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Heavy Weather (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Smart machines lurked about the suite, their power lights in the shuttered dimness like the small red eyes of bats..." (more)
Key Phrases: command yurt, aerodrome truck, second chess player, Ellen Mae, West Texas, April Logan (more...)
3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Why hack computers when you can hack nature? Sterling's Storm Troupe lives in a post-greenhouse world ravaged by monster storms and finds itself hacking the ultimate storm: the F-6 tornado. No one in the Troupe, not even it's brilliant, driven leader, guesses the real nature of the F-6 or the shadowy forces unleashed in its twisting fury. Not until it is too late...


From Publishers Weekly

Cyberpunk prophet Sterling, whose last book was a nonfiction exploration of computer hackers and the law (The Hacker Crackdown), returns to SF with a near-future thriller. In 2031, the world suffers from "heavy weather"-tornadoes and typhoons caused by a runaway greenhouse effect. While most people wisely try to avoid the storms, one group of counterculture techno-enthusiasts calling themselves the Storm Troupe chases them through the badlands of Texas and Oklahoma. Led by the visionary scientist Jerry Mulcahey, the Troupe studies the storms with an array of high-tech equipment, trying to document what Mulcahey believes is coming soon-a superstorm, the "F-6," a tornado far more powerful than any ever seen and which might even prove unstoppable, a perpetual violent disturbance ravaging the landscape. When Mulcahey's lover, Juanita ("Jane") Unger, drags her brother Alex (who suffers from some strange disease as well as an irritating anomie) from an illegal Mexican clinic back to the Troupe's camp, tensions are ignited among the Troupers. But those plot threads are abruptly dropped when the F-6 hits, and the Troupe pulls together to fight the elements. Some similarities between this book and Sterling's previous fiction are evident: the Troupe uses the word "hack" as computer users do, saying they "hack" heavy weather, and they've got a similar case of technophilia, but it lacks the scope and the big, innovative ideas that gave novels like Islands in the Net their power. This one has some sharp moments and intriguing characters, but it never offers that exciting sense of vision.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Bantam (December 1, 1995)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 055357292X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0553572926
  • Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 5.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #262,647 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Bruce Sterling
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Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
Smart machines lurked about the suite, their power lights in the shuttered dimness like the small red eyes of bats. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
command yurt, aerodrome truck, second chess player, virching helmet, refugee suit, first chess player, smart rope, suction spots, paper suit, trail boots, chronic mucus, perimeter posts, structure hits, webbing belt, thirty kilos, heavy weather, wall cloud, squall line
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Ellen Mae, West Texas, April Logan, Joe Brasseur, State of Emergency, Jane Unger, Texas Rangers, Crimson Avenger, Jerry Mulcahey, Radar Bus, Carol Cooper, High Plains, Medicine Boy, Nuevo Laredo, Leo Mulcahey, Sam Moncrieff, Storm Troupe, Rudy Martinez, Alex Unger, Don Aldo, Lone Star, Martha Madronich, Mickey Kiehl, Rick Sedletter, Tornado Alley
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Tornado Alley by Howard B. Bluestein
 

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3.6 out of 5 stars (34 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Human Science Fiction, January 11, 2000
By C. Gilbert "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
Sterling is one of the few current cyberpunk/scifi writers who seems to work with real characters rather than new ideas. Despite an occasionally messy plot point, this book delivers some of the most interesting speculative fiction around. The German-Mexican brother sister pair-- Jane and Alex-- are full and complex people and rather than simply acting out some kind of mythic archetype they move in this futurescape the way you'd expect real people to move. The sense of scene is also rich and full, with the cultural details full of verisimilitude. Perhaps not my favorite Sterling, but still a great read.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A very good spin on Cyberpunk, December 12, 1998
By A Customer
Bruce Sterling took the familar sub-genre of Cyberpunk and carried it to new terrain, literally. The story takes place primarily in West Texas and up Tornado Alley, with a smattering of Mexico for the really dark side of living. Most of Cyberpunk takes place on the West Coast or Asia. The setting changes the whole ambience of the book. Instead of the slick, fast, all mirror feel of typical cyberpunk fare, we have a more paced and linguistically clever piece of writing.

Sterling does go a little overboard with the F-6; the anticipation is built up so much that when he finally describes it, the disappointment is palpable. Words simply fail to capture the idea of such a colossal event.

However, this book is about people, and how they are dealing with a world in climatic catastrophe. Consequently, the characters are rich and the dialogue is textured. The characters are not ginger-bread people, each is noticeably different from one another. Many very clever lines from this book and some astute insights as to the nature of modern American thought.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars hack this storm, September 24, 2005
By Betsy Mendelsohn (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Weather challenged everyone before the 20th century: if you lived in Kansas, how did you know what weather was coming toward you over the plains? Naturalists developed anemometers, wind vanes, barometers, rain gauges, and thermometers to collect measurements over time of the weather at particular locations. In the early 19th century, statisticians sought to interpolate among enormous numbers of measurements of wind speed and direction, humidity, temperature, barometric pressure, and rainfall to figure out what the atmosphere plans for us in terms of weather. Only when we distributed accurate clocks along railroad routes could meteorologists integrate this data into weather maps that showed the development and decay of weather systems over time and geographic space. In the 20th century, with aircraft, more complex statistics, and computers, we developed measurements and models of weather systems in 3-dimensions. (See, for example, James Fleming's Meteorology in America.)

The protagonists of Heavy Weather use nothing as handy as a thermometer, but rather a combination of modern and futurist tools, most of which require developing a personal knack to master. In addition to supplying a story, the extreme weather of the southern plains also serves as a metaphor for stormy relationships and the battle that one protagonist, Alex, wages with his own body, whose mysterious debility has seemed to control his life's purpose until he chooses to focus on helping his sister's troupe of roving weather hackers to understand the region. Medicine employs instruments much like those used to measure weather, but that reduce Alex's body to a mapped system that then does not respond to therapies as doctors project.

This is a complex book, gratifyingly over the top in areas, and mundane in some aspects of character development. Sterling's novels show that he is intent on examining basic interpersonal relationships, such as parent-child, lovers, siblings, colleagues, and civil society in extreme settings. As with all his books, his protagonists are heroes who are less than heroes, sometimes improbably sweet or strong.

In light of the mysterious, powerful weather on the U.S. Gulf Coast this fall, I especially recommend this book. As I listen on the radio and TV to the reasons that the public and officials give for not acting appropriately in the face of enormous risk, I think about the 500-year transition much of the world has made away from a mystical and toward a science-based understanding of "why things happen." Clearly, the science of hurricanes has not been heard by many of those who are most at risk of losing life and property, as well as by many of those most favored by position or education and bearing an enormous responsibility, as experts, to act to promote public safety.

Four stars only because I wish this Sterling book were longer, with more development of his settings and technologies. It might be a characteristic of the cyberpunk label that intriguing terms get plopped in the text with little explication, their meaning derived from narrative context. However, many of these terms stick like burrs and travel with me into conversations; they are very pithy. I can't complete the metaphor of comparing extreme weather to the characters because that would give away too much. Suffice it to say that there's an end to every storm.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars A harrowing visit to Tornado Alley
The year is 2030, and the world is in a state of political, economic, social and environmental chaos. Things have literally fallen apart. Read more
Published on September 7, 2007 by Henry W. Wagner

4.0 out of 5 stars Not Free SF Reader
A story about a team of storm chases, and their dictatorial, totally
obsessed leader, and their struggles to survive and make a living. Read more
Published on September 3, 2007 by Blue Tyson

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun eco-cyberpunk
I enjoyed reading this book. A lot. There were a few glitches, like a mysterious creepy subplot that doesn't really explain or resolve itself. Read more
Published on June 8, 2007 by Clay

4.0 out of 5 stars Not a future to look forward to
Bruce is one of those Texas SF authors I've seen and heard at Cons since the late 1970s. His style in public has always been to hold forth and fulminate, which can make for... Read more
Published on August 27, 2006 by Michael K. Smith

1.0 out of 5 stars Has Bruce Sterling actually TALKED to any computer geeks?
Like others, I bought this book because of recommendations that put Bruce Sterling in the same category as authors like Neal Stephenson and William Gibson. Read more
Published on October 13, 2003 by Julie Fugett

4.0 out of 5 stars Hack This
Bruce Sterling has delivered quite a powerhouse of the imagination here. This book is a mostly strong mixture of cyberpunk elements along with textbook sci-fi storytelling... Read more
Published on May 22, 2003 by doomsdayer520

5.0 out of 5 stars One of his better ones...
I recently reread this book, and I like it much better than some of Sterling's more recent books like Holy Fire or Distraction. Read more
Published on March 13, 2003 by John T. O'Donnell

4.0 out of 5 stars Flashy, but....
Flashy, vivid, involving novel by 1 of "cyberpunk"'s clearest, most incisive thinkers. But: Sterling & his storm chasers spend the Ntire novel waiting 4 the ultimate... Read more
Published on September 12, 2002 by Tracy Deaton

5.0 out of 5 stars Sterling's Best Book for Hard SF Action Fans
Maybe this is controversial but I would say that this is his best book in the following sense: it has real characters that are sympathetic, it balances his tendency towards over... Read more
Published on January 18, 2002 by Gordon Rios

4.0 out of 5 stars A nice break from traditional cyberpunk
Bruce Sterling's Heavy Weather is a nice break from such traditional cyberpunk novels as: Slant, Shockwave Rider, and Neuromancer. Read more
Published on November 30, 2001 by Melanie Casner

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