14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Feeling slow-witted about this one -- or is it the book?, April 9, 2001
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.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Post-911, a prophetic book, January 2, 2002
This review is from: Zeitgeist (Mass Market Paperback)
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.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bruce Sterling's Stylishly Hip View Of The Millenium, June 8, 2001
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.
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