| Title | : | Distraction |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1857989287 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781857989281 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 489 |
| Publication | : | First published December 1, 1998 |
| Awards | : | Hugo Award Best Novel (1999), Arthur C. Clarke Award (2000), John W. Campbell Memorial Award Best Science Fiction Novel (1999) |
Distraction Reviews
-
How was this book written in the late 90s, when it captures the 21st century political moment more than any other work of fiction ever?
I don't believe it, this must have really come out at least after 2015
Very prescient and reads like a contemporary tech thriller about the near future, the chaotic insane hyper-confused scifi America that is unfolding before our eyes right now.
Considering it takes place in the 2040s, I'd very much like to reread in 20 years and see how scarily this vision comes true... -
This is my favorite book.
It's so much my favorite book that I wrote
an article on its 20th anniversary for Slate. I
interviewed Bruce Sterling on what inspired him while writing, and why this book is still relevant right before the 2018 midterms.
...
Okay, that's not a review. Let me explain why this is my favorite book. Distraction paints a picture of a world gone down the tubes in an all too familiar way, but unlike the usual dystopian moanings, Sterling has the guts to imagine a way out; a characteristically optimistic American faith in the endless frontier of science, technology, and freedom from any kind of notion of responsibility.
But there are three things that I really, truly love about Distraction. First is the setting, which after 15 years smells more like the future than when it was written. An American political system that has descended into an insane farce. An economy that no longer has jobs for half the people; most of whom have dropped out to join a perpetual nomad carnival run off of weird reputation servers. Ecological Cold War with the Dutch and a coalition of low-lying Third World nations. A lost economic war with the Chinese over intellectual property. And information warfare as the basic fact of life--a world where bugs can be bought in bulk at flea markets, spam email servers orchestrate assassinations, and the US Air Force has to hold a bake sale to keep the lights on. It's a rich tapestry, and all of it hangs together beautifully.
Second, the aphorisms. Bruce Sterling knows how to turn a phrase, and he has some great ones around science and politics in this book. I'm a science policy professional by a living, and personally, I think Sterling has a better understanding of how this all works than 90% of the boring scholarly types involved. You want a mind-expanding quote about science and society, this is your book. Sterling doesn't bash you over the head with abstruse STS theory, but you can feel it deep underneath the writing.
And third, I really enjoy the plot and the characters: the genetically altered political strategist, the Nobel prize winning scientist, the mad governor of Louisiana, and the intricate scheme of neural engineering and power machinations that draw them into collision. Sure, some of the more important plot points proceed by random happenstance, but history doesn't have good reasons. In the real world, strange stuff that nobody could've seen comes in and upsets the board all the time. Just sit back, relax, and let the ride take you.
Read it. -
3.5 stars. It has been a while since I read this and it is on my list to re-read. My recollection is that this was an above average near-future, dystopian novel.
Nominee: Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1999)
Nominee: John W. Campbell Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1999)
Nominee: Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1999)
Winner Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (2000) -
I've enjoyed Bruce Sterling books in the past, so I was eager to start reading this one. The description of the book at Goodreads make it sound interesting. Unfortunately, the description of the book IS the book -- it's the entire plot boiled down to a few paragraphs. How Sterling got 500 pages out of this, I'll never know. I found it to be largely boring. There were some humorous moments, yes, but really, a book about a political spin doctor trapped in a Texas research facility just isn't that interesting. The budding romance that is hatched seems forced. There were some original ideas, certainly, such as the broke Air Force holding bake sales for money, but on the whole I was disappointed with this effort. I kept waiting for something to *happen.* After 115 pages, not much had, so I gave up and didn't finish the book. Normally I give a book 50 or 60 pages to interest me, but I gave Sterling more because I've enjoyed his previous efforts. I'm sorry I wasted my time. I am honestly amazed at how many reviews rave about this book. I guess I just didn't get it. Sorry. Not recommended.
-
Rating: "B": masterful writing and funny/clever satire, undermined by gross implausibilities and clunky auctorial manipulations. Distraction has a more mature, less headlong feel than Holy Fire, Sterling's previous novel. And the premise is grimmer -- the mid-21st century USA, bankrupted by a Chinese netwar, is coming seriously unglued.
Sterling's eye for the absurd and powers of invention are unmatched, and you'll have a lot of fun reading Distraction. But -- the book never quite jells, and left me feeling vaguely dissatisfied. I started a review, but couldn't quite put my finger on what was wrong -- until I found Gerald Jonas had done the review I wanted to write :
https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/02/2...
"In DISTRACTION (Dec 98, Bantam, $23.95) the estimable Bruce Sterling demonstrates why science fiction is such a difficult genre to get right... So unlikely is [Sterling's] next-century scenario that I found myself unable to take the actions of his characters seriously, even as satire. Ideas as counterintuitive as the bankrupting of the United States by the overnight obliteration of copyright and trademark laws cannot function as mere background for other events; they call for front-and-center treatment on their own... The players in the drama [are reduced] to bloodless puppets of the authorial imagination... "
Yup, that's pretty much What Went Wrong with the book. Perhaps he got too close to some True Beliefs... Pity. Still worth reading.
[Review written 1999, lightly revised 2017] -
One word defines how bad this book is: repetition. The author has some interesting ideas about problems in American society, and tries to extrapolate their impact in the near future. However, he also likes to repeat those ideas. So, if you're not really excited and into his theories, the plot drags during these America-is-going-to-hell for [insert random thought here] moments. And in case you don't get them the first time, they are brought up over and over. Additionally, the plot is advanced not with the characters' motivations and relationships, but with seemingly coincidental encounters with outsiders (i.e. Oscar's security guy Kevin).
-
From 2011, Sterling’s 1998 vision of 2044 is looking uncomfortably realistic. The US government is in a 20-year State of Emergency, half the population is unemployed, and the technological underclass have become scavenging nomads who rely on a classier Hot Or Not reputation servers to trust one another. Anyone who can afford to be a patron has their own krewe of flunkies. Environmental damage has physically reshaped the country. Ethically motivated bank robberies are crowdsourced.
The lead character, Oscar Valparaiso, is a campaign manager who’s been ditched now that his Senator’s been elected. Oscar’s a clone who sleeps four hours a night and never gets sick due to his 102-degree body temperature, so he’s not content to sit around; he wants to restore America to its former glory. Chaos ensues.
Oscar’s really, really good at manipulating people. As someone lacking both tactics and strategy, I really enjoyed this. I also really enjoyed the humor: nobody can take a man seriously if he isn’t wearing a hat; everyone assures Oscar that they totally don’t mind his personal background problem; Anglos are a violent, unpredictable, suspect minority.
This book is ten kinds of genius. I’m embarrassed to admit that the only other Sterling I’ve read is The Difference Engine. I stand corrected. -
(I originally wrote this in 2000; this version is adapted from
the one on my website.)
Originally seen in a Seattle bookstore when it was brand-new, and put on my to-read list immediately. When I actually got a chance to read it (I'd been distracted, heh), my hopes were confirmed. Bruce Sterling's
Distraction is perhaps the most perfect novel it's possible to write under that name, a marvelous political sleight-of-hand, a
Primary Colors for the 21st Century.
Oscar Valparaiso is a campaign manager of particular genius, a fast-talking manipulator who never, ever lies - because he never has to. The truth should always be enough, if you spin it right - and Oscar's the master of spin. But Oscar also has a longstanding "personal background problem" that even he can't spin enough, a problem that despite his talents and high-profile childhood keeps him from taking center stage himself.
As the book opens, Oscar has successfully shepherded an almost unknown architect into the U.S. Senate (not as wonderful an achievement as it sounds, what with unConstitutional "Emergency Committees" running almost everything and sixteen political microparties squabbling over the rest), and has been shunted off down to Buna, Texas, in an armored campaign bus with the rest of his election krewe for a little R&R.
But Oscar gets... distracted, in such a way that the reader also gets distracted, and neither he nor the reader knows what's coming next until it gets there.
In ideas per second, Distraction is right up there with Neal Stephenson's
Snow Crash, and while it also shares with that book an abrupt and somewhat disappointing ending, that may just be the unavoidable letdown you feel at the end of a roller-coaster ride... damn, it's over, and so soon!
Highly recommended. -
I like data-heavy, hyperbolic stories and Bruce Sterling is the absolute master of this kind. I feel so close to the main character, Oscar (except the genetic background stuff; which was madly interesting by the way), that it completely positively biased me towards the book I think. His tendency to act like he is in control while actually going with the flow really reverberated with how I usually approach life.
Aside from Oscar, the book was brimming with interesting characters; particularly Green Huey the renegade governor. It is a bit hard to discuss about the ideas in the book without really spoiling it; but as a biotech professional even after 18 years; I can tell that the stuff here is still relevant.
I love the political and social situations Sterling has created to put his story across and albeit infuriating for me as a scientist, his assertions about the mindset of scientific community were mostly (sadly) true. My only complain about the book is it gets whiny a bit every now and then. But that small complaint did not knock offSterling as one of my favourite all-time writers. Highly recommended. -
Unbelievably futuristic, Bruce Sterling takes (what feels like) all of the modern day stressors and blows them up, to fifty-years hence, so we can see what's going on, as we speak. Whew! Few outside Christopher Buckley know how to make a political operative the center of one's narrative, let alone an appealing one — moreover, every character in the novel (barring the Senator, and his wife, or what-have-you) seem to have no use, no ability to grasp, no idea what Oscar is for— a neat riff on the uncomfortableness contemporary Americans feel about the place politics has in their lives. How is this supposed to work? A great tour through things you'd hadn't heard about, or knew how to grasp, fully, despite the fact that your life's and mine's too are beholden to them; plus, it's a hoot to read! More and more popular these days, this book is, though it's been out for years; I sense a revival with this one. Mark. My. Words.
-
A re-read I began when Trump became an actual candidate. I first read Distraction many years ago. I thought "this is fascinating but bizarre--a colorful, violent, jaded, deeply fractured American dystopia that would never actually happen!" In fact, I grew impatient with the long-winded, detailed explorations of sociopolitical leaders' moods, moves, and motives because they felt so unrealistic.
As the weeks and my re-read progressed, I realized I was absorbing it more as a survival manual. Some passages are remarkably prescient.
I was torn between four stars--for imagination, seerlike extrapolation, and detailed worldbuilding--and three stars because, like other reviewers, I had problems with the dialogues and relationships between the characters, personal and professional. I'll go up to four stars because this book is so very current again. -
I really liked this book. It's one of the best near-future science fiction novels I've read in a long time. You won't find any interstellar travel,
artificial intelligence or spandex-clad sex droids here, just a world very much like our own but 8-10 years in the future. A future where things have gone a bit wrong. Some of the things you're missing by not reading this book include: Reputation Servers, Air Force Bake Sales, the Politics of Squatting and BioTechVoodoo Haitians if I remember correctly. Oh, and it's a love story. -
Sterling is an ideas man (and one of my favorites), and this near future political thriller is filled with them. Although some people have rightly complained that the actual story doesn't really begin until about 90 to 100 pages in, I still love every page of this novel. Although much less silly (in a good way) than Neal Stephenson's classic
Snow Crash, I'd imagine that those who enjoyed all the funny throw-away bits of social commentary in SC will find just as much to enjoy in Distraction. -
so far, it's either airport magazine rack crap, or pretentious elitist crap that's making a statement by parodying airport magazine rack crap.
-
In many ways this book is a product of its times written in the late 1990s -- yet its future (2040) today in 2021 looks to be really plausible. While Sterling doesn't have an idea of social media, he is able to talk about the political economy of the USA in a way that is really intriguing and seems likely. There are so many good lines in this book -- so many pontificative rants! Here's a few choice quotes (no spoilers)
"Politics don't work anymore! We can't make politics work, because the system's so complex that its behavior is basically random. Nobody trusts the system anymore, so nobody ever, ever plays it straight. There are sixteen parties, and a hundred bright ideas, and a million ticking bleeping gizmos, but nobody can follow through, execute, and deliver the goods on time and within specs. We've given up on the Republic! We've abandoned democracy. I'm not a Senator! I'm a robber baron, a feudal lord. All I can do is build a cult of personality."
--
"No it's too late for that. We're so intelligent now that we're too smart to survive. We're so well informed that we've lost all sense of meaning. We know the price of everything, but we've lost all sense of value. We have everyone under surveillance, but we've lost all sense of shame."
--
"But there's the animals," she said. "The genetic facilities."
"That's the truly tragic part. You can't save an endangered species by cloning animals. I admit, it's better than having them completely exterminated and lost forever. But they're curios now, they walk around looking pretty, they've become collector's items for the ultra-rich. A living species isn't just the DNA code, it's the whole spread of genetic variety in a big population, plus their learned behaviors, and their prey and their predators, all inside a natural environment. But there aren't any natural environments anymore. Because the climate has changed."
--
Oscar recognized the United States Senate as a strong and graceful structure built to last by political architects committed to their work. It was a system that he would have been delighted to exploit, under better circumstances.
But Oscar was a child of his own time, and he knew he didn't have that luxury. He knew it was his duty to confront and master modern political reality. Political reality in modern America was the stark fact that electronic networks had eaten the guts out of the old order, while never finding any native order of their own. The horrific speed of digital communication, the constant flattening of hierarchies, the rise of net-based civil society, and the decline of the industrial base had simply been too much for the American government to cope with and successfully legitimize.
There were sixteen major political parties now, divided into warring blocs and ceaseless internecine purges, defections and counterpurges. There were privately owned cities with millions of "clients" where the standard rule of law was cordially ignored. There were price-fixing mafias, money laundries, outlaw stock markets. There were black, grey, and green superbarter nets. There were health maintenance organizations staffed by crazed organ-sharing cliques, where advanced medical techniques were in the grip of any quack able to download a surgery program. Wiretapping net-militias flourished, freed of any physical locale. There were breakaway counties in the American West where whole towns had sold out to tribes of nomads, and simply dropped off the map.
There were town hall meetings in New England with more computational power than the entire US government had once possessed. Congressional staffs exploded into independent fiefdoms. The executive branch bogged down in endless turf wars in an acronym soup of agencies, every one of them exquisitely informed and eager to network, and hence completely unable to set realistic agenda and concentrate on its own duties. The nation was poll-crazy, with cynical manipulation at an all-time toxic high--the least little things produced tooth-gritting single-issue coalitions and blizzards of automated lawsuits. The net-addled tax code, having lost all connection to fiscal reality, was routinely evaded by electronic commerce and wearily endured by the citizenry.
With domestic consensus fragmenting, the lost economic war with China had allowed the Emergency congressional committees to create havoc of an entirely different order. With the official declaration of Emergency, Congress had signed over its birthright to a superstructure of supposedly faster-moving executive committees. This desperate act had merely layered another operating system on top of the old one. The country now had two national governments, the original, halting, never-quite-suspended legal government, and the spasmodic increasingly shrill declarations of the State-of-Emergency cliques.
The book isn't a rant though. Instead Sterling takes us on this fast paced journey that is defamiliarizingly familiar and yet alien, one that I found completely gripping. -
A dystopian future of the USA .... but one where there is still hope and humor. Sterling is a great writer. My full review is here:
http://peterfsblogs.blogspot.com/2018... -
A near-future Sci-Fi novel about a political operative in a world that was probably meant to be absurd when the book was written in 1998, but which is surprisingly grounded and realistic now. There's a lot of humor that lightens the darker moments, and the silliness throughout the story seemed more realistic to me than the grimness that is more common in Sci-Fi. "Distraction" depicts a post-crash America in a world with dramatically rising sea levels and a completely non-functional Federal government. Most Americans are unemployed, and society is a mess, but the book is a relentlessly hopeful and positive angle on that particular situation. For instance, the minor character of a charismatic businessman who completely upends the Federal government seems shockingly prescient now, but his method of subverting the government's regular processes by starting a sham war is more humorous than realistic.
"Take away America's money, and you've got a country of tribes."
The "proles" have dropped out of regular commercial society altogether. Displaced by climate change, they scavenge and recycle to get by. "creating new, functional objects that were not commercial detritus - they were sinister mimics of commercial detritus, created through new, noncommercial methods. Where there had once been expensive, glossy petrochemicals, there was now chopped straw and paper. Where there had once been employees, there were jobless fanatics with cheap equipment, complex networks, and all the time in the world. Devices once expensive and now commercially worthless were being slowly and creepily replaced by near-identical devices that were similarly non-commercial, and yet brand-new."
The people of this story believe that they're pretty much always under surveillance, and they're right. But they're not worried about it. They don't feel oppressed. To them, it is just a fact of life that machines are always monitoring everything done in public (and most of what is done is private), and that a person with sufficient power can gain access to any information they like. But these people still recognize that the masses have power. One says, "The people who rule us are spooks, they lie and they cheat and they spy. The sons of bitches are rich, they're in power. They hold all the cards over us, but they still have to screw people over the sneaky way."
When some of these dropouts are hired as muscle in a labor dispute, their leader describes the muscle he's sending this way, "They're teenage girls. We used to send in our young men when we wanted to get tough, but hey, young men are extremely tough guys. Young men kill people. We're a well-established alternative society, we can't afford to be perceived as murdering marauders. These girls keep a cooler head about urban sabotage. Plus, underage women tend to get a much lighter criminal sentencing when they get caught." And as squad leaders, logistics support, and scouts the teenage girls are supplemented with old ladies. After all, what group could possibly be better at snooping and staying organized than elderly women?
By the high point of the story, a very remarkable politician has emerged who bears some resemblance to contemporary figures:
"Now, for the first time, the President began to look genuinely powerful, even dangerous. This was a classic political coalition: it had worked in Medieval France. It was the long-forgotten bottom of the heap, allied with the formerly feeble top, to scare the hell out of the arrogant and divisive middle."
"Like a sorcerer slamming swords through a barrel, the President began to bloodlessly reshape the American body politic.
The Normalcy manifesto was a rather astonishing twenty-eight point document. It stole the clothes of so many of America’s splintered political parties that they were left quite stunned. The President’s national plan for action bore only the slightest resemblance to that of his party platform, or that of his supposed core constituency in the Left Tradition Bloc. The President’s idea of Normalcy had something in it to flabbergast everyone.
The dollar would be sharply devalued and made an open global currency again. A general amnesty would free from parole anyone whose crimes could be considered remotely political. A new tax structure would soak the ultra-rich and come down brutally on carbon-dioxide production. Derelict and underused buildings would be nationalized en masse, then turned over to anyone willing to homestead them. Derelict cities and ghost towns — and there were many such, especially in the West — would be scraped clean from the face of the earth and replanted in fast-growing trees. Roadblocking was henceforth to be considered an act of piracy and to be punished without mercy by roving gangs of the CDIA, who, since they were all former roadblockers of the most avid temperament, could be expected to know just how to put an end to the practice.
A constitutional amendment was offered to create a new fourth branch of government for American citizens whose 'primary residences were virtual networks.'
America’s eight hundred and seven federal police agencies would be streamlined into four. There was a comprehensive reform plan for the astoundingly victorious American military.
There was also a new national health plan, more or less on a sensible Canadian model. This would never work. It had been put there deliberately, so that the President’s domestic opposition could enjoy the pleasure of destroying something."
Interesting words I learned from this book:
alcade: usually spelled "alcaid", "mayor/governor/warden" in Spanish, from "leader" in Arabic
astrocyte: a star-shaped glial cell of the central nervous system.
autonomen: short for autonomist Marxist, a person who follows that set of anti-authoritarian left-wing political beliefs
borborygmus: a rumbling or gurgling noise made by the movement of fluid and gas in the intestines.
boucherie: butchershop (from French)
brio: a quality of being active or spirited or alive and vigorous.
canebrake: a thicket of specific large grasses (canes)
casque: a helmet or the helmetlike growth out of the beaks of some birds
communards: members of a commune
congelation: the process of congealing or the state of being congealed.
contretemps: a minor dispute or disagreement.
coruscate: to flash or sparkle
demitasse: a small coffee cup
extrastriatal: relating to a outer region of the brain towards the front
furbelows: a gathered strip or pleated border of a skirt or petticoat.
gimcrack: flimsy or poorly made but deceptively attractive, also a word for a knicknack
hebephrenia: a form of chronic schizophrenia involving disordered thought, inappropriate emotions, hallucinations, and bizarre behavior.
houngan: a voodoo priest
instantiation: The production of an instance, example, or specific application of a general classification, principle, theory, etc.
kiva: a chamber, built wholly or partly underground, used by male Pueblo Indians for religious rites.
klieg light: a powerful electric light typically used in filming
kraal: a traditional African village of huts, typically enclosed by a fence.
krewe: is an organization that puts on a parade or ball for the Carnival season (like Mardi Gras)
lignin: a class of complex organic polymers that form important structural materials in the support tissues of vascular plants and some algae
louche: disrespectful or sordid in an appealing way
lysenkoism: a Soviet political campaign against genetics and science-based agriculture in the 1920's to 1960's
maquiladora: a special economic zone in Mexico, a manufacturing operation where factories import material and equipment on a duty-free and tariff-free basis for assembly, processing, or manufacturing and then export the products immediately.
myoclonus: a brief, involuntary twitching of a muscle or a group of muscles
nubby: coarse or knobbly
orthogonal: of or involving right angles
papadam: from Tamil. A thin, crisp, disc-shaped food from the Indian subcontinent
paraboloid: a shape made by rotating a parabola around its axis of symmetry
pith: (as a verb) to remove the spongy central tissue from a plant or the spine from an animal
quonset: a prefab building made of corrugated metal and having a semicircular cross section
seine: a fishing net that hangs vertically in the water with floats at the top and weights at the bottom edge, the ends being drawn together to encircle the fish
sere: dry or withered
skein: a length of thread or yarn, loosely coiled and knotted.
stochastic: random, guessed
swot: to study hard, or in business usage to analyse Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats
syncytium: a single cell or cytoplasmic mass containing several nuclei, formed by fusion of cells or by division of nuclei.
tensegrity: the characteristic property of a stable three-dimensional structure consisting of members under tension that are contiguous and members under compression that are not.
thixotropic: a property of gels or fluids, to be stable at rest but become fluid when agitated
valise: a small traveling bag or suitcase
vizard: a mask or disguise. -
I remember picking up this book in an airport back when it was newly published. It must have been in 1998, then.
I didn't recall too much of it, but one thing stuck vividly with me. It's in chapter 3 (page 73-74 on in my edition):"Okay. Let's imagine you're a net-based bad guy, netwar militia maybe. And you have a search engine, and it keeps track of all the public mentions of your idol, Governor Etienne-Gaspard Huguelet. Every once in a while, someone appears in public life who cramps the style of your boy. So the offender's name is noticed, and it's logged, and it's assigned a cumulative rating. After someone's name reaches a certain level of annoyance, your program triggers automatic responses." Fontenot adjusted his straw hat. "The response is to send out automatic messages, urging people to kill this guy."
I recall reading that back in 1998 and being blown away by the idea, despite its conceptual simplicity.
Oscar laughed. "That's a new one. That's really crazy."
"Well, yeah. Craziness is the linchpin of the whole deal. You see, there have always been a lot of extremists, paranoiacs, and antisocial losers, all very active on the nets.... In the Secret Service, we found out a long time ago that the nets are a major intelligence asset for us. Demented, violent people tend to leave some kind of hint, or track, or signal, well before they strike. We compiled a hell of a lot of psychological profiles over the years, and we discovered some commonalities. So, if you know the evidence to look for, you can actually sniff some of these guys out, just from the nature of their net activities."
"Sure, User profiles. Demographics analysis. Stochastic indexing. Do it all the time."
"We built those profile sniffers quite a while back, and they turned out pretty useful. But then the State Department made the mistake of kinda lending that software to some undependable allies...." Fontenot stopped short as a spotted jaguarundi emerged from under a bush, stretched, yawned, and ambled past them. "The problem came when our profile sniffers fell into the wrong hands.... See, there's a different application for that protective software. Bad people can use it to compile large mailing lists of dangerous lunatics. Finding the crazies with net analysis, that's the easy part. Convincing them to take action, that part is a little harder. But if you've got ten or twelve thousand of them, you've got a lotta fish, and somebody's bound to bite. If you can somehow put it into their heads that some particular guy deserves to be attacked, that guy might very well come to harm"
"So you're saying that Governor Huguelet has put me on an enemies list?"
"No, not Huey. Not personally. He ain't that dumb. I'm saying that somebody, somewhere, built some software years ago that automatically puts Green Huey's enemies onto hit lists."
It's only the law of large numbers applied. Given enough followers, someone with such an audience could convince a tiny fraction to do something crazy, like, say, attack the Capitol Building.
I never forgot the general concept, but in light of recent 2021 events, I was vividly reminded of it. I decided to reread the book.
While published in 1998, and describing events taking place in 2044-45, it describes an impressively believable near future.
I
recently read Neal Stephenson's Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, but his vision of a near-future Ameristan didn't work at all for me, despite being published in 2019. Distraction, in contrast, holds up much better, despite its age.
It's full of futuristic ideas, most of which seem uncomfortably close to reality. The story isn't bad, either. -
I just read the best review of this book over on
Boing Boing! and it reminded just why this is in my top ten favorite books list.
It also reminded me why I like Cory Doctorow, the author of the following review as well as several fun works of science fiction, so much:
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/05/17/...
"I just finished re-reading (for the nth time) Bruce Sterling's 1998 novel Distraction. I didn't mean to -- I picked it up in a used bookstore in Milwaukee on my way to a quick dinner in my hotel room, thinking I'd just read a few pages of this old friend and then leave it behind for the next guest to discover and enjoy. Now it's 18 hours later and I've read all 500-some pages of it, and, as ever, my mind is a-whirl with the incredible ideas, people and speculation in this remarkable, remarkable book.
Distraction is the story of an America on the skids: economy in tatters, dollar collapsed, unemployment spiked, population on the move in great, restless herds bound together with networks and bootleg phones. The action revolves around Oscar Valparaiso, a one-of-a-kind political operator who has just put his man -- a billionaire sustainable architecture freak -- into the Senate and is looking for some downtime. But a funny thing happens on the way to the R&R: Oscar and his "krewe" (the feudal entourage who trail after him, looking after his clothes, research, security, systems and so on) end up embroiled in a complex piece of political theater, a media war between the rogue governor of the drowned state of Louisiana, the Air Force, the newly elected president, and a weird, pork-barrel science park in its own glassed-in dome.
Every single chapter -- every one! -- has at least enough material for five great speculative short stories. From the net-gang hobos (and their remarkable, cellular-automata driven fleamarkets) to the weird economic boom in cognition research, to the idea of leisure unions and anti-work activist techno-triumphalists, this book fizzes with awesome ideas.
But that's only one of its three signal virtues. The other two are: the insight Sterling brings to the nature of politics and the political process in the age of networked economies and systems; and the vivid, larger-than-life characters who populate this book. They are, to a one, likable, frustrating, believable, admirable and enraging.
It's a powerful concoction, this book, and now, ten years after its initial publication, it's possible to asses just how prescient, how visionary, Sterling is. I love all of Bruce's books, but this one may just be my favorite. It's the kind of friend you end up staying up all night chatting with, even when all you plan on doing is saying a quick hello." -
What Sterling has done in this book is to extrapolate the current trends in society and just follow them into a logical conclusion. While I think this scenario is entirely possible, I think that Sterling didn't give enough time for things to get as bad as they are in Distraction. A shortened timeline seems to be common in these books. Maybe it's because the author needs to get the plot moving or something, but I don't think that they give enough time for scenarios like the one you find in this book to realistically develop...
Read the rest of my review at
A Bookish Type. -
Very interesting and stimulating, a fascinating potential breakdown.
2nd time through got to really like the characters and the entire anti self serving central government ethos. Sterling has created a future with 3rd world contrast between have and have nots in America. The Chinese destroying America by making public all of our intellectual property is a fun twist. Doing something with that IP is still the best bet though. Love that anglos are the persecuted minority prone to violence. Lots of great irony and social commentary. Solid book as always from Sterling. Makes you think about what ifs. -
This is one of his best in many ways, although Mr Sterling’s work is usually of a high standard. It is genuinely prophetic and not just satire. It’s funny and very clever. I loved it.
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Bruce Sterling è uno scrittore di fantascienza che riscuote tutta la mia simpatia: sarà che ho avuto occasione di leggerlo sul mio quotidiano di riferimento, sarà che collabora con Wired, o sarà perchè – decisivo – ha deciso di vivere in Italia e vi soggiorna ormai da quasi un decennio. Avendo avuto in passato l’occasione di godermi alcuni dei suoi racconti, probabilmente la forma narrativa in cui eccelle, non mi ha sorpreso più di tanto trovare un suo romanzo fra quelli elencati nella lista dei 1001 libri da leggere. (link:
www.capitolo23.com)
Sterling, teorico del cyberpunk, tratteggia in “Caos USA” (“Distraction” nel suo titolo originale) gli Stati Uniti del 2044: una ex potenza, annichilita dalla pirateria informatica cinese che – rilasciando gratuitamente tutto il software prodotto negli States – è riuscita a mettere in ginocchio l’intera economia statunitense. Il quadro è desolante: forze armate costrette a piazzare dei posti di blocco con cui taglieggiare gli automobilisti per riuscire a sfamarsi, enormi gruppi di persone dedite al nomadismo sullo sfondo delle Highway, quartieri che si sono proclamati proprietà privata e si sono barricati dietro recinti di fortuna, corruzione dilagante.
In questo quadro è inserito il protagonista: Oscar Valparaiso, uomo senza compleanno (al lettore scoprire il perchè), geniale addetto stampa e organizzatore di campagne elettorali che incontriamo subito dopo il successo dell’elezione di un senatore. Nel tempo Oscar dimostrerà di possedere doti da vero leader e di non voler lasciare nulla di intentato nella sua intenzione di riportare il suo paese a quel ruolo primario che le è consono.
La trama è intrigante, fosse anche solo per lo sforzo di immaginare una civiltà in pieno decadimento, e le ambientazioni efficaci, lontane dalle tradizionali claustrofobie cyberpunkeristiche: il romanzo si posiziona certamente di più sul genere fantascientifico con tracce di possibile ucronia (una specializzazione che ho sempre amato molto). Alcune trovate sono spassose (il conflitto fra USA e Olanda, con gli europei che invitano serenamente ad invadere una terra ormai sommersa dalle acque…) ma al romanzo avrebbe certamente giovato una robusta sforbiciata: penso in particolare ad alcuni dialoghi, decisamente didascalici, e ad alcune delle descrizioni della storia recente (per noi futura). “Caos USA” è certamente un romanzo che ha interpretato il proprio tempo, e veleggia fra una critica del sistema sociale americano e una interpretazione estrema della globalizzazione. E’ stato scritto dieci anni prima della crisi del 2007 di cui ancora paghiamo le sofferenze, ma leggete l’indignazione di un americano per la produzione automobilistica coreana (auto di paglia e carta) che sta disintegrando il settore: “Come fa a sopravvivere un’industria quando un’auto costa meno di un sacchetto di carta? Qui è in gioco una grande tradizione americana! L’automobile definisce l’America: la catena di montaggio, i drive in, le macchine truccate, la periferia, il sesso adolescenziale, tutto ciò che rende grande l’America!”
Un romanzo non semplicissimo da reperire, ma che una ricerca la merita di sicuro. -
Bruce Sterling did an amazing job in this novel at predicting the social, cultural, and political future of America. His biggest mistake was being about a quarter-century too slow: Distraction takes place in 2044, but Sterling has done an unnervingly good job at describing today: tribalism and social media, trade war with China, an incompetent/ineffective federal government, Trump-like political figures.
I heard about this book from
Cory Doctorow, and it's clear that Doctorow was heavily inspired by it: his
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and
Walkaway both come across as responses, or almost alternate versions of this novel.
One way of describing the political split in modern America is who you distrust more: the government, or corporations? If you dislike or distrust the former more, you're likely a Republican; the latter, a Democrat. Distraction shows a profoundly dysfunctional government and doesn't have much to say about corporations or the worst abuses of capitalism; Walkaway is rather the opposite. In that way, the two books are excellent companions, and I recommend both very highly.
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https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3488524.html
set in a crumbling USA of 2044, whose protagonist is a political operator who switches from electoral campaigning to protecting his lover's laboratory. Some parts of the setting now seem eerily prescient.
We get taken into the depths of the politics of Sterling's future America, with weak governance (Senator, Governors, President), armed militias (mostly benign), a vat-born hero, and self-funded scientific breakthroughs. It's funny and fast-paced, and has more owners on both Goodreads and LibraryThing than the other two put together. But I felt that of the three, it is the most superficial and has aged least well. Sterling was of course the apostle of cyberpunk, and the fact that this book actually has a coherent plot and interesting (if not always sympathetic) characters set it apart from some others in that genre. -
Часом шукаєш чогось не складного і далекого від дійсності, щоб просто розгрузити голову, а натрапляєш на якусь таку перлину, як «Распад». Книга в 2000 році отримала премію Артура Кларка. Події відбуваються в 2030 році у Сполучених Штатах. Але Штати вже не ті: до економічної кризи додалася екологічна, білі стали етнічною меншістю, громадянське суспільство невпізнавано змінилося, держава померла, а на її трупі паразитує політика.
Книга не виглядає ані фантастикою, ані антиутопією, адже події в ній логічно розвиваються з сьогодення. Скоріше вона змушує замислитися над процесами, що відбуваються в світі і до чого призведе той соціальний і сенсотворний тектонічний зсув, який явно відбувається просто зараз. -
A post climate change, post American era politcal thriller. China wages an economic cold war on the US by effectively unilaterally ending intellectual property through state sponsored free distribution of all known IP. We rattle around a dysfunctional semi-permanent semi-civil war in a USA decimated by climate change and the destruction of almost all of the economy trying to find a moral footing for science in a future without patent protection. Plot pace of a thriller drives you through the futurism like it all makes sense.
