Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling

Schismatrix Reviews

• 
  David

  At times, my mind would wander while reading Schismatrix. But not in the usual way wherein a thought much more interesting than what's on the page enters my head. Instead, I found myself often just musing about the ideas I'd just read a paragraph ago or even earlier in the book.
  
  Schism is so packed with ideas and dwells so little on any one of them that it was sometimes a bit difficult to keep reading, wait, that idea was so interesting...the ramifications...we can't go on yet, I have to think about this!
  
  Despite having been written twenty-five years ago (can 1985 really be that distant?) there is very little in Schism to place the date of its authorship anywhere but on the bleeding edge. Sterling sidestepped many of the usual conventions of Science Fiction altogether, so there's little of the familiar to fall back upon and it's no lazy read. In fact, it can be a bit exhausting. But I found plenty of humanity and meaning amongst the chaos of technologies, philosophies, world-building and world-destroying.
  
  So I recommend that you crack open the Schismatrix, where the excitement of invention truly never ends.
• 
  Adam

  I had written Bruce Sterling off as a relic of the cyberpunk era, big mistake. The wow factor is pretty big on this. Mind mutating, WTF, idea per sentence science fiction with shades at time of Bester, Triptree jr. Delaney, Barrington J. Bailey(who blurbs it) William S. Burroughs, and Ballard. Dense, filled with absurd humor and grotesque surreal visions, as human future and form breaks and cascades into increasing odd shapes. I feel a little buzzed after finishing this. This and a couple of short stories have put Sterling on my favorites list. This book also had a profound influence on the books of Charles Stross and Alastair Reynolds, the former taking the zany idea flinging and economic speculation and the latter the grim, fractured weirdness.
• 
  John

  The only other book I've read that comes at all close to kinship with this fascinating space epic is Stross's 2005
  Accelerando, which appears to have been influenced both indirectly (in form & style) and directly (posthumanism & lobters!) by Schismatrix, which predates Accelerando by two decades. In both cases there is at least one tongue-lolling, brain boiling, oh-wow SF concept worked into the story in every paragraph. Such a high ratio of idea-to-story weighs a little heavy on the reading at times, sometimes making ciphers out of secondary characters and making blatant macguffins out of interplanetary political conspiracies and intruige, but it never veers too far into the superficial, and Sterling occasionally lets his left brain cool down for stretches and allows some real depth and pathos to seep into his story before resuming the SF pyrotechnics. There were occasionally whole stretches of the story that made only a passing amount of sense to me (i.e. "are they *really* transforming themselves into modified deep sea creatures and colonizing the subterranean oceans of Europa, or did I miss something?"), but such parts were still a deliriously pleasurable experience.
  
  Considering how much of this book, first published in 1985, still feels new and mind-blowing, and given the influence it has had in the genre these past two decades (Swanwick, Stross, et. al.) it is a must read for sf devotees.
• 
  James

  This book has been on my list after reading an excellent short story by Sterling dealing with this same universe. Well after finally finding a copy of this and reading it, I can say I wasn't missing much. Like a lot of SF, the characters seem like cardboard cutouts, and the plot is not good to say the least. Actually, this book is confusing as hell. Why are the characters doing what they are doing? What is motivating them? Sterling does present a colorful vision of the future where humans abandon Earth and live out on lunar colonies, on asteroids, and moons of Saturn. They are divided up into Mechanists and Shapers. They apparently don't like each other but it's never made clear why. There is an alien race called The Investors who arrive and there is a period of détente. Then the Investors go away or something. Who knows? This really seems like a several short story pieces that are clumsily cobbled together to make a novel. The chapters are sometimes several years apart in the timeline with no decent grounding of what happened during the intervening years or why. There's also dozens of characters who drift in and out of the novel at various times. Like I said, confusing as hell.
• 
  Olethros

  -Innovador en su momento, pero pocos se dieron cuenta.-
  
  Género. Ciencia-Ficción.
  
  Lo que nos cuenta. Abelard Lindsay es un formista (o formador en otras ediciones) desterrado a la Luna en la que rápidamente debe usar su ingenio y su “formación”, nunca mejor dicho, en diplomacia para encontrar tanto la forma de sobrevivir en la tensa sociedad de Zaibatsu Popular Circunlunar de Mare Tranquilitatis como la forma de luchar por aquello en lo que cree, totalmente distinto de lo que la facción mecanista (o mecanicista en otras ediciones) propone.
  
  ¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
  
  
  http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
• 
  Pier Virgilio Vassalli

  Che trip!
• 
  PetSch

  Frag mich bitte keiner nach der Handlung; obwohl viel in dem Roman drin steckt - was auch immer.
  3 Sterne wären zu wenig, 4 zu viel.
• 
  Gary

  Sterling's highly detailed future Worlds and Races reminds me of Iain M. Banks at his best in the Culture novels. There's usually a large dose of social critique in Sterling's books and this is no exception with it's interspecies animosity and interaction having parallels with our own planet and it's current and historical cultural and racial conflicts. There's a significant degree of anthropomorphism with the aliens but hey! at least it's not bunny rabbits with human emotions. I'd recommend all of Bruce Sterling's books and this is no exception.
• 
  Chip

  A very difficult book to get through. And honestly not a well written because the book's ideas are all over the place and near impossible to figure out what is going on. It took me almost the entire book to unravel the main premise was two cousins with different philosophies of life are out to get each other. There is plenty of political manipulation and deception. A couple of interesting ideas but far and few between.
• 
  Jeremy Hornik

  Eh. Hard science sci-fi with a psychedelic edge. Mechs versus shapers in a diplomatic battle for the something or other. Covers centuries, feels like it took months to slog through.
  
  I'm reading it twenty-five years too late.
• 
  Leonid

  Непогано, дуже зайшло. 3 частини дуже різні по настрою і сюжету, друга мені зайшла, мабуть, найбільше.
  Єдине, що трохи незрозуміло - чому книга записується в багатьох описах до кіберпанку. Той факт, що Стерлінг - один з батьків жанру, зовсім не означає, що він має писати виключно кіберпанк. Що не робить книгу анітрохи гіршою.
• 
  Diego Tonini

  Per quanto apprezzi l’acume di Sterling nelle sue analisi sociopolitiche e riconosca la sua capacità di dipingere società realistiche, senza risparmiarsi una critica a quella in cui viviamo, la sua scrittura proprio non mi appassiona.
  Leggo i suoi romanzi, certo, ma faccio fatica ad arrivare in fondo, e questo non fa eccezione.
  Sarà la narrazione di ampio (troppo?) respiro, che copre un intervallo di secoli, sarà la sua maggiore attenzione per l’introspezione psicologica e sociale rispetto alle scene d’azione, sarà la ricerca dei dettagli, ma non riesco ad accedere appassionarmi come vorrei alle sue storie.
  Limite mio.
• 
  Jörg

  Bruce Sterling was one of the leaders of the Cyperpunk movement in science fiction and Schismatrix is the central novel of Sterling's shaper/mechanist universe. The Schismatrix is the whole extraterrestrial mankind after departure from exploited and polluted earth to orbital stations around the moon, in the asteroid belt, the Saturn rings or other places in the solar system. A schisma of mankind into shapers and mechanists took place with shapers focussing on genetical engineering and mechanists using mechanical implants to extend and improve life. The factions are fighting each other in wars lasting generations. At the fringes of societies diverse subcultures have formed. Their participants are called sundogs. Schismatrix mainly tells the story of one of them, Abelard Lindsay, spanning almost 200 years of his life. A main theme is the arrival of alien races and their influence on mankind.
  The book is termed a cyberpunk novel, although it is not about the seemingly constitutive element of the genre, cyberspace. It's linked to the genre in its generally pessimistic attitude toward human development and man/technology integration. Mankind will continue to fight each other for power and wealth, exploit their environment notwithstanding any technological progress. Technology's role is to provide new ways of living after man has destroyed his environment again. It can't help to overcome human weaknesses. Nonetheless, Sterling leaves a remainder of hope as mankind is inventive enough to always find new ways to survive and he hints at a future in what he calls post-humanism.
  To me it's a punk novel in so far as the author's wants are larger than his skills which could be said of almost any early punk musician. The book is full of half-baked philosophy, the writing appears more dilettantistic than stylish which is not helped by one of the worst German translations I've read.
  It has enough strengths though. Sterling has lots of ideas & thoughts on future issues, many of them just hinted at to be explored in other stories. There's a richness of settings and concepts that could fuel ten other SF stories. The disintegration of mankind into many different social systems is interesting enough and the characterization of alien races so facetted that I would love to read a hypothetical history book of Sterling's shaper/mechanist universe where the weaknesses of his story telling wouldn't matter.
  
• 
  Sarah B.

  I picked up this book because I couldn't remember it from the first time I had read it, twenty years ago. I needed a bathtub book (one that I wouldn't mind if it fell in the water), and I wanted to decide if I should keep it on my shelf or pass it on. Within the first thirty pages I had dropped all my other books and was secretly heading off to my room to sneak in a few more pages.
  
  I loved the way Sterling balanced almost overwhelming creativity with cool, calm, and precise prose. I loved the way he balanced the inhuman stretch of time that the book covers (almost 200 yhears) with unexpected jumps forward in time, which to kept the story fresh and new. It must have been exhausting to write, although it was a delight to read. I understand why Sterling said he never wants to revisit this world, and I guess I better get caught up on what he has been doing since this novel...
• 
  David

  Not my taste. The first section had a sort of post-apocalyptic feel - most people seem like scavengers, pirates, black market...a major form of currency corresponds to time one can spend with prostitutes... Not a good start for me. The end involving some mysterious / implausible entity didn't work for me. In between, the story was essentially futuristic intrigue. Didn't really engage me, but didn't put me off either. A theme of divisions between groups of future humans based on bio-enhancements, tech body parts or those who are just brains hooked into the computer network will interest some readers, but I didn't feel it was explored deeply.
• 
  Ben Loory

  been meaning to read this for a really, really, REALLY long time... finally got around to it. i was expecting cyperpunk but it's not, it's far-future space opera; feels a lot like varley's
  The Ophiuchi Hotline. only a lot longer and not as much fun. the ideas are great (and they just keep coming), and the book's written in a kind of hallucinogenic countercultural michael moorcockian mode, but the story is just... really slow. like, "wait, is there even a story?" type slow. it was hard to finish.
• 
  Booksofdoom

  This is a good science fiction novel, but it is very heavy and in the end I appreciated the short stories in the back better than the actual Schismatrix part.
  
  
• 
  Paco Nathan

  this is the one that i asked bruce to sign. and old tattered paperback copy, but treasured. then his wife asked him to turn down the led zepplin because the kids were trying to sleep. or something.
• 
  reherrma

  Besprechung folgt !
• 
  Jesse

  Imaginative and interesting 80s sci-fi with no plot. Damn, this coulda been way more readable...
• 
  Tom

  A Cyberpunk infused early and influential work of postmodern space opera.
  
  Warning: spoiler alert!!
  
  Bruce Sterling’s Shaper/Mechanist series (1982-1985) consists of several short stories and only one book, Schismatrix. The series revolves around a conflict between two ideologically divided factions: the Shapers who dream of a transhumanist utopia via biogenetic engineering, and the Mechanists who strive for perfection through machine implants and computer circuits. Set in a widely colonized 24th Century Solar System, Schismatrix is an early and hugely influential example of postmodern space opera.
  
  Abelard Lindsay, born into a Mechanist family, has changed allegiance to the Shaper cause. Political intrigue has forced him into exile in the circumlunar criminal enclave of the People’s Zaibatsu, a lawless and slowly decaying society. Lindsay eventually manages to escape so he can begin a journey across the Solar System, promoting peace between the Shapers and Mechanists, working for the Preservist cause of trying to preserve a core of humanity’s baseline, an endeavour that is tied up in and threatened by a decade-long rivalry with his former ally, Philip Constantine, now a Shaper militant. By the intervention of a technologically more advanced alien race known as the Investors, who weigh in by pursuing peace for the sake of a free flowing economy, Lindsay initially succeed at establishing an uneasy détente between Shapers and Mechanists.
  
  The Shaper/Mechanist schism is only the tip of the iceberg and symptomatic of much wider splintering of humanity in the world of Schismatrix, a sf trope that has since come to define most of postmodern space opera, such as David Zindell’s Neverness Universe (1988-1998) and Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos (1989-1997). Sterling envisions a mature space-faring civilisation where any sense of community has evaporated, where a global understanding of humanity is impossible. The sheer amount of therapies available within each camp means that is not even possible to reduce the Shaper/Mechanist schism to a simple binary. While Mechanist "Lobsters" permanently seal their bodies into life-support shells, allowing them to live and work in deep space, Mechanist ‘Wireheads’ have left their bodies behind to live as computer simulations. The splintering of humanity has also led to an explosion in different ideologies, from Preservationism, the idea that the human baseline must be preserved, to Cataclysm, a libertarian resistance to social controls, to Zen Serotonin, a bioengineered drive for zen-like bliss and slowing down of societal change.
  
  Technology has also opened up the field of human phycology and what it means to be human. Shapers can change mode of consciousness at will, they can free themselves of emotional baggage to enhance their analytical acumen. Side-stepping humanness for political or economic gain is the source of continual tension in the work, a theme that anticipates Peter Watts’ multi-layered investigation into the nature and evolutionary purpose of consciousness in the his still ongoing Blindsight series (2006-2014?). Subject to the same evolutionary logic, Shaper children are bioengineered to mature early and learn faster than their baseline counterparts known derogatively as the Unplanned. With so much money and effort put into breeding – in what is basically a case of survival of the best engineered – it is only natural that the Shapers have evolved into an aristocratic society where one’s genetic heritage is of great importance. It is suggested that augmented cognitive power has paved the way for a post-scarcity society, and it is therefore not surprising either that the Shapers worry a great deal about ageing and spend large sums of money on rejuvenation therapies.
  
  Concerns over economic growth play an important part in the book where data volume is used as a measure for progress. Humanity has clearly learned valuable lessons from Earth, now a marginalised backwater following an ecological collapse. An yet, not everyone is in favour of technology controls. The faction known as Cataclysts demand an end to all controls, favouring a super-charged neo-liberal agenda which recalls Charles Stross’ Accellerando (2005).
• 
  Urban

  Ich las Schismatrix Anfang der neunziger Jahre mit so viel Begeisterung, dass ich den Roman viele Jahre als meinen Favoriten im Bereich der Science-Fiction empfohlen hatte. Wegen dieser damaligen Begeisterung gebe ich fünf Sterne. Nun habe ich den Band im Original erneut in die Hand genommen und bin immer noch sehr angetan.
  
  Beim heutigen Lesen fällt kaum auf, dass Bruce Sterling Schismatrix schon vor mehr als 30 Jahren geschrieben hat - im Genre eine Seltenheit. Das liegt daran, dass Sterling auf die heute ggf. veraltet erscheinende Beschreibung technischer Details entweder verzichtet - oder sie sind total abgefahren und daher zeitlos.
  
  Schismatrix wird als eines der bedeutendsten Werke des Subgenres des Cyberpunks angesehen, das in den achtziger Jahren des letzten Jahrhunderts einen Hype erlebte und sich mittlerweile im Mainstream aufgelöst hat. Meiner Meinung nach passt aber eher das Label "Posthumanism". Schismatrix beschreibt die Entwicklung der Menschheit im Sonnensystem über einen Zeitraum von ca. 200 Jahren in einer nicht allzu fernen Zukunft. Im Zentrum steht die gesellschaftliche Diversifizierung ausgehend von zwei Hauptgruppen, den "Shapern" und den "Mechanics", in immer verschachteltere Untergruppen: "Live moves in clades".
  
  Man kann das Werk auch als Ode an die Jugend ansehen (Sterling war keine 30, als er es veröffentlichte): Eine Kernaussage besteht in der Sentenz: Bewegung (Weiterentwicklung) ist Leben, Stillstand ist Tod. Sinnbild für den Stillstand sind die Bewohner der Erde, die in der Schismatrix keine Rolle spielen und sich vom Rest durch ein "Interdict" abgeschottet haben. Sie haben sich nicht weiterentwickelt und werden im Roman nicht weiter erwähnt.
  
  Man kann das Werk auch als Antwort auf die Herausforderungen der Menschheit lesen, Herausforderungen, die immer wieder auftauchen, denen wir nie entkommen werden, so sehr wir uns auch bemühen, Sicherheit zu schaffen: Kriege, Klimawandel, Pandemien etc. Bruce Sterling zeigt in Schismatrix auf, dass solche Herausforderungen nur durch Weiterentwicklungen - technischer oder gesellschaftlicher Art - gemeistert werden können, nie durch Aussitzen und Rückzug. Diese Weiterentwicklung erlaubt es auch dem Protagonisten, dem Shaper-Diplomaten Abélard Lindsay, über knapp 200 Jahre immer wieder Katastrophen zu entkommen und Neues zu schaffen. Freunde, die weniger entwicklungsfreudig sind, bleiben auf der Wegstrecke.
  
  Wegen seiner philosophischen Implikationen ist der Roman sehr lesenswert. Der Plot ist nur im ersten Teil spannend und actionreich, der sich um den jungen Lindsay dreht. Im zweiten und dritten Teil werden dagegen einzelne einschneidende Augenblicke des älter werdenden Lindsay beleuchtet. Sterling nutzt diese Szenen eher als Leinwand für seine Gesellschaftsskizzen. Spannend sind sie trotzdem wegen einem Überfluss an Ideen, mit denen uns Sterling beständig bombardiert.
  
  Fazit: Klare Empfehlung für junge Leser wegen des optimistischen (Cyberpunk-untypischen) Grundrauschens und ebenso für ältere Leser, die sich mit den philosophischen Ideen auseinandersetzen wollen.
• 
  Gianni Costanzi

  Meriterebbe 2 stelle per la traduzione, o forse 1, e 4 per l'ambientazione e la storia.. quindi 3 nel complesso.
  
  Ho sempre adorato l'ambientazione cyberpunk, dai film ai videogames, e quindi di recente ho voluto provare a colmare alcune lacune letterarie affrontando prima
  La matrice spezzata di Gibson e poi quest'altra pietra miliare del genere, La Matrice Spezzata, di
  Sterling Bruce. Già con il Neuromante ho fatto una fatica immensa e temevo che fosse un limite mio, che non afferravo la storia per il modo difficile di scrivere dell'autore.. poi informandomi su siti con appassionati del genere ho inteso che il problema sono i due traduttori, Cossato e Sandrelli, che ahimè hanno tradotto anche questo Volume.
  Ho fatto estrema fatica a portarlo a termine e temo che anche qui il problema sia la traduzione pessima, perché la storia in sé è affascinante e mi incuriosiva.. il mio consiglio quindi è di affrontarlo in lingua originale se ne avete la possibilità, io per un romanzo di questo tipo non me la sono sentita perché temevo fosse troppo complesso, ma probabilmente avrei capito di più che con questa traduzione in italiano. A titolo esemplificativo, ho iniziato a leggere l'antologia
  La notte che bruciammo Chrome, e il primo dei racconti, Johnny Mnemonico (da cui è stato tratto l'omonimo film) sempre di Gibson l'ho trovato godibilissimo e infatti in quel caso il traduttore è diverso, Delio Zinoni.
• 
  Christopher Tower

  I am not quite sure what to say about this book. It's not going to be for everyone. Many recommended it to me as a classic science fiction novel with cyberpunk flare (though not so much really) and a great future vision for author and seer Bruce Sterling. For the language of futurism alone, I loved it. Like this passage on pages 246-47: "In the hands of the Zen Serotonists, the Ring Council struggled for stability; as a result, it was falling behind. The cutting edge of genetics technology had been seized by the wild-eyed black surgeons of the cometaries and the Uranian rings, mushrooming posthuman clades like the Metropolarity, the Blood Bathers, and the Endosymbiotics. They had discarded humanity like a caul. Disintegrating microfactions surrounded the Schismatrix like a haze of superheated plasma."
  And there's lots more where that came from. It's poetic, lyrical, and fantastic, like a futuristic garden spring roll with surprise tastes hidden inside its roll.
  
  It's a complicated, lavish, dense book, though its plot hums along swiftly, and there's plenty of sex. It's surely worth re-reads. I just wish there was an audio version.
• 
  Marco Landi

  Libro piuttosto complesso...
  L'epopea postumana di Aberland Lindsay, attraverso vari habitat circumlunari, asteroidi intragalattici, pianeti terraformati e simili.. attraverso la battaglia tra Plasmatori (con le loro modifiche genetiche) e i Mechanix (coi loro impianti).. dopo un inizio apparentemente sconclusionato e un po' ostico, si entra nella storia, dalla trama un po' indefinita, ma ugualmente affascinante grazie al visionario genio creativo di Sterling.. nell'immaginare intere società postumane, con tanto di usi, costumi, mode, politiche e iterazioni sociali, filosofiche ed economiche, non ha uguali.. tirando dentro anche razze aliene o percorsi inimmaginabili.. con un finale all altezza dell'intera opera.. non per tutti, complesso e a momenti un po' criptico, accostabile per alcune cose a Accelerando di Stross, esprime tutto il futuribile potenziale della matrice umana nell'universo.. non per questo trascurando quelli che sono i sentimenti umani alla base della nostra natura..
• 
  Ivan

  Не помню, кто и при каких обстоятельствах настоятельно рекомендовал эту книгу, но рекомендация была очень убедительной, если я в очередной раз решил вернуться к ненавистному киберпанку. К середине книги стало интересно: она все же не про технологии, а про историю, политику, космос. Вполне годная версия развития нашей солнечной системы и даже с инопланетянами.
  4 звезды потому что тяжело уследить за всеми персонажами и сюжетом: много имен, много внезапных изменений в сюжете, когда нужно адаптироваться под новый мир.