Rating: 
Summary: I couldn't put it down... fast enough.
Review: Nothing happened in the seventy pages I read. The author showed us around his hackneyed, dystopian future and introduced some characters with all the personality of storefront dummies who, like me, seemed to be waiting for something to happen (a.k.a., a plot).Science fiction is particularly vulnerable to having its storyline overpowered by concepts and gadgets. You see it in William Gibson's novels, a slow progression from storyline ("Neuromancer") to something more like an anthropologist's field study ("All Tomorrow's Parties"). I am not partial to either "Islands in the Net" or "The Difference Engine"--two earlier Sterling efforts--but at least they were readable.
Rating: 
Summary: Good at being both Cheesecake and floorwax
Review: I tend to like political thrillers and sci-fi, but am picky about both. So, reading something that claimed to be both from an author I hadn't read before was merely a "mind expanding" exercise for me. I was pleasantly surprised. Sterling manages to write an epic yet chatty novel, without being overly pretentious (something I am beginning to find with both Gibson and Stephenson). His political characters have the expected seediness, but surprise you just when you think you have them pegged. American patriots will not like his depiction of the US, but given the current political climate, I do not find this to be a stretch at all. In fact, it's a bit scary.
Rating: 
Summary: Fun and thought provoking
Review: This is my favorite of the recent Bruce Sterling novels. It combines degenerate politics, hyperactive mass media, science, bio-ethics, and a little sex into a fast paced absorbing story. Sterling's blunt and swift narrative matches perfectly with the personality of the main character. His depictions of politicians and their staff are often hilarious and sometimes disturbingly familiar. And there are plenty of speculative new technologies, each bringing benefits and problems to the inhabitants of the near future. Excellent work Mr. Sterling.
Rating:
Summary: A Bruce Sterling Newbie from UK
Review: Having been a a Sci-Fi fan for many years but never having read a Bruce Sterling novel I bought this in an airport purely on the recommendations on the book cover. I have to say I was not dissappointed. This is a superb novel of almost epic scope with an almost inexhaustable supply of wildly over dramatised but simultaniously believable characters. This is a complex and deeply humourous plot liberally sprinkled and blended with political innuendo, cynicism and conspiracy. Oscar is an inspired creation. "Doable" in fact. There is much in this novel to challenge even the most jaded futurist Sci-Fi reader. Maybe it's because I'm a "European" and also an "Anglo" who has travelled and lived in the good old U.S of A. that I was inspired by Mr. Sterling's X-Ray Laser insight into the uninspiring and dubious world if national and inter-national politics. I am now looking forward to reading all of this master authors works.
Rating: 
Summary: Dissapointing
Review: I wouldn't have thought it possible, but here is a sci-fi "Washington" novel. That said, most of it takes place in Louisiana, but nonetheless, the novel is concerned with examining the political future circa 2042 via a Senator's campaign manager cum spin doctor. Unfortunately, this character, though whose eyes the whole novel unfolds is completely uninteresting. He seems to exist solely to drift in and out of more interesting lives and situations which are never really fully realized or tied together. While Sterling's vision of a heavily fragmented America, with crazy technology, uberpowerful nets, and soforth is all very well-crafted, and intriguing, the story itself is rather boring. In fact, so boring, I won't recount it here, nor will I recommend investing any time in this 440 page monster.
Rating:
Summary: Unfortunately very boring
Review: Fortunately I have read almost all other books by Bruce Sterling, "Zeitgeist" is already waiting on my bookshelf and I really hope it will be more entertaining than "Distraction" was. Distraction is somehow not a true Sterling novel. Too much is missing, to much is simply wrong. How can he imagine that cell phones and the Internet will work the same way in 2045 than they do now ! People still lugging laptops and phones hidding in their sleeves are truly 1999 stuff and feeling even already today outdated. The whole plot is constructed and does not feel right. Avoid this book !!
Rating:
Summary: My favorite Sterling to date
Review: Having read _Holy Fire_ and _Heavy Weather_ I have to say that I enjoyed this Sterling the most, and I've enjoyed all three very much indeed. Sterling's writing is quirky, intelligent, and real. He makes implausible situations (such as a cold war between the US and the Netherlands) feel both believable and appropriate. The characters are wonderfully drawn. I was in love with Oscar-- the fast-talking campaign manager who isn't quite human but can always find the angle in a situation. I believed in his odd relationship with the unlikely and awkward Dr. Penninger simply because it was so improbable but at the same time so true. I can understand why the ending felt unsatisfying to a lot of readers, because it fails to hand you simple or predictable resolution. Indeed, a lot like life, the plot almost fades away, leaving us with the main characters' relationship as the primary movement in the novel. Oddly appropriate for a book written about a time where everyone seems to be frantically sitting still, but grantedly atypical for science fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing Drivel
Review: Please understand that I thoroughly enjoy Sterling as a writer. but Distraction was a bomb. I read it all the way through hoping that eventually a plot would emmerge. It didn't. If you are a first time Sterling reader, PLEASE don't start with Distraction. It'll sour you to his writing. Start with Heavy Weather, or even go back so far as Schismatrix. You'll be much happier.
Rating:
Summary: Bruce Sterling as infotech's Delphic Oracle
Review: The importance of this book for serious students of the social impact of the information culture cannot be overstated. In Bruce Sterling's Distraction DeTocqueville meets Plato's Republic meets Gibbon's Fall of Rome, meets Phillip Dick, meets Michael Crichton, only not nearly as straight laced and conventional as Phillip Dick. To my mind, this book has now displaced Snow Crash (which had displaced Neuromancer) as not only sequentially the most insightful and accurate prognosticator of near term social consequences of the information/ubiquitous media culture, but absolutely so. For example Distraction's premise assumes a level of technological sophistication far closer to currently available off-the-shelf technology than was the case with Neuromancer and Snow Crash. Sadly, this suggests that he's far more likely to be painting a picture of a realistic possibility for our near term future. And Distraction is in a class by itself in terms of depth of cultural commentary and insight into the political, sociological, and psychological factors predisposing individuals and cultures to use information technology in certain ways to certain ends and how this all combines with the decay of a culture and polity to create an imploding dystopia. [Think Hieronymus Bosch as social commentary.] And in terms of predictive accuracy, its important to realize that Gibson and Stephenson's books are old enough that we've been able to compare their portraits of our near term future with the actual trajectory of our trans-millenial civilization. OK, immersive VR is a long way off. But immersive VR was far from the most important of the assumptions being made about the trajectory of our civilization in these books. And I'd say we're pretty much on schedule to arrive at the dystopia's their fiction implicitly predicted. Sadly, this only makes Sterling's future seem that much more plausible. And as for the comic aspects of his portrayal, how could anything in Sterling's fiction, or even the writing of Kurt Vonnegut or Phillip Dick out weird the tragicomic elements of Clinton/Lewinsky saga or the Florida election situation? Yes, yes, I know, art is its own justification and it probably does violence to the literary excellence of these books and their artistic intent, to ask them to carry the freight of social analysis, and because its near term sci-fi, prognostication. But when so many professional futurological pundits of the George Gilder (on the right) or the Tofflers (on the left) variety are unshakeable "The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow" utopians, who else is up to the job? Mea big time culpa for the oracle thing Bruce baby, but if you can't take the heat, get out of Delphi.
Rating: 
Summary: not the best
Review: This was my first Sterling novel... I can't figure out those who say that this ranks up there with Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. Not even close. I did particularly enjoy Sterling's dissection of federal funding of science in the late 20th century and his projection of one possible future scenario. Being deeply involved in the frustrating, absurd and increasingly meaningless quest for public funding for science, I really appreciated this portion of the novel. Unfortunately, the whole didn't live up to that particular part. It was sometimes funny, but in the end was too disjointed and unfocused. I was glad when I finished it.
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