Ascendancies: The Best Of Bruce Sterling (2007) - Plot & Excerpts
Bruce Sterling, one of the best practitioners of science fiction and every kind of writing that can be presented using the tropes of sci-fi, i.e. fantasy, finally allows us to get a glimpse of his entire range of literary creativity. The stories are unlike most of the contemporary science fiction that fill up the extremely boring volumes edited by gardner Dozois, or some of the other pretenders. They are fresh, fast, driven equally by plot & characters, and very tightly told. Sterling gives too hoots about propagation of politically correct themes through fiction, and concentrates on creating stuff that you are bound to remember as "one hell of a story". The contents of this massive collection are: -(*) Introduction by Karen Joy Fowler(*) Foreword by Bruce SterlingPart I: The Sharper/Mechanist Stories1) Swarm2) Spider Rose3) Cicada Queen4) Sunken Gardens5) Twenty EvocationsPart II: Early Science Fiction and Fantasy6) Green Days in Brunei7) Dinner in Audoghast8) The Compassionate, the Digital9) Flowers of Edo10) The Little Magic Shop11) Our Neural Cherynobyl12) We See Things Differently13) Dori BangsPart III: The Leggy Starlitz Stories14) Hollywood Kremlin15) Are You for 86?16) The Littlest JackalPart IV: The Chattanooga Stories17) Deep Eddy18) Bicycle Repairman19) TaklamakanPart V: Later Science Fiction and Fantasy20) The Sword of Damocles21) Maneki Neko22) In Paradise23) The Blemmye's Strategem24) KioskI can try to list some of my favourties among favourites, but that would not be very good for you, the prospective reader. These are wonderful stories, and if you feel like reading them, after you have read this incompetent review, my work here would be done. Highly recommended.
What do You think about Ascendancies: The Best Of Bruce Sterling (2007)?
