Rating: 
Summary: Worth reading
Review: It was good. I liked it. It started stronger than it finished, which is the reason for the 8 rating. I would read Islands in the Net first
Rating: 
Summary: Has Bruce Sterling actually TALKED to any computer geeks?
Review: 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. I hope Amazon was paid handsomely to make that comparison, because it can't possibly be less true. The characters are two-dimensional and predictable. The women, typical of most of the sci-fi I've seen, are cliched and ultimately dependent on their men, although Sterling seems to think that bitchy catfights = feminist empowerment. I've saved the worst for last, however: the dialog. Sterling's dialog in Heavy Weather is painful to read. "Mega tasty?" Who *says* that? He has achieved the literary equivalent of MovieOS--a non-geek attempting to approximate what "real" geeks do, what they enjoy, how they talk. It's fake and cloying and makes me, a geek, shout "DUDE. Shut. Up." at almost every page. Save your money and buy some real cyberpunk literature. This isn't it.
Rating:
Summary: Has Bruce Sterling actually TALKED to any computer geeks?
Review: 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. I hope Amazon was paid handsomely to make that comparison, because it can't possibly be less true. The characters are two-dimensional and predictable. The women, typical of most of the sci-fi I've seen, are cliched and ultimately dependent on their men, although Sterling seems to think that bitchy catfights = feminist empowerment. I've saved the worst for last, however: the dialog. Sterling's dialog in Heavy Weather is painful to read. "Mega tasty?" Who *says* that? He has achieved the literary equivalent of MovieOS--a non-geek attempting to approximate what "real" geeks do, what they enjoy, how they talk. It's fake and cloying and makes me, a geek, shout "DUDE. Shut. Up." at almost every page. Save your money and buy some real cyberpunk literature. This isn't it.
Rating: 
Summary: Sterling's Best Book for Hard SF Action Fans
Review: 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 abstraction with a more plot driven approach, and it retains all the best elements of well researched hard sf. Even if you haven't liked him before, but you like more action oriented hard sf, you will like this book.
Rating:
Summary: Strong concept and interesting ideas make this a good one
Review: Several months after reading this book, my brother put the movie "Twister" on, and having seen it before, he tried to get me to watch it, claiming all sorts of good things about it. Well, I hung around for a few minutes, so as not to be rude, but immediately upon seeing it, the first thing that hit my mind was "Hey, this is a rip off of Bruce Sterling's Heavy Weather!" And while I'm sure the makers of "Twister" had no intention of emulating Sterling's novel, the similarities are very striking.
Still, the sad fact remains that Heavy Weather did the topic first, better, and pulled it off with more ease and ideas. But this isn't a comparsion review, so let's forget "Twister" and talk about Heavy Weather. With this book, it appears that Sterling breaks away from the cyberpunk roots of Gibson and others, but at the same time he remains true to those same routes.
Heavy Weather does not have computers, or people fighting the huge Man who is trying to keep the little guy down using only their knowledge and wits. There are elements of that, of course, but Sterling tries to convey something different here, a sense of the weather as a force. Computer, they are constructed by men, and we can understand them. Who can understand the weather? And that is the main pursuit of the Storm Troupe, to understand, explain, and comprehend, all while having a little fun at the same time.
Sterling should be congratulated on such a fine book that clearly was ahead of its time, seeing the success of "Twister" a few years later (oops I said I wasn't going to compare. Oh, well). It ranks among his finest
Rating:
Summary: Human Science Fiction
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Sterling manages to integrate nature with Cyber...
Review: Sterling manages to integrate nature with Cyber... And without excessive tech. The story in Heavy Weather manages to avoid the usual shortcoming of Cyberpunk (Which this book certainly is) - It uses technology to make the story possible, rather than being about technology. Inside the text is certainly enough entertaining garage technology to thrill an avid cyberpunk author, and nothing we are unlikely to see in the next ten years. The tech has limitations that are believable rather than seeming to be thrown in at the last moment. The story winds through the personal and public lives of a series of stormchasers, a group of people who make it their lives to wander after the semimythical F6 tornado. The characters appear three-dimensional (though at times the inflation of said folks feels slightly forced, rather than merely appearing in the text) and react in what seems to be realistic ways (based on what you know of them.) As a technoweenie, though, my favorite feature of the book was the tech, and the causal immersion of it into the storyline. Whatever else you say about the book, the use of technology is smooth - From the smartwheels (quickly becoming everyone's favorite thing to insert into a book) to the spraycan of glue, the terminology ("Structure hits", "Hack"). All in all, the book comes out as one of the most integrated pieces of fiction I've read recently, let alone in the Cyberpunk genre. 8/10, which on the Martin scale is high marks indeed.
Rating:
Summary: Like a bad movie that becomes a parody of itself...
Review: The first-and will remain the only- book I've read by Sterling. Characters have no understanding of the "why" they do, let alone the what. Plot moves sluggishily and in no way gives the characters any reason to move forward and explore who and what they are. Bad dialouge, bad writing, just a bad book. I only kept reading to see how much worse it could get.
Rating:
Summary: Heavy Weather
Review: The novel Heavy Weather by Bruce Sterling has a suspenseful plot, advanced technology, and some great characters. It is forty years into the future and the earth's atmosphere has been destroyed by the greenhouse effect. A group of Storm Troupers chase tornadoes that are caused by the altered environment in the South Western part of Texas. A predicted monster storm like no other is developing into a treacherous F-6 tornado that has never been analyzed. The entire book builds up to the F-6 tornado, but the ending is a little weak and there was too much hype about this storm. The storyline was interesting and not completely off the wall because of the realistic characteristics of the environmental factors.
The characters in the book are an important asset to the novel. Alex and Janey are brother and sister and have that common relationship that siblings have. Jerry, the head leader of the troupe, is a genius who predicts the unprecedented storm. The rest of the characters in the troupe also have unique personalities and history.
Overall, I would recommend this book to people who enjoy cyberpunk novels because Heavy Weather does not have the traditional cyberpunk storyline. Even though the storyline does drag at times, the plot is interesting and unique.
Rating:
Summary: Heavy Weather
Review: The novel Heavy Weather by Bruce Sterling has a suspenseful plot, advanced technology, and some great characters. It is forty years into the future and the earth's atmosphere has been destroyed by the greenhouse effect. A group of Storm Troupers chase tornadoes that are caused by the altered environment in the South Western part of Texas. A predicted monster storm like no other is developing into a treacherous F-6 tornado that has never been analyzed. The entire book builds up to the F-6 tornado, but the ending is a little weak and there was too much hype about this storm. The storyline was interesting and not completely off the wall because of the realistic characteristics of the environmental factors.
The characters in the book are an important asset to the novel. Alex and Janey are brother and sister and have that common relationship that siblings have. Jerry, the head leader of the troupe, is a genius who predicts the unprecedented storm. The rest of the characters in the troupe also have unique personalities and history.
Overall, I would recommend this book to people who enjoy cyberpunk novels because Heavy Weather does not have the traditional cyberpunk storyline. Even though the storyline does drag at times, the plot is interesting and unique.
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