Schismatrix Plus [BARGAIN PRICE] (Paperback)

by Bruce Sterling (Author) "They shipped Lindsay into exile in the cheapest kind of Mechanist drogue..." (more)
Key Phrases: launch ring, circumsolar space, corporate republic, Ring Council, Red Consensus, Geisha Bank (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Bruce Sterling has called his Shaper/Mechanist novel Schismatrix "my favorite among my books." It is a detailed history of a spacefaring humanity divided into two camps: The Shapers, who prefer genetic enhancements, and the Mechanists, who rely on prosthetics. Sterling also published five Shaper/Mechanist stories between 1982-84, which have been collected with the novel in this compendium volume. This book represents the definitive collection of what is arguably Sterling's most intense work, offering a hard, gritty look at humanity as it pushes and claws its way to the stars. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Library Journal
This collection contains Sterling's cyberpunk sf Shaper/Mechanist universe short stories from his collection Crystal Express plus his novel Schismatrix, both published in the 1980s. Recommended for sf collections lacking the two books.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• ISBN-10: 0441003702
• ASIN: B000IMV89W
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,193,561 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb Sci Fi Reminiscent of Heinlein and Gibson, July 29, 2003

By	D. W. Casey (Sturbridge, MA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Schismatrix Plus (Complete Shapers-Mechanists Universe) (Paperback)

I became interested in Bruce Sterling's writing because he co-authored a book with my favorite sci-fi writer, William Gibson, called "The Difference Engine" about an alternative history of Victorian England. Sterling's Schismatrix Plus shows that he is truly Gibson's equal as a science fiction writer, capable of inventing a complete alternate universe.

The Schismatrix novel, and the short stories that accompany it in this edition, take place in the future, where human beings have migrated to space stations and circumlunar colonies within the solar system. The schism at the heart of the universe is between two sects; the Shapers, who are genetic engineers; and the Mechanists, who believe in cybernetics. The Schismatrix novel follows the character Abelard Lindsay through his several hundred years of life, first starting out as a Shaper revolutionary, then after his exile becoming a pirate, and eventually the father of a new sect called Posthumanism. The book is reminiscent of Heinlein's "Time Enough For Love" -- we follow Lindsay through his several re-creations of himself much like we do Lazarus Long in Heinlein's work.

The book has an eery beauty to it; the posthuman universe, although melancholy, is not without charm. Central to the work is a distrust of ideology -- the blood feuds in the work between the various sects are extremely destructive of the characters' personal relationships; but Sterling's message is still positive -- all narrow sects are doomed in the end by the shock of the new future, and all old revolutionaries are outdone by their descendants.

The short stories that accompany the novel are also very good; and they are helpgul in explaining, in shorthand, the universe of the author. Sterling does not coddle the reader -- his universe is believable in part because he does not explain its cleverness in long narrative passages -- you discover it as you go. This makes the book's many turns seem as shocking as they are to the characters themselves.

An excellent work, a must for any modern sci-fi collection.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ambitious, September 10, 2000

By	Omer Belsky (Haifa, Israel) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Schismatrix Plus (Complete Shapers-Mechanists Universe) (Paperback)

For me, Ambitious is the very word that describes Schismatrix Plus. It aims very, very high, whether Sterling's aim was accurate, is for everyone to judge individually.

I had very high expectations from this book. I've previously read Sterling's 'The Swarm', the very first Shapers/Mechanist story, in Gardner Dozois's anthology, THE GOOD NEW STUFF, and liked it alot.

Furthermore, the last two books I've read were very different from each other, and both really good - George R. R. Martin's new Fatasy Epic A Storm of Swords, and Stephen Zweig's The Royal Game. In between those two masterworks, I've read the prologue to Schismatrix, and loved it.

What impressed me most about the prologe, about the Swarm and indeed about the novel itself, was the scope and the vividness of Sterling's Future. The Shapers/Mechanist universe is clearly one of the most fascinating and exotic worlds created in Science Fiction.

So I came to Scismatrix with exteremly high expectations, believing I was about to read a classic on par with Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, Frank Herbert's Dune, or Dan Simmons's Hyperion Cantos.

The first 80 pages cured me of that hope. I'm not a passionate Cyber-Punk fan, quite the contrary, and the first 80 pages consist of a Cyber Punk story set in Space. A well written Cyber Punk, no doubt - others have commented on Sterling's prose, and he has a great deal of talent, but a traditional Cyber Punk story nonetheless, and thus somewhat out of date.

However, after those 80 pages, Sterling changes the style fo the novel, and returns to the issue of the introduction - the wide spread political sweeps that take the universe, as Sterling's hero, Lindsay, finds his peaceful life threatens by both his ideology and his long time friend turned bitter enemy, Constantine.

And then, the novel changes again, this time becomes a generational story, of the hero passes through a universe which changes in terrifying speed. Sterling attempts the kind of paradigm shifting SF story telling, as evident in such works as Clarke's Childhood's End, and in the process comes up with some very nice touches - a particularly lovely scene is the final meeting between Lindsay and his long friend/Archi Nemesis Constantine.

All in all the novel, and the stories, portray a wonderfully realised world. But they lack the kind of plot structure and advances necessary to make this kind of work appealing to me, and the ideas, while sometimes fascinating are often reduced to merely new Jargon versions of old clisches.

My own high expectations damaged my enjoyment of the novel, but Í have enjoyed it nonetheless, and would recommand it to others. Schismatrix is a seminal work of Cyber Punk, and an immaginative attack on the age old tradition of SF - and for that it deserves to be read.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A translator's perspective, August 4, 2005

By	Torkel Franzen - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Schismatrix Plus (Complete Shapers-Mechanists Universe) (Paperback)

I've read this book - or, at this point, 223 pages of it -
while translating it. As I've had occasion to note elsewhere:

Translation is a grueling process, inflicting agonies on the translator, but also subjecting the text to a peculiar and ruthless scrutiny.

Ordinarily, when we read a book, we are mild and forgiving creatures, or so it seems to the translator. As long as we are carried along by the story or the argument, we are prepared to skip lightly over the odd boring passage, and the little stylistic quirks and weaknesses of the author don't trouble us. We don't pause to make sense of every image or visualize every description.

Reading a book as a translator is a very different matter. The little stylistic quirks and weaknesses take on the dimension of instruments of torture. Explosive groans of sheer anguish have escaped my lips as I encounter some descriptive device or image or turn of phrase that the doting author sees fit to inflict upon the reader for what seems to be the eighty-ninth time. Violent hatred for the author has flared in my mind as I have looked, with little hope, at yet another piece of imbecile imagery or muddy description that no reader would ordinarily need to make sense of, but that I have to render into some sort of coherent language. The translator knows that faithfully reproducing the repetitiveness or inanity or sheer unintelligibility of the original will inevitably lay him open to charges of poor translation, whereas on the other hand he cannot in all conscience rewrite the sentence, the way the editor of the original should have. So he struggles on, doing the best he can, in a series of impossible compromises.

I'm pleased to be able to report, therefore, that Sterling's
book passes this acid test remarkably well. He actually tells
a story that captivates my interest, and his writing is by
no means torture to translate, in spite of the usual quirks
and weaknesses. This is not cyberpunk drivel, but a story
in the best tradition of sf, well told.