Islands In The Net

by
Bruce Sterling

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Islands In The Net

by Bruce Sterling

3.61 of 5 stars 3.61 · rating details · 2,139 ratings · 41 reviews

In the high-tech twenty-first century, a family of "corporate associates" descends into an underworld of data pirates and bootleg biogenetics to discover the identity of new-order terrorists.

Published (first published 1988)

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Dec 17, 2008 Evan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 outst...more

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Sep 19, 2007 Seth rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: cyberpunks, social theorists, terrorist fiction fans

Shelves: masterpieces, science-fiction, sf-f-h

Reading Islands in the Net now, it may take a minute to figure out why it's a cyberpunk classic. There is very little VR, and what is there is not described in detail. Most of the book is off the grid (but then again, much of Neuromancer is, too). The heroine isn't a hack, programmer, or counterculture sympathizer, in fact, she's a corporate worker.

But read further in and you'll see that it's about the essential cyberpunk issues. Corporations consolidating power and those who don't get any. The...more Reading Islands in the Net now, it may take a minute to figure out why it's a cyberpunk classic. There is very little VR, and what is there is not described in detail. Most of the book is off the grid (but then again, much of Neuromancer is, too). The heroine isn't a hack, programmer, or counterculture sympathizer, in fact, she's a corporate worker.

But read further in and you'll see that it's about the essential cyberpunk issues. Corporations consolidating power and those who don't get any. The impact of instant world-wide communication and what happens to those who aren't included. How technology and society change one another and how the morals of those involved matter. Whether the masses can threaten a global social order. What kind of crimes, if any, can be forgiven for the sake of technical or social genius.

The major action of the book is completely relevant today: global terrorism and the questions of social and economic breakdown in Africa. What is likely, what is preventable, how do they affect the rest of the world, and does anyone have both the power and the will to affect the issues?

The book is written in Stirling's slightly-dry style and the setting changes back and forth in ways that may large sections of the book less interesting to some readers. It's worth it and it's far from a slog, but be aware going in that it's best to either do it in one quick read or spread out over many days.

The story follows Laura Webster. She is a high-flyer rising in Rizome Corporation, a multinational megaconglomerate. (The pun on "rhizome" is no doubt intentional.) At the beginning of the book she's starting up a new subsidiary, a Lodge in Galvaston the company uses as a combination retreat, vacation spot, and meeting place for the most discrete business. Her architect husband designed the place and now spends a lot of his time playing Worldrun, a sim game of modern politics. Like most players he can't master the art of keeping Africa stable.

Laura and David--and their baby--become involved in Rizome business with offshore data pirates, learning the ins and outs of international banking crime. Along the way they meet other people sheltering offshore, criminal scientists and artists. As her involvement deepens she finds herself stuck between Rizome, the newly-recreated Church of Isis, terrorists, rogue states, African nationalists, American nationalists, rival multinationals, and the interests of her own family. Terrorist acts threaten the almost-one-world government, a meltdown of African societies threatens to both her safety and her morals, and the implications of the gulf between Net-haves and Net-have-nots, whether by reason of location, income, or literacy, rises to the world stage.

This is one of the few cyberpunk books written from the suit perspective, and it's a pleasure to see genuine idealism alongside power-plays in the zaibatsu.(less)

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Dec 19, 2008 Nick Black rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Not only was the book itself an execrable waste of $5.95 USD, the title's bad enough to elicit wincing, and to top if off there's some $8-an-hour model doing softcore on the front, looking for all the world like the cover of a Def Leppard album. Pyromania! Hysteria! Islands in the Net! How the hell did Bruce Sterling come to be so respected? Yet another few hundred pages of crap yielded up from the "Cyberpunk" genre; aside from Neuromancer, there was really not much going on here. It's a shame,...more

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Apr 11, 2011 Milele rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Twenty years brings a lot of wrinkles to the face a near-future science fiction book. As always, some things change faster than the author can imagine (even though we're still 10 years away from the book's timeline), some things slower, and some things just differently.

The Net is much faster, cheaper and has more bandwidth than Sterling anticipated. His characters recorded video messages and used "telex" to send text to one another to save costs, rather than just go live.

His video-phone/organi...more

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Dec 27, 2010 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Sci fi fans, cyberpunks, political imaginers

Recommended to Michael by: Tom Maddox

Shelves: literature, science-fiction

I haven't read this book since I was in college, but I recall its having a profound effect on me. I remember enough of it to say that it was "prescient" in some senses - high tech employers like Google seem to be following some of the patterns suggested by the Rizome megacorp in the book, the recent uprisings in Thailand resemble those described for Singapore in the book, and current disarmament talks conform to his predictions as well - but that's not really what makes good fiction, even good s...more

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Jun 13, 2010 Curtis Butturff rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

My version of this book isn't actually listed here I have the leather bound edition from Easton Press such was my regard for the work.

Sterling was a member of a younger generation of science fiction writers that were referred to collectively as the cyber punk movement in the 1980s and 1990s and having read most of his work this title always struck a chord with me.

Some of it's central ideas might seem not so far fetched these days but note that it was first published in 1988 prior to the fall of...more

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Aug 10, 2009 Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: black-comedy, literature-disguised-as-science-fic, spy-vs-spy, heart-of-darkness

People seemed to miss the boat on this one. Badly in need of a reissue, ditch the atrocious cover and update the text a little bit and this would be cutting edge or at least comfortably contemporary. Like Brunner or Moorcock’s Cornelius stories(and peer/co-conspirator Gibson) this takes a sci-fi lens to contemporary culture and stretches into plausible shapes. Sterling pretty much nails it(yes he gets some wrong but not enough to discredit the rest), with Globalism, the rise of the third world i...more

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Feb 11, 2012 John E. Branch Jr. rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sf

As far as I can tell so far, the online Science Fiction Encyclopedia, launched in 2011, aims to be authoritative in the manner of traditional reference works: broad in its perspective, knowledgeable in its scope of reference (entries are apt to allude to many styles, trends, subcategories, and the like, whether it be historical literary forms such as the picaresque or more SF-oriented groupings such as the Ruined Earth and Steampunk approaches), concise but thorough in its summaries, and evaluat...more As far as I can tell so far, the online Science Fiction Encyclopedia, launched in 2011, aims to be authoritative in the manner of traditional reference works: broad in its perspective, knowledgeable in its scope of reference (entries are apt to allude to many styles, trends, subcategories, and the like, whether it be historical literary forms such as the picaresque or more SF-oriented groupings such as the Ruined Earth and Steampunk approaches), concise but thorough in its summaries, and evaluative. One will find much the same in traditional works such as the Oxford Companion to English Literature. And as far as I can tell so far, it succeeds.

Its entry on Bruce Sterling suggests I might do well to revisit Islands in the Net, which I read during a period of the 90s when I was not paying the utmost attention to the diversions I chose. The SFE proposes that “many of Sterling's novels may be seen as tours conducted around fields of data by protagonists whose main function is to witness them for us. This approach culminates in Islands in the Net (1988), a Near-Future thriller concerned with the increasing growth and complexity of political power in electronic communication networks.” That sounds like a book that could speak to the present day, depending on the details. And the concept of a tour is a good answer to the question “How can one best appreciate the kind of story it is?”

I’m not immune to the appeal of that approach. Two of James Cameron’s films, Titanic and Avatar, seem to me best regarded as tours; though they have fully developed stories (something neither I nor, apparently, the SFE are willing to claim for Islands in the Net), I can’t help thinking that Cameron wanted most of all to show us as much as he could of the great ship itself, in the former film, and in the latter as much as he could of the planet and its denizens that he (with collaborators) had imagined. If that’s what Sterling did in Islands in the Net, I might appreciate it for that today.

The impressions that I recall most strongly, on the other hand, are of an outlandish plot and a flat set of characters. Even the Wikipedia entry, which by Wikipedia rule should be devoid of any unattributed opinion, can’t help saying, in its predictably tedious plot summary, that at one point the central character “is miraculously freed” from impending doom. What I would have written about it at the time I read it might go something like this, though with descriptive details:

As a writer of nonfiction as well as fiction, Bruce Sterling is a kind of thinker, often entertainingly polemical and dogmatic, but also a kind of inventor, whether of verbal constructions, concepts, or entire analytical approaches. He may be most at home when at play in the field of ideas, especially those concerning the social or political impact of technology. His skills of invention are less developed when it comes to the complex interplay of character, action, plot, and theme that literature has customarily expected of novelists. One suspects that he has simply never had time (meaning he has never taken the time) to study and ponder how those things work. Has he ever read E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel, for instance? It’s rudimentary in a way, but in the midst of reading Islands in the Net one feels like recounting some of Forster's points to Sterling. His story isn’t short of conflict, which public-school teachers often pound into the heads of students as the requirement sine qua non of a good story; what it lacks is architecture, which requires a sense of structure and a good choice of materials. Decor isn’t lacking either. The various spaces visited by this novel are pretty clearly distinguishable; one gets the point. But the overall result feels like so many elaborate tableaux.

There--that's my quick impression of my mid-90s character. He was somewhat dogmatic himself, without being entertaining. What I'd write today, if I reread the novel, would be different, but maybe not as much as I'd like to think.(less)

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Jul 23, 2012 Dean rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: speculative-fiction, sciencefiction

This was a great read. The scope of this novel is tremendous, I had to keep reminding myself that this was written in 1988. Bruce Sterling has created a fine character filled adventure that manages to excite, philosophise and predict in an unerring way a speculative future that reads like some corporate slash revolutionary playbook. He manages to do this while never falling into excessive techno-fetish or a particular dogma.
We are dragged through a comprehensive geographic and geopolitical mael...more

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Apr 27, 2009 Sadie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

Okay, so this book is sci-fi from the late 80s. Which is cool, when you remember how much there wasn't yet the 'internet' of today. The main character is totally unrealistic, but when does a hot scifi woman written by a man ever actually behave realistically?
The fun part is that when you're reading the book, it all makes sense, except occasionally, you'll say EH? what's that? and remember that he's making up all the ways the internet operates, and so his assumptions about how we talk about it n...more

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Sep 29, 2008 Nicolas rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: cyberpunk, guerilla, politique, rayon-fantasy-et-sf

Sterling est un des grands du cyberpunk, et ce roman nous le prouve. Alors que d’autres nous propulsent allègrement dans un futur post-gouvernemental où les "corpos" font la loi, Sterling, lui, préfère s’intéresser au basculement, et c’est à ce moment précis que se situe l’intrigue des Mailles du réseau.
Dans un monde où les entreprises prennent de plus en plus d’importance, Laura Webster est l’une des associées d’une démocratie économique, la puissante multinationale Rizome. Et en tant que memb...more Sterling est un des grands du cyberpunk, et ce roman nous le prouve. Alors que d’autres nous propulsent allègrement dans un futur post-gouvernemental où les "corpos" font la loi, Sterling, lui, préfère s’intéresser au basculement, et c’est à ce moment précis que se situe l’intrigue des Mailles du réseau.
Dans un monde où les entreprises prennent de plus en plus d’importance, Laura Webster est l’une des associées d’une démocratie économique, la puissante multinationale Rizome. Et en tant que membre influent, elle a l’insigne honneur d’accueillir une réunion de pirates informatiques, qui cherchent "ensemble" à lutter contre un ennemi invisible, dont on prévoit que la menace ne tardera pas à grandir. Le roman débute comme une tranche de la vie quotidienne au XXIe siècle, continue un bon moment comme une course à travers les planques de données, pour se terminer dans une Afrique ravagée par la guerre, la famine, la maladie, bref, les calamités africaines classiques. Et naturellement, chacune de ces parties possède un rythme et une construction propres, qui font doucement perdre pied au lecteur, lequel se retrouve quasiment dans le même état que l’héroïne : déstabilisé, bousculé, chahuté par ce monde réellement futuriste. Certains pourront être déroutés par la multiplicité de l’intrigue.
Cependant, si l’action ne se déroule que dans quelques décennies, et si les structures sociales de base restent inchangées, on trouve dans ce roman une extrapolation tellement logique du quotidien, du contexte politique, voire des technologies (mais c’est nettement moins sûr, étant donné l’imprédictibilité du progrès technique) que c’en serait presque inquiétant, si Sterling n’avait pas le talent qu’on lui connaît pour nous familiariser avec cet univers. Par exemple, Rizome est à elle seule une vision d’une conception extrêmement futuriste, mais en même temps tout à fait dans le droit fil de l’esprit actuel: une société capitaliste mondialisée, où tous les processus de décision sont soumis au vote, et où les grands chefs prennent grand soin d’apparaître comme des gens du commun, c’est assez étrange, et pourtant tellement désirable !
Et il y a dans ce livre tant d’autres idées fascinantes ! Sur ces quelque 500 pages, on est bercé par ce futur, envoûté par les découvertes qu’on y fait, mais également par quelques technologies insolites (comme par exemple la téléconférence avec animateur).
Pourtant, si le décor est beau, l’intrigue en perd du coup un peu de sa lisibilité, alors même que sa complexité politique mérite qu’on s’y attache. Il y a derrière les aventures de Laura Webster plusieurs aspects politiques fort intéressants, qui sont plus ou moins apparents dans le récit : l’aspiration à un monde plus sûr et délivré des états voyous, le désir de supprimer la menace nucléaire, mais aussi d’éviter les effets pervers de la dérégulation économique totale. Ces différents thèmes, bien que très intéressants, ne sont peut-être pas traités de manière assez détaillée. Cependant, saluons la clairvoyance de Sterling, qui a su anticiper dès 1988 bon nombre de problèmes qui font notre actualité, et notamment les risques de la lutte anti-terroriste, aussi dangereuse, par ses moyens et ses buts, que l’ennemi qu’elle combat.
Globalement, Les Mailles du réseau est donc un roman captivant. Un signe qui ne trompe pas : j’ai, pour la première fois, loupé mon arrêt de RER à Gare du Nord, ce qui m’a mis en retard d’un quart d’heure, mais m’a permis d’avancer d’autant dans ma lecture !(less)

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Oct 21, 2007 Nicholas Whyte added it · review of another edition

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1080154.html[return][return]A really good read, set in an early 21st century future but written in 1988. It is of course not intended as a work of prediction, but it's impossible not to read it in that way now - yes, end of Cold War; no, didn't see collapse of communism; yes, video-recorders obsolete; yes, non-state actors capable of major damage to industrialised society; no, rogue states on the whole not providing havens for "data piracy". The passages explaining how...more

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Jul 12, 2011 Matt rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: cyberpunk, science-fiction

There was a time when Islands in the Net was considered one of the must read classics of cyberpunk, but I don't really think it has aged well. As big a fan as I am of the genre, Islands in the Net ends up being pretty bland. Cyberpunk is all about high-octane craziness, and this novel reads more like a political romp than a science fiction novel. Sterling writes well, and he has some really good ideas, but pretty much gets through those ideas in the most boring way possible. I wouldn't re-read t...more

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Jan 10, 2012 arjuna rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sterling's ability to accurately predict in principle just how we as a species bend and shape the world - and just how irredeemable we are - is a joy. Written decades ago, this reads as if it were put together yesterday, with a full knowledge of the excesses and stupidities of global culture and politics and technology and its abuse in the post 911 world. Fresh as a daisy. Where other writers' predictions appear naive, Sterling's are essentially on target, even when the astronomical changes in t...more

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Jul 23, 2011 Robyn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this in a high school "US History" class along with Thoreau and Howard Zinn. Oh how I loved my strange, progressive education. It is a testament to this book that I can recall any of it at all, as high school class reads are often forgotten along the road to wherever. I'd be willing to revisit it now and see how much of it rings true today.

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Jun 06, 2011 Patrick rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi-fantasy

Something of a "lost classic." In terms of setting, I think this was, by far, one of the best products of 80s cyberpunk. The world Sterling envisioned was complex, nuanced, quirky, and believable (I still love the "Anti-Labor Party"). Unfortunately, the narrative was kind of clunky and uneven. I would definitely still recommend it to fans of the genre.

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Jan 03, 2012 Gsmalz rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A visionary cyberpunk thriller that stands the test of time fairly well some 24 years later. Technology has progressed in some ways far beyond what Sterling envisioned while in other ways his ideas are eerily accurate, for example referring to a worldwide computer network as the Net well before the rise of the World Wide Web.

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Jun 14, 2011 Jillian rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"...'All Zulus are great warriors.'

Laura nodded. 'Yeah, we Americans, uh, had a black president ourselves.'

'Oh, that fellow of yours didn't amount to anything... you yankees don't even have a real government, just capitalist cartels.'"

(special note: this was written in 1988) Bruce Sterling was right on with a few things in his vision of future America. :)

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Dec 18, 2008 Ryan Mishap rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

I read this back in the day and it was one of those books that solidified my general distaste for science fiction and my detestation of cyperpunk in particular. Why waste your time on this junk?

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Jan 09, 2011 London rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

This remains my favorite Sterling novel. Set in the near future (from when it was written), it's amazingly prescient about the danger of failed states as breeding grounds for terror. While some of his technological predictions are hilariously off the mark (most notably, the fax machine as an important communication device), his explorations of how poverty shapes politics remains compelling. It's all wrapped up in a quick-paced story with a memorable, rich protagonist.

I don't believe this remain...more

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May 06, 2012 Saul rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: cyberpunk, science-fiction

A must read for all cyberpunk fans. The best thing about Sterling's work is to realize how his SF world of tomorrow has become true today. Scary real, a must read.

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Feb 16, 2010 James rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I just double dog dare you to reread this after reading this.

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Dec 23, 2008 Mark added it · review of another edition

I need to re-read this. It is "date" in one sense, but it is prophetic about the implosion of the New World Order. Prescient.

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Nov 23, 2012 Joe rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

great cyberpunk yarn with a strong female protagonist and an amusingly horrible cover illustration.

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Dec 14, 2009 Robertoschramm added it · review of another edition

Nunca julgue um livro pela capa. A da edição brasileira é horrível, mas o livro é muito legal.

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Nov 14, 2011 Andreas rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Mediocre cyberpunk with a disturbing lack of focus.

http://www.books.rosboch.net/?p=1360

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Jul 02, 2009 Eric rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The protagonist just seems to careen from one global crisis to the next with little explanation or reason. The story if there was one, lost me along the way somewhere.

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Nov 24, 2008 Poindextra rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An OK read, but it seemed rambling to me. I'm not sure what kind of point Sterling was trying to make, if any.

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Nov 11, 2012 James rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Good book-- dunno if it really earns its regard as seminal cyberpunk in my eyes, but it definitely was an interesting read. First half was excellent, but it fell off in the later chapters.

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Sep 09, 2010 Tucker rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Horrendous cover.

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