Globalhead

by Bruce Sterling

Book Overview

Featuring thirteen satirical short stories, a unique collection includes scientific superstars, a rock singer who is the voice of the people, and two lost souls who drive off the edge of the world and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553562819
• ISBN13: 9780553562811
• Release Date: October 1994
• Publisher: Spectra Books
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 4.2" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

Hits and Misses

This collection of short stories contains some interesting "hits" (Hollywood Kremlin, Storming the Cosmos, We See Things Differently, Are you for 86?) and some disappointing "misses" (The Sword of Damocles). Sterling is at his best when he is discussing alternative futures close to our own, and he has done his homework in studying two rival cultures that play roles in his alternate universes -- the Muslim world and the world of the old Soviet Union. He creates memorable characters (the international arms dealer/hustler Leggy Starlitz, for instance) and generates a lot of thought-provoking ideas (Will Turing-conscious AI's embrace Islam? Was the Tunguska blast really caused by an alien speacecraft? Will Islam become the dominant superpower -- threatened only by American rock and roill? Will genetically engineered pets capable of human-like thought and speech exist?). Sterling's prose here is not of the quality of William Gibson's, or indeed, as good as Sterling is in other works, such as Schismatrix, or The Difference Engine. It is a good collection of stories, for the most part, and makes a good companion on a trip to the beach.

Third World Posse

"Apocalypse is boring," so spaketh Chairman Bruce, in his mission to overcome the faux-Terminator after-the-bomb scenarios which typify so much contemporary SF hack-work. It's been a long time coming since J. G. Ballard's classic planetary-disaster novels; those who do SF in his wake must write their way to new levels of subtlety and informed speculation, become a legitimate participant in the great Futurological Debate, rather than just another cynical doomsdayer-cum-road-warrior writing in the megalomaniacal glare of Oppenheimer's bomb-God. In light of Sterling's admonition, it is peculiar to admit that the stories in *Globalhead* have an inescapable post-Nuke groove to them, symptomatic of Sterling's coxcomb-jingling portrayal of disaffected Third World spaces. A far subtler apocalypse, but still great fun."Our Neural Chernobyl" (my personal favorite) is a stunning hybrid of high comedy, dead seriousness, and throat-grabbing economy which the remainder of this collection will never surpass. The old-school SF theme of intelligence-maximization is treated with breezy hep-cat irony and panache, a counterculture of renegade "gene-hackers" riding the god project of biotechnology. Cagey, brilliant, underhanded, hilarious, dead-on modern fiction.The last twenty pages of "Storming the Cosmos" reaches a pinnacle of revisionist SF, in the glassed-in detention cell of a Soviet gulag for dissident rocket-scientists, the purveyors of a protean technology that *actualizes* the subjective imagination of its observer (i.e. an experimental substance that changes shape and function according to the minds which possess it). When the conservative, obstructionist members of blackguard Soviet science abduct the item, the device *becomes* an antique rocket, replete with hoary, mind-blowing (literally) repercussions. Just read the story."Jim and Irene" hits a tender note, the possibility of trans-cultural romance in a dingy, saturated, postmedia world. It goes a long way towards justifying the travails of relationship-related stress and paranoia, the feasibility of making human connections at the heart of a Baudrillardian desert, postmodern Nothingness encroaching upon our air-conditioned havens of glass and steel."The Gulf Wars" points to the cyclical barbarism of Middle East violence and warcraft, in a brash little comedy about two hapless army engineers sucked into an Arabian time-warp to die the good death. But by now Sterling in beginning to lose his edge...."The Shores of Bohemia", notable for its extrapolation of animal-empathy cults in the future, simply does not pay the reader back for his/her efforts, as the arch-narrative of Gaia vs. Artifice and the propaganda-value of Titanic architecture (see Sterling's *Wired* travelogue "The Spirit of Mega") comes on a bit conventional and, well, conceptually worn-out.Things pick up with "The Moral Bullet", the precursor to Sterling's superb *Holy Fire*(1996), where a pharmacological fountain-of-youth corners

Hit and Miss, but the Good Ones Are Outstanding

There are some definite losers here, like "The Sword of Damocles," an experiment that, well, failed. However, there are some incredible stories here--"Our Neural Chernobyl" is outstanding, and the incredible "We See Things Differently," about a future in which Islam is in ascendance and America is in decline, still gives me chills just thinking about it.

A collection of cyberculture-infused short stories

While not every story is a masterpiece, Bruce Sterling shows his understanding of cyberculture in stories like "Our Neural Chernobyl," a fictitious review of a book about the history of DNA manipulation. Sterling integrates this understanding with the "beat" culture as well, creating enjoyable and meaningful works such as "Jim and Irene," the story of a drifting phone-phreak and a widowed Russian lawyer, and "Dori Bangs," a what-if fiction based on the lives of two real-life hip-culture tragedies. This collection is a must-read for any cyberfreak or beat poet.

Uneven collection of hard to find Sterling stories.

None of the stories in this anthology are duds, but a few ("Are You for 86?") have an indulgent, smug flavor to them. But all are worth reading, and a few are truly wonderful. "Our Neural Chernobyl," a fictional book review about a popular science tome recounting a plague of increased intelligence, is hilarious. "The Shores of Bohemia" is a mind-bender set in what _seems_ like a low-tech future, but is actually something far more wonderful and terrible. -Stefan Jones