Today, those boundaries are set by ethnicity, religion, geo-politics, and culture. On its most primitive level, humanity operates in groups-us-and-them, friend and stranger, similarity versus the other-tribes huddling together in the glow of the campfire, envious and fearful of the other tribes lurking in the darkness. A more evocative take on the prologue’s ornithopter compared to the newer editions. And I think that was a pretty impressive accomplishment.Īce Books – 1986 – John Harris. Sterling was writing our future in style and theme, in human pettiness and dreams, even if the tech doesn’t come to pass. This future holds up pretty well, in that I can see it-for all its pessimism and bizarre transformations-coming to fruition. There is the space opera element, yes, but it’s more that this is a novel about posthumanity-the end result of enough genetic manipulation and wundertech to split the human animal into divergent species. It’s still “high-tech low-life” though, but the tech goes far beyond virtual interfaces and digital sentience. But the novel also has its own… majestic grandeur, for lack of a better term, that the short fiction often lacks.Īnd it has that grandeur because the Shaper/Mechanist universe isn’t the same gritty megacorporations stuff that the word ‘cyberpunk’ brings to my mind. These are placed after the novel, and there’s some debate whether it’s best to read them first they do a bit more to explain some of the key concepts, the universe’s history and factions. “Twenty Evocations” is the most experimental of the stories that follows the wild life of one Shaper. “Cicada Queen” expands on some of the background of Schismatrix, showing events in the C-K city-state Lindsay helps create, while “Sunken Gardens” expands on the Martian terraforming Lindsay helps usher in. In “Spider Rose,” an aged Mechanist trades a valuable gem for an alien pet, getting more than she bargained for in the process. “Swarm” is about one of the other 19 alien lifeforms in the universe, a hive-minded insectoid race and an attempt to leverage them as an asset in the human factions’ war.
The plus in the book’s title refers to its composition: the 1985 novel Schismatrix plus five short stories, comprising the entirety of the Shaper-Mechanist universe. Actually, with its focus on transhumanism-posthumanism, per Sterling-it reads as one of the first postcyberpunk novels, and I would not be surprised if this influenced authors like Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross. Those are just some of the highlights from the first section, it’s a non-stop chain of brilliantly bizarre (or bizarrely brilliant) concepts fired at machine-gun speed.ĭefining Schismatrix Plus is not easy it has the grandeur and scale of a space opera, touring a high-tech solar system augmented with the jargon and technological futurism of cyberpunk. Or take the race of alien Investors, who buy and swindle their way across the galaxy and make first contact to rip humanity off. There’s the genetically modified geisha who sweats perfume and pheromones, and later becomes an entire ecosystem, buildings grown from flesh and bone. There’s the group of pirates-a sovereign nation-state, last remnant of a failed mining syndicate-that structures itself ala American government, replacing their names with titles like First Justice and Secretary of State. Some of the developments are mind-boggling, some are eye-opening, others are just silly.
Sterling’s kaleidoscopic vision of the future is awash in big ideas and sprawling concepts there’s a drug for everything, or a piece of technology to make your life better, and posthumanity is a fragmented series of city-states evicted from earth scattered among the stars. Betrayed by his friend and colleague Phillip Constantine, Lindsey begins his own grand tour of known space, falling back on his kinesics and genetic training as he crosses paths with the numerous factions that spring up over hundreds of years of posthumanity’s history. Abelard Lindsey should know, an exiled Shaper diplomat turned outlaw sundog. In this balkanized future, countless schisms continue to divide posthumans into branching splinter groups based on technology and philosophy.
On the battlefields of ideology, you must choose between humanity’s numerous factions, the most important being the Shapers-those who alter their bodies through genetic modification and mental training-and the Mechanists-those who modify their bodies through computer software and external prosthetics (e.g., cyberware). Arbor House – 1985 – Ron Walotsky, depicting one of the many barren planetoids posthumanity calls home.