Rating: 
Summary: Great ideas, but it goes nowhere
Review: Bruce Sterling has some of the greatest ideas in the biz. DISTRACTION has some startling ideas that make you think for a long time about those ideas' implications (roving bands of techno-nomads that have their own social structure outside of mainstream America, organic fuel cells, and "pervasive" tech are some of the goodies you find in this novel). However, after you get over the "gee-whiz!" aspect of these ideas, you are left with a story that is little more than a series of disconnected events. Oscar, the main character, runs all over the landscape attempting to be clever and cool, but his actions seem a little unrealistic. His relationship with Greta and his interest in her lab never rings true, even when Sterling leads us to believe that it's supposed to be. And like most of Sterling's work, the ending leaves a lot to be desired. The story peters out with no real closure. Perhaps this is some post-modern hip writing style that I don't get, but I usually like my stories to have a definite resolution.My suggestion to Sterling is that he concentrate on making his stories make sense and stop spending so much time doing the "look here, isn't this cool tech!" thing. If he wants to showcase cool tech, he should write non-fiction or stick it on his Viridian mailing list.
Rating:
Summary: A disappointment
Review: Sterling is a great author but this was not a great book. The author tells the tale of Oscar Valparaiso, a geneticly tweaked near-human living in a near future world. Denied electability by his background, he works in the campaign team of a disintegrating politician while pursuing his own agenda involving the control of a government research base. All through this, his world teeters on the brink of collapse as corrupt politicians and the onslaught of new technologies pile up waves of problems. This setting has the potential to be a really remarkable novel but ultimately, it fails. None of the characters are satisfactorily explained. Too often, they select a course of action which, while necessary to the direction of the plot, seems not to fit in with the picture painted of their ambitions and motivations. Finally, the story falls into an all too common trap in modern SF. It is almost as if the author realises that he has nearly reached the books allotted quota of words without having ended the narrative. So, the reader is presented with a frenzied winding up of the plot to reach the author's desired conclusion. Die hard Sterling fans will find it essential but he is capable of producing much finer work that this.
Rating: 
Summary: Perhaps not the best ever, but still more than worth it.
Review: Bruce Sterling's Distraction is a rather brilliant book. Between its extrapolation on current political trends and its classical cyberpunk themes, it creates a ride that shouldn't be missed. Unfortunately, a few minor problems damaged my enjoyment of the story. The most fundamental is that the main character's true intentions throughout the book tend to be rather hard to follow. Though this is generally a good thing because it allows for a more realistic, non-linear motivation, I really felt a craving for a touch more direction. If only there had been a couple more of scenes where he took a reality check with his majordomo and explained his end goals, this book would have been perfect. Also, the ending left me wanting more. Perhaps this is the mark of a truely good story, that you do not want it to end. In this case, however, I feel that the book simply ended too soon for me to truly feel a sense of closure. Now, if a sequel is in the cards, I take my last remark back and eagerly await the conclusion. I would hate for the above, however, to stop anyone from reading this book. Perhaps it is not as good as Gibson's Neuromancer or Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, but it is definetly as good as any other middle-future work on the market today. (Including Gibson's latest which, while more lyrical than Distraction wasn't nearly as much fun.)Anyone with an interest in the future, research, or in American politics should pick this up.
Rating: 
Summary: Pleasant escapist fare
Review: Bruce Sterling eats Neal Stephenson's lunch with Distraction, a near-future techno-political thriller that's strongly reminiscent of Stephenson's Cryptonomicon and Interface (which Stephenson and his uncle wrote under the pen name Stephen Bury). I don't mind this because I loved those other books, though it's strange to see Sterling borrowing rather than being borrowed from. Sterling's technological and political speculations are interesting and plausible, and his plot moves right along, propelled by informal but evocative language and a lot of humor. The best part of the book, though, is its protagonist, Oscar Valparasio, who combines the genius and audacity of Lois Bujold's character Miles Vorkosigan with a personal reserve and opacity that makes us even more interested in finding out what he's really like. Sterling actually manages to keep Oscar mysterious even though we're seeing through his eyes throughout the book. Distraction is mostly about the ride -- like another of my favorite Sterling books, Heavy Weather, it has little pretension to epic scope or deep literary meaning -- but it has enough depth to make it a worthwhile read. My chief complaint is that it drowns in cynicism towards the end, leaving us with a downbeat and overlong ending and nothing much in the way of climax. A classic character like Oscar deserved a better sendoff.
Rating: 
Summary: In the best cyperpunk tradition
Review: Together with Stephen Bury's `Interface', a new category - political SF. Though `Distraction' more in the cyberpunk underdog tradition, a nobody becomes a minor bit player only to be swept back to nobody by waves of events much, much greater than himself. No pauper to prince here - good - 've quite outgrown those stories. A rich, swiftly moving plot which grips, and lets the author take us through a grand tour of his imagination. What a tour it is! Sterling has a million ideas a minute, his future is compelling, complete and entierly frightening. Great portrayal of the rot that is Washington, don't know how much of that is fiction, how much fact. Comparable with the best of Stephenson, Gibson.
Rating:
Summary: Should have been a better read than it was
Review: Bruce Sterling is a puzzling writer. He obviously possesses talent and deep thoughts, but the sum of the parts rarely adds up. I found his non-fiction work, "The Hacker Crackdown," to be quite well-written and readable. And the first short-story in "Crystal Express" was very entertaining. Too often, however, his books, like "Holy Fire," are too byzantine to be truly enjoyable. It's not a question of having too much detail, or too many ideas -- qualities present in Neal Stephenson's more readable work -- there's something inexplicably inaccessible about some of Sterling's books. "Distraction" falls somewhere in between. It never plods, and there are parts where Sterling's ideas and writing merge into a clarity and power that are remarkable. Yet, as a whole, the book never seems to rise above the level of a mere political thriller, which it clearly does not intend to settle as.
Rating:
Summary: Easy Entertainment
Review: Arguably not Sterling's best book, but still an easy, quick and entertaining read. It held my interest despite an end that was predictable. If you appreciate futuristic sci-fi with plenty of twists this is a winner.
Rating:
Summary: It Fizzles
Review: The book starts out with so many great concepts that it was really an easy choice for me to buy it on the basis on reading the first few chapters. And a lot of interesting things happen along the way to the end. But it strangely fizzles out before the conclusion, which is a major disappointment. In fact, there really didn't even quite seem to *be* an ending. I felt like someone must have chopped out the last hundred pages. Likewise, Oscar starts out as an intersting character but he never, ever changes and we never really seem to get inside of him or achieve any sort of understanding of him. For a character that seems so deep and interesting when you first assay him, you end up with the feeling that he's just an android spounting endless bits of dialogue to no real purpose. A shame. Read Schismatrix or Heavy Weather instead.
Rating:
Summary: Serling has written much better books...
Review: how seriously can you take a book when feirce political rivals allow eachother grandstanding monolouges for not paragraphs but PAGES on end. the endless monolouges even interupt time critical action sequences. I have read everything Sterling has ever published as well as most of his cyberpunk contempararys' work. This book falls well short of his usual high mark. It was not the subject or the characters... the delivery was abysmal. I feel bad that one of my favorite authors would fall down like this. cyberpunk authors seem to be dropping like flies. even the great Gibson's latest published work is about his love of watch collecting on e-bay. Thank god we still have Stephenson churning out great science fiction.
Rating:
Summary: NEW GENRE: FUTURE POLITICS
Review: Bruce's work is hardly Sci-fi, rather, sociopolitical prediction. In 1989 when he published the short story, WE SEE THINGS DIFFERENTLY, the author used the same gimmick. That time his narrator sneaked some carcinogenic into the rock star's hit of coke. This time it was a spore to produce a permanent mind altering schizoid condition -- but that is no more Sci-fi than a James Bond assassin's gadget is Sci-fi. There's nothing weak about this new genre of futuristic sociopolitical drama. The weakness is in the failure to transition his main character. Oscar, the political operative, finishes pretty much as he started -- unchanged even by the radical insemination of a second brain lobe. Although Sterling was super imaginative in dealing with the neurological technique for hatching a second brain center he strangely failed to give the condition a new name. In the old days they called this technique a lobotomy. Perhaps "cultured lobotomy" might have worked. The main distraction to me was his leaving out the role of the global conglomerate business world which in the real world has a talent for controlling political puppets like his Huey Long governor character of Louisiana, and his President Two Feathers. But after all these comments, I still thought the book was great.
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