tomgray's Full Review: Bruce Sterling - Distraction
Bruce Sterling's Distraction rivals and perhaps surpasses Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash* as the best comic novel to date of the information age. Full of satire that is almost indistinguishable from straightforward extrapolation of today's social trends, it piles up a mountain of terrific riffs, gradually becoming more and more wacky and hilariously out of control.
Distraction follows Oscar Valparaiso, the very model of a postmodern political campaign operative, on a one-man crusade to redeem an America impoverished by Chinese industrial espionage and in danger of lapsing into total chaos. Oscar's boss, architectural whiz and all-around genius Alcott Bambakias, has just been elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts with 38% of the vote on the ticket of the Federal Democrats, one of 16 parties contending for power among the country's shattered electorate.
We join Oscar on a post-campaign bus trip billed as a "vacation" for the campaign staff (actually it is meant to keep them out of the Senator's way while he selects his permanent office staff), but nothing goes quite as planned. In a perfectly logical sequence of events, politically speaking, Oscar comes to find himself leading a revolution of scientists at a federal biotech research laboratory in east Texas and plotting to assassinate the governor of Louisiana, who has been using pilfered research from the lab to alter human and animal genes in a covert campaign to seize national power.
In the process, Oscar gets to wear the world's first neural watch--a jelly-like contraption powered by a mouse brain that has to be fed and defecates a drop of liquid now and then; attacks the governor using a one-man supersonic drone aircraft that is piloted by global positioning and can penetrate almost any airspace; builds a hotel with talking bricks that provide construction directions; and much more. Like Snow Crash, Distraction is extraordinarily funny, but it goes beyond Stephenson's novel with a deeper analysis of social and political trends and the ways in which they might play out.
My experience is that humor is a highly personal thing--I didn't find either Catch-22 or The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy particularly amusing, to name two outstanding examples many friends have raved about--so let me give a few examples of Sterling's humor so that you can judge for yourself whether this book might appeal to you:
President Two Feathers: "Someone has to deal seriously with these people. I suspect that you are just the man."
Oscar: "I think I understand you, sir."
President Two Feathers: "They don't have any grasp of political reality, but they're going to blow the doors off the human condition unless something is done with them. I'm thinking: something subtle. Something attractive. Something glamorous, something that would make them behave less like Dr. Frankenstein and more like artists do. Modern poetry, that would be excellent. Costs very little, causes very intense excitement in very small groups, has absolutely no social effect. . . . "
- - - - -
Oscar: "I hadn't really thought much about Holland before. I mean, that Holland has so much potential. I mean, we own Holland now, basically, don't we?"
Senator Bambakias: "Yes, that's right. You see, Holland is the new Louisiana. Louisiana is yesterday's news! You and I were right to get involved in Louisiana earlier, there was a serious difficulty there--but as a rogue state, Louisiana is a sideshow now. It's the Dutch who are the real future . . . Believe it or not, they're ahead of the United States in a lot of areas--especially banking. Louisiana is over the top. They're not serious. They're visionary crawdad-eating psychos. We need serious political organization now, a return to normalcy. . . . "
Oscar: "You're really different now, aren't you, Alcott?"
Senator Bambakias: "I beg your pardon?"
Oscar: "I mean this regimen you've been through. It's completely changed you as a person. You're realistic now. You're sensible and prudent. You're boring."
Senator Bambakias: "Oscar, I'm sure that you have some kind of interesting insight there, but this isn't the time for chatter. We need to stick to the point . . . "
- - - - -
Dr. Greta Penninger: " . . . You're not remote and pure. You're alive and you're part of the real world. You know what you want."
Oscar felt a soaring sense of absolute masculine triumph. It lasted three seconds, crested, and left him tingling with premonitory dread.
"A love affair isn't always peaches and cream," he said.
She stared at him in utter astonishment. "Oscar, sweetie, I'm not talking about the sex. That's all very nice, and I'm happy about it, but you and I could have all the sex in the world, and it wouldn't change a thing. I mean that you gave me a real and lasting gift, Oscar, because you put me in power . . . I think I always wanted power, but I always resisted it, because I thought it was bad for me--but it isn't! Now I know what power is, and my God, it's really good. It's changing me completely. I just want more and more."
- - - - -
Sterling ladles up the scientific ideas in droves, mingled with zany yet somehow plausible political and social theories and analyses in an overflowing, zesty gumbo of a novel. Eat hearty.
Writing: 10
Characterization: 8
Big Issues/Ideas: 10
Recommended reading: Snow Crash has an even more manic flavor at times and is not to be missed. It's been a long time since I've read anything as funny as these two books. Sterling's Islands in the Net* is also quite good and similarly peppered with invention.
Imagine a world where the U.S. Army and Navy can t pay their power bills. Unemployment is at 85 percent. The House and Senate are self-appointed and r...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.