or "feeling"- heavy, with the technology needed by the plot just "there," and little thought given to how and if it would work and be used.

This book was very interesting at the time I originally read it if you were thinking about how to build the future, and what to build and how it could actually be used in practical fashion, rather than say, the kevlar dusters and mirrorshades.

I agree with some other reviewers' criticisms that the protagonist is poorly characterized and the narrative sometimes drags, but this is nevertheless an excellent book, more than redeemed by its wealth of ideas about the world's technological, social and political future, illustrated through lively and colorful incidents, dialogue and settings. Offshore data havens in the global information web; the abandonment of Africa to poverty and anarchy; the rise of transnational corporations and international organizations and networks; the withering away of governments; terroristic chemical and electronic warfare: The treatment of these near-future motifs is rich, sophisticated, and interesting, and stands up very well in comparison to their handling by other writers who have exploited them since this book was published in 1988.

Perhaps I may be unfair in my review of Islands, for I expected something very different, but I was not as impressed by it as I thought I'd be. The book is a good and solid story of a relatively simple corporate woman thrown into a whirlwind of an international power struggle. The awkwardness lies in the editing -- it easily could have down with shaving off 75 or so pages -- for Sterling has a tendancy to too involved with details in the story that once the reading of the novel is complete, and looking back, were quite unimportant (even to backdrop, characterization, etc. -- not just plot). Another awkward point is the main character, an amazingly simple and flat character that I had a hard time caring about at all. Finally, the last awkward point is Sterling's obvious fascination with foreign countries, political struggles, etc. This can be interesting, for while most cyberpunk books put the corporate inter-fighting ahead of any political tussles, Sterling offers a glimpse of why that might come to be (ie., the rise of corporations of political structures); however, Sterling frequently gets bogged down in trying to explain and display too much of these cultures he fancies.

Overall, however, the story is good, the characterization, setting, etc. are all good, and in the end, you *are* left with a solid sense of what the author intended (thoughts about world-wide changes over time...revolutions...*ideas*...sweeping political changes), and thus, the novel is effective and entertaining.

This was without a doubt the worst book I've ever read. Astoundingly boring, pointless, and then all of a sudden really preachy in the last third or so. Years and hundreds of pages pass and nothing happens, and the characters are completely uncompelling, especially the main character, who for all she goes through does not change one whit. Why was this book written? There's bad and then there's bad; this wasn't even fun-to-read-it's-so-bad bad. If I had had anything better to do with my bus ride, I would have stopped reading it after about the half-way point when it becomes clear that no, the story's not actually going to get exciting.

I finished this book mostly out of sheer bloodymindedness... It was way too long, and it DIDN'T GO ANYWHERE. It's an ongoing sermon about how technology and nonviolence will overcome the more basic aspects of humanity that have dominated civilization since the beginning of time. But the story doesn't support this assertion, which makes me wonder what the point of writing this book in the first place was.

Now that cyberpunk seems to mean simply 'fiction with virtual reality', it is worth looking back to when it had more depth. Sterling's best novel to date (I haven't read 'Distraction' yet), is fundamentally a serious novel of global politics disguised as a sci-fi adventure story. It has its faults, notably lack of editing and occasional lapses in characterisation, which is why I only give it 4 rather than 5 stars, but it is still refreshing to read an intelligent novel with anarcho-socialist leanings in a sub-genre which has become increasingly apolitical and irrelevant.

I have read all of Neal Stephenson's and William Gibson's books and only some of Sterling's. I thought that this book was better constructed, although the tech is a little lower, than the early books of the others. I was confused by why, when the main character is described as small and blonde, the book jacket displays a Paula Cole look alike. Just free form marketing I guess.