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These stories have a lot in common. They all take place in the near future, and most are action oriented, involving colourful characters such as secret agents, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, mafiosi and revolutionaries. But they are also personal tales that tend to focus on individuals rather than ideas, which makes them hit home more often than standard SF fare. The best of the bunch is probably "Taklamakan", a high- concept piece about two freelance spies sent to a central Asian desert called Taklamakan, where the Asian Sphere is doing some sort of secret research into space flight. "Bicycle Repairman" is set in the same world but instead of an Asian desert it takes place in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the spies in this story aren't the good guys. It's a less successful piece than "Taklamakan" but also a good read.
Not all of the stories in this collection have the edgy, this-is-what-tomorrow-will-be- like quality that typifies Sterling's best work. But even when Sterling isn't at his best he's entertaining, and A Good Old-Fashioned Future is certainly that. --Craig E. Engler
These stories have a lot in common. They all take place in the near future, and most are action-oriented, involving colorful characters such as secret agents, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Mafioso's, and revolutionaries. But they are also personal tales that tend to focus on individuals rather than ideas, which makes them hit home more often than standard SF fare. The best of the bunch is probably "Taklamakan," a high-concept piece about two freelance spies sent to a central Asian desert called Taklamakan, where the Asian Sphere is doing some sort of secret research into space flight. "Bicycle Repairman" is set in the same world, but instead of in an Asian desert it takes place in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the spies in this story aren't the good guys. It's a less successful piece than "Taklamakan" but also a good read.
Not all of the stories in this collection have the edgy, this-is-what-tomorrow-will-be-like quality that typifies Sterling's best work. But even when Sterling isn't at his best he's entertaining, and A Good Old-Fashioned Future is certainly that. --Craig E. Engler
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His short stories tend to fare better. They are less ambitious but also tighter, and hence less distracting. "A Good Old-Fashioned Future" represents his latest collection of stories; the earlier works are "Globalhead" and "Crystal Express," which contains one absolute knock-out story called "Swarm."
These stories are less experimental than "Globalhead" and more successful. Most of them are set in the near future and focus on collapsing societies. The last three are set in the same world and form a loose novella; Sterling seems to like this setting.
None of the stories in here drags unacceptably, and some are quite good. It may be that Sterling has settled down to writing clean readable stories, rather than trying to write "outside the box."
I liked this anthology a lot despite the fact that a couple of the stories were rather weak. Some of the stories seem to have been written by extrapolating current events into the future and these, like "The Littlest Jackal" are the weakest in the collection. Also, in that story, the author mis-places Helsinki north of the Arctic circle and so he has the sun not setting in the summer, that was just sloppy writing. The stories such as "Maneki Neko" (my favourite) and the "Deep Eddy" series, that extrapolate technology are the ones that make the book worth while. In these, Sterling's wry view of the way that technology might change our world is both thought provoking and funny.
The last three stories are all set in the same world and they follow the largely unrelated exploits of a group of people living on the edge of a highly technological society. I felt as though the author was taking some of the people that he met while writing "The Hacker Crackdown" and then dropping them into the middle of the 21st century. These are three great stories.
The best is "Maneki Neko," a genial story set in a Japan where the traditional gift economy has become fantastically enhanced. This one's up for a Hugo.
The weakest story is "The Littlest Jackal," another entry in the Siggy Starlitz sequence. Here the underground opportunist finds himself in the company of mercenaries trying to overthrow the local government and establish an off-shore banking haven. Not bad, but not up to the rest of the collection.
Strangest is a collaboration with Rudy Rucker about a Silicon Valley startup, synthetic jellyfish, and trouble in oil country.
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