Rating: 
Summary: Boring Story, Interesting Ideas
Review: This book was good in that it has some interesting ideas about the future, mortality and aging. This might have made it recommendable.
But the story didn't have any meat on it. It was actually pretty boring and ultimately a disappointment. And for this, it's not really recommendable.
Rating: 
Summary: A convincing future
Review: With this book, Bruce Sterling has created one of the most believable futures I have read. Most of his predictions are well-reasoned, and he doesn't overlook the social consequences of his technologies. The characters are believabler as well, although Mia/Maya is the only one fleshed out at length. Sterling's writing style is good; although he isn't exactly a poet, his sentences and paragraphs are clear and the book is quite readable. The only real problem is the plot, which is a little hard to follow. Personally, I can enjoy a good setting as well as a good plot, but if you demand plenty of action then you might not like this book.Unfortunately, I haven't found Sterling's other novels to be as good as this one--I wasn't that impressed with 'Distraction' and didn't even finish 'Heavy Weather.' His short stories are well worth a look, though.
Rating: 
Summary: Sterling's best novel -- "A+"
Review: _____________________________________________
Mia, a 94-yr old woman at the close of the 21st C., tries a new life-
extension treatment. She emerges in the body of a thrill-seeking
20-yr-old. . . you say you've seen this story before? Not as
related by master extrapolationist, storyteller & all-around fine
writer Bruce Sterling.
Let's go into the polity, the medical-industrial complex that rules the
world, where "the whip-hand of coercive power is held by
smiling & stout-hearted medical rescue personnel. And by social
workers. And by very nice old people. . ."
"There were, of course, some people who disagreed with
the entire idea of life extension. Their moral decision was
respected & they were perfectly free to drop dead."
The story-line is simple: a bildungsroman, the wanderjahr of a
95-yr-old girl thru 21st C. Europe.
We're at a fashion show in fin-de-siecle Roma. Mia is getting ready:
..they put the wig on & she left human perfection for a
higher realm. It was a very smart wig. This wig could have leapt from
her scalp like a supersonic octopus & flung its piercing tendrils right
thru a plaster wall... It was a staggeringly pretty wig, a wig in rich,
solid, deeply convincing, faintly luminescsent auburn, a wig as
expensive, as cozy & as well-designed as a limousine... When it
curled lustrously about her neck & shoulders it behaved the way a
woman's hair behaved in daydreams...
The models were old women, and they looked the way that modern
old women looked when they were in truly superb condition ...
They showed none of the natural signs of human aging, but they were
just a little crispy, a little taut. The models were solemn and sloe-eyed
and dainty and extremely strong...
Their clothes were decorative and columnar and slender hipped and
without much in the way of a bustline... The clothes were
splendidly cut... Rather ecclesiastical, rather bankerly, rather like the
court dress of high-powered palace eunuchs from the Manchu
Forbidden City...
Well. I could go on, & probably would if I had a scanner, or was a better
typist.... but you should be picking up the flavor of the book, the
richness and density of invention. Sterling at his best reads something
like a collaboration between Tom Wolfe & John McPhee. Folks, I've
been reading this stuff for 40 years. and I'm hear to tell you, it don't get
much better than this.
Highly recommended.
Review copyright 1996 by Peter D. Tillman
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