Customer Reviews

Zeitgeist (Bantam Spectra Book)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

First, if this is the first time you have heard of Sterling and haven't read his other work, STOP right there. Read his short stories in Globalhead or A Good Old Fashioned Future. Then, decide if you are interested in reading more. If this were the first Sterling work you ever picked up, I doubt you would ever read anything more by him. You need a gentler introduction to Sterling.

Second, before you purchase this book, take a look at Sterling's Leggy Starlitz short stories. The three that I know of are: "Hollywood Kremlin" (in Globalhead), "Are you for 86?" (in Globalhead), and "The Littlest Jackal" (in A Good Old Fashioned Future). If you like those stories and want to know more, for sure read Zeitgeist - you will probably like it. Also, if you don't read the short stories, you will have a harder time figuring out all of the details in Zeitgeist - not 100% necessary but very helpful.

Leggy Starlitz is definitely one of those characters that you really love and "get" or one of those characters that you hate, you think is shallow, and you just don't understand. Personally, I think that I understand at least a little of who/what Starlitz is and (especially in the short stories), I really loved him. He's not a flat character and there is a lot about him that is not explained either in the short stories or in Zeitgeist.

That said, did I like Zeitgeist? "Yeah, no, maybe" sums it up pretty well. In case you don't know, the word zeitgeist is German for "the spirit of the times". That's the basic concept driving this book. The question is, what is time all about? How does time work? Does the millennium have any meaning at all or is it just another year?

I'm not going to pretend that I actually figured out answers to those questions by reading Zeitgeist, but it did make me think about them a lot. Honestly, I felt that I was a bit out of my depth reading this book. I could definitely tell that there were some super high level concepts that Sterling was trying to get across but I had a hard time understanding them. The main idea was something along the line of time being a narrative and about how events either "fit" the narrative or just don't make sense in it. If events don't belong in the narrative, then bad things tend to happen.

There is a great deal of depth to this novel beyond the high level plot about Starlitz managing a faux Spice Girls band. This is also the case with all of the Starlitz short stories - there's always more than meets the eye. Although that high level plot isn't half bad either, it's the behind the scenes action that I really like. And the tiny Princess Di subplot made me fall over laughing when I figured it all out.

As for the argument that this is a book about Y2K that was published a year to late... If you actually get to the end of the book and still think this, you have definitely missed the point.

Also, as for the argument that Sterling is mired in jargon and doesn't make sense... come on! It's Sterling for crying out loud. This should not be your first Bruce Sterling experience and if you've ever read anything by him, you know what to expect in terms of jargon and being "kool".

Basically, no guarantees that you will actually like this book if you buy it. I would not say that I liked it that much. It's not my favorite work of Sterling's - Heavy Weather and his short stories seem much better to me. In fact, on occasion, Sterling's style falls a little short - in the final section when we're getting closer to Y2K, the story seems to get a bit muddled... but that might be part of the point as well.

Not my favorite Sterling work, but DEFINITELY a book that I will want to re-read in six months or a year. To me, actually wanting to re-read a book is the best possible test of how worthwhile the book was to read.

A science fiction novel about Y2K written after Y2K? No, i think the real mystical power of this book came into play in our post-911 world, where the reality of the "culture war" became apparent even to ignorant, self-centered Americans. Can you think of any other novels that mention Osama bin Laden by name?

Personally, i think this is Sterling's best work in years. The self-referentiality and magical realism aspects are hard for many people to grasp (judging from other reviews), but if you're familiar with French semiotics and Spanish language magical novels, it is much easier. And really, magical realism and self-referentiality is as good a lens to view our world of constant surveillance, mass marketing, and millenial change as anything anyone else has to offer in the marketplace of ideas.

Bruce Sterling's latest novel is perhaps his funniest. It is also the first with a contemporary setting, though some of the plot qualifies as marginal science fiction. Leggy Starlitz, the wily protagonist in several of Sterling's short stories, is the manager of a Spice Girls group. Here he is just as wily, and stylishly hip. This hilarious rollercoaster of a tale stops in Cyprus, Turkey, New Mexico, and Hawaii. Although it is still not quite as accomplished a work of fiction as his acclaimed "Schisimatrix", "Heavy Weather" and "Holy Fire", it shows him writing almost at the peak of his powers. I find it a vast improvement over his disappointing "Distraction". Long time admirers of Bruce Sterling's work won't be disappointed. And others in search of a funny tale set at the dawn of the new millenium will also be quite pleased.

Bruce Sterling's short stories have always been his best medium. See "Our Neural Chernobyl" in _Globalhead_ as an example. With _Zeitgeist_ he has finally written a book that holds up the entire length.

Not to say it keeps the same voice throughout. The first third is typical "Leggy Starlitz" stuff. Exotic sleazy setting - the internationally unrecognized country/province of Turkish Cyprus with dirty dealings and cynical black/gray market behavior.

Then the next third, the redemption of Leggy with observations about parenting, faith to one's friends, and dealing with failure in his treatment of G-7, the girl band he abandons.

The final third he gets his licks in at post-modernism, why Leggy really is a bad person, and deus ex machina endings contained within a deus ex machina ending.

In _Heavy Weather_ Sterling had also tried this and it came off as dull and a little too precious, but by wrapping it in a shiny golden postmodern wrapper it really works.

Others may find this as dated postmodernism, but I sense Sterling is using it (in the Starlitz sense) rather than being serious. But maybe my narrative is limited and cannot jump into a post-post modernist setting.

For anyone new to Bruce, you should know that many readers, myself included, think most highly of Bruce's short stories, at least as much as the full novels. I myself couldn't have had a better introduction to him than "Hollywood Kremlin," where Bruce first began the misadventures of modern-day picaroon, Leggy Starlitz.

This late novel, "Zeitgeist," is a continuation of the series of short stories which began with "Hollywood Kremlin," and developed through 3 or 4 others now found in the collections, "Crystal Express," "Globalhead," and "A Good Old-Fashioned Future," in that order. And so if you are new to Bruce Sterling, those are the books I would recommend, rather than this one. Bruce has displayed an extremely sharp wit over the years I have been reading him, and his short stories demonstrate this best, perhaps. You also need to read the earlier Leggy Starlitz episodes to be able to get your bearings in this novel. Me, I would love to see all the Leggy stories gathered together in one publication.

Among many clever, outrageous remarks Bruce has made over the years, I remember reading that nobody has anything useful to contribute after they are 40 (rough paraphrase, sorry.) If I remember correctly, Bruce turned 40 right around this book's publication. So as well as all that everybody else has said, I might add that the book appears to be about Bruce. There has always been a little of himself in Leggy Starlitz.

Bruce is seeking his own transformation as well as that of the world around him. He has reached the age he predicted he will no longer be relevant, yet now approaches the age where a writer should be "coming into his own." Where now? That is the question Bruce is faced with -- or the "People" magazine version of the question: Is there life after 40, Bruce? The end of this story puts me in the mind of the "Schismatrix" story or stories, in a number of ways. The characters all seek to transcend their own limitations and mortality, and one presumes become better people as well. But does "better" mean the same thing to a butterfly as it does to a caterpillar?

I believe the final transformation of Leggy in the end, this represents the challenge we are faced with as modern, post-modern, whatever ... human beings. Can we open our minds and our hearts, or do we continue on with the shallow 20th Century agenda? Or will the question be answered for us soon anyway? Me, I'm putting my ZZ Topp records up for sale right now!

On a side note, several of the reviewers here outdo themselves in demonstrating how far they excel beyond Bruce in semiotics, epistimology, structuralism this and that. Bruce has always attracted such wannabees, and probably always will. He is not so different from them, after all. For me, to say that the writing is no longer intellectual cutting-edge has little to do with whether what Bruce has to say is valid, or more to the point, entertaining. Some reviewers seem to differ on that point.

So if you want Good Bruce Sterling and are unfamiliar with his writing, look elsewhere; my recommendation: "Crystal Express." But I doubt anybody that has read a book of his wouldn't find a laugh or two here. But prerequisite are "Hollywood Kremlin," "Are you for 86?" and "The Littlest Jackal," available in short story collections elsewhere.

Zeitgeist is an absolutely fascinating book. But let's face it, Sterling doesn't have half as much interest in the plot as he does in making observations of the modern world. This is pop culture, mass consumerism and culture war wrapped up in a brilliant package, but it seems a lot less like a novel than it does a series of modernistic philisophical conversations.

The author of ZEITGEIST sketched out the world as seen through the brain of a pop music magnate, Starlitz, who has a very peculiar world view-where the "deeper reality is made out of language." In this story, as in all stories, the characters must follow the narrative-stay in that world created by their language. The raconteur, Starlitz, tells the reader: "in a world made out of language nothing else is even possible." This peculiar world that the characters exist in is an alien habitat, possibly the only element that qualifies this story as science fiction. Following Phil Dick's obsession of "what is reality?" Sterling invites the reader into a world so distorted by language as to imprison the characters. On P 152 he tells us, "There is no way out of a world that is made of language." Starlitz warns his daughter to never go to the place that Wittgenstein called an "empty space where things can't be said, can't be spoken, can't even be thought. ...You can never come out of there. It's a Black Hole."

The plot was interesting. Starlitz is peddling stupid pop music and trashy G7 gals with zero talent from the worlds richest countries to the some of the world's poorest. At stories end, in contrast to the G7 girls whose tour ended in monetary disaster, Starlitz likes the idea of next trying the tour with seven very talented gals from seven obscure countries singing the best music with the ambition of making no money at all. Their success could support Sterling's idea that reality depends entirely on the words used-the narrative.

Leggy Starlitz has a lucrative plan for the G-7 girls, and the only number one rule is that they stop before the year 2000. But when the mother of his only child blows into town, daughter in tow, he needs to take a family visit to Mexico and abandon the act to the tender mercies of a Turkish spy/manager. Sure enough, while he's communing with his father, the French One of the G7 girls becomes the first Dead One, and Starlitz is forced to return before his cheap & fake rock band becomes the first shot in a very real culture war.

If you've read Sterling before, Zeitgeist is going to be vastly entertaining. Playing with issues of culture, temporality, and celebrity, it romps across the end of the 20th century. This said, it's thinner than some of his other novels, and I don't think it's the place for a Sterling newbie. I liked it, however.

This book has a heart of surrealistic mysticism in the mode of Like Water For Chocolate or One Hundred Years Of Solitude. But the book's brain is almost hyper-realistic in its knowledge of the contemporary world. There are other SF writers, good writers, who dabble in surrealism but no others are so relentlessly informed.

Bruce Sterling, master cyberpunk author, examines the spirit of the twentieth century in his latest novel Zeitgeist. Set in the waning weeks of 1999, Zeitgeist follows Leggy Starlitz (a two-bit American conman marketing a Spice Girls rip-off band called The G-7) as he stumbles through the post-Cold War landscape of Turkish Cyprus (with side trips to the American West and Hawaii). Leggy's questionable connections with sleazy Turkish bureaucrats and former Soviet black marketeers costs him control of the band - plus his ex-girlfriend shows up at just the wrong moment to deposit their 13-year-old daughter with him. Within the crucible of Cyprus, where East meets West and the Third World meets MTV, Sterling examines the sum total of the twentieth century, mulling over everything from Y2K to New Age mumbo-jumbo, to the fickleness of pop culture, to the dysfunctionality of the New World Order.

Sterling's writing is hip and cynical, with an eclectic array of eccentric characters (including a mysterious vagrant who speaks only in palindromes). The snappy dialogue is what we've come to expect from so-called "cyberpunk," and you'll alternately laugh and shake your head as the weirdness unfolds.

The oddest thing about this novel is that it's a Y2K novel (seemingly) published a year too late! And it's not really a science fiction novel per se; nonetheless, it's an interesting book that makes us rethink our assumptions about the last hundred years, and makes us wonder if the next hundred will be anything like we imagine.