Islands in the net Book

Visionary.

Okay, we don't have personal watch-phones. We have personal phone-watches instead. Big deal.

The trajectory of this book, the whiff of cynicism, menace, strangeness, and internationalism -- it's basic arguments about the future of power, all of them are still relevant and still have the power to explain parts of the world.

You can hear Sterling's prose learning from the textural techniques of William Gibson, and benefitting from them, but the raw intellectual content of this book outstrips any of Gibson's novels. Neuromancer is still a better work of literature, but this novel lights up different parts of the brain entirely.

Much of the future-shock of this novel is softened, not because it has aged poorly, but because it has aged so WELL. The rise of terrorism and private warfare around the globe, the ascendancy of a new corporate ethos, the feel of post-industrial buildings, the simple fact of dizzying multiculturalism in commerce and media, the antiquated feel of the 20th century, the rise of automation in industry and warfare -- it's all in this book, written in the late 1980s. Remember, this book came out only a year after the Regan administration had ended. And it STILL feels cutting edge.

And I even love the vintage, schlocky, buxom cyber-babe on the cover, even though I can't figure out which character in the book she's supposed to be.