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(Copied from an old review originally posted elsewhere.)
Date: 17 November 1993, 10:05:49 EST
From: David M. Chess
To: sf-reviews at presto.ig.com
Subject: Review of Bruce Sterling's CRYSTAL EXPRESS
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
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