Subject: Review of Bruce Sterling's CRYSTAL EXPRESS

From: [email-masked] (David M. Chess)
Date: 18 Nov 93 02:35:29 GMT

If you know Bruce Sterling primarily through MirrorShades, Islands
in the Net, the Difference Engine, and perhaps Green Days in Brunei,
you associate him with a certain sort of cyberpunk; a rather light
(as opposed to lite) near-future cyberpunk, in which not everyone is
evil, and technology can sometimes be a positive force.  You don't
associate him with the classic "fly around in outer space meeting
strange aliens" sort of sf.  To the delight of the reader in me and
the writhesome envy of the wannabe writer in me, the stories in
Crystal Express show that Sterling can in fact do that sort of
story, and at least a few other kinds, just as elegantly.

The book is divided into three parts, labeled "Shaper/Mechanist",
"Science Fiction" and "Fantasy Stories".  This was a Bad Idea; it
tends to imply that this is really three collections bound together
to make pagecount, whereas in fact all the stories are nicely bound
together by some common themes and outlooks.  I would suggest
ignoring the division, and perhaps reading the last four stories
(the "Fantasy" ones) first.

Sterling is fascinated by change.  This is part of what makes him a
significant modern writer; he understands that change is itself a
thing, and that all changes, even if wildly different in context and
content, still have some flavors in common.  Three of the four
stories in the "Fantasy" section (_Telliamed_, _Flowers of Edo_,
and _Dinner in Audoghast_) and one in the "Science Fiction" section
(_The Beautiful and the Sublime_) are about cultural change,
large-scale paradigm-shift, recrystalization of human reality.  The
"Fantasy" stories are so labeled because they are set in the past,
but there are no swords or sorcerors here.  These are lovely little
atmosphere pieces, about more or less archetypal (but still very
human) people reacting to the change of the world: the Age of Faith
gives way to the Age of Reason, Tokyo rises from the ashes of Edo,
the high culture of XIth century West Africa glimpses its coming
end, and people struggle with what it means to be human now that
machines can be intelligent.  These are all wonderfully done, and
show that Sterling does not write about technology because he likes
shiny electronics, but rather because of the crucial part it plays
in human messing-about.  (The fourth story in the "Fantasy" section,
_The Little Magic Shop_, is, unless I've missed something, just a
romp.  You'll like it, but you wouldn't buy the book for it.)

The five stories in the "Shaper/Mechanist" section are set in a
common future which change has mostly overwhelmed.  There are still
human beings of some sort doing something or other on Earth, but we
don't hear much about them; the action is in space, where humanity
has fragmented into an unspecified number of factions.  The blur of
technology, rapidly shifting allegiances, and perhaps the subtle
machinations of the alien Investors ("We like a competitive market")
keep culture fluid, unsettled, and somewhat violent.  Mars is being
terraformed, the Shapers are playing with human genetics (if you
breed IQs of much over 200, they either go insane or take off for
parts unknown), and the Mechanists use emotion-suppressing drugs and
gradually merge with their machines.  Or other stuff.

_Swarm_ and _Spider Rose_ show us two examples of the wild things that
evolution can do with life; it's a big universe, and there must be
some very strange entities out there.  I admit that this is one of my
favorite themes, so I may be overlooking weaknesses of other kinds
in the stories, but I enjoyed them very much ("[untranslatable] is
not really a literature.  It's really a kind of virus.").  The other
three Shaper/Mechanist stories focus more on inter-human relations,
and what people will do with, for, and to each other in a world
where there are no constants ("Here we sit, products of technologies
so advanced that they've smashed society to bits.").  Again Sterling
is showing us change, this time change as a way of life.  His
characters are also interested in change, both cultural and cosmic;
the four Prigoginic Levels of Complexity that the Posthumanists
study are Ur-space (the de Sitter cosmos), normal space-time, life,
and intelligence (and perhaps something else beyond).

What haven't I touched?  _Green Days in Brunei_ is a fine moist
novelette about technology, hope, making-do, and the importance of
your local BBS.  It differs from most of the other stories in Crystal
Express in that the people here have managed to avoid being swept away
by change, and are picking and choosing which technologies they will
allow to touch them, and how they will allow themselves to be changed.
In that sense, it is almost anti-cyberpunk.  _Spook_, on the entirely
other hand, is the kind of antihero cyberpunk that I've never liked
much: there are -no- sympathetic characters (the one non-evil person
that gets even a bit part is casually destroyed, his "mind...
shattered like a dropped vase", by the protagonist), and one can
almost be glad that everyone will probably destroy each other
eventually (although it's a pity that they'll probably take the whole
planet with them when they do).  I suppose in a different mood, or
perhaps before I had a wife and kid, I might have gotten a dark
pleasure out of it.

Altogether, Crystal Express is a tasty and elegant study of the
various sorts of express humanity is constantly finding itself on.
On the other hand, the stories are not preachy or scholarly; even
if all this talk about cultural paradigms and the constancy of
change bores you to death, and all you want is a good story and
some mind-stretching, Crystal Express is highly recommended.

%A   Sterling, Bruce
%B   Crystal Express
%C   New York
%D   1990
%G   0-441-12423-2
%I   Ace Books
%O   First published by Arkham House, 1989
%P   278 pp.
%T   Swarm
%T   Spider Rose
%T   Cicada Queen
%T   Sunken Gardens
%T   Twenty Evocations
%T   Green Days in Brunei
%T   Spook
%T   The Beautiful and the Sublime
%T   Telliamed
%T   The Little Magic Shop
%T   Flowers of Edo
%T   Dinner in Audoghast

- -- -
David M. Chess                    /     "...net.net.god,
High Integrity Computing Lab      /            I wanna be
IBM Watson Research               /              a net.god..."