Schismatrix Plus (Complete Shapers-Mechanists Universe) (Paperback)

Ambitious, September 10, 2000

By	Omer Belsky (Haifa, Israel) - See all my reviews

I had very high expectations from this book. I've previously read Sterling's 'The Swarm', the very first Shapers/Mechanist story, in Gardner Dozois's anthology, THE GOOD NEW STUFF, and liked it alot.

Furthermore, the last two books I've read were very different from each other, and both really good - George R. R. Martin's new Fatasy Epic A Storm of Swords, and Stephen Zweig's The Royal Game. In between those two masterworks, I've read the prologue to Schismatrix, and loved it.

What impressed me most about the prologe, about the Swarm and indeed about the novel itself, was the scope and the vividness of Sterling's Future. The Shapers/Mechanist universe is clearly one of the most fascinating and exotic worlds created in Science Fiction.

So I came to Scismatrix with exteremly high expectations, believing I was about to read a classic on par with Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, Frank Herbert's Dune, or Dan Simmons's Hyperion Cantos.

The first 80 pages cured me of that hope. I'm not a passionate Cyber-Punk fan, quite the contrary, and the first 80 pages consist of a Cyber Punk story set in Space. A well written Cyber Punk, no doubt - others have commented on Sterling's prose, and he has a great deal of talent, but a traditional Cyber Punk story nonetheless, and thus somewhat out of date.

However, after those 80 pages, Sterling changes the style fo the novel, and returns to the issue of the introduction - the wide spread political sweeps that take the universe, as Sterling's hero, Lindsay, finds his peaceful life threatens by both his ideology and his long time friend turned bitter enemy, Constantine.

And then, the novel changes again, this time becomes a generational story, of the hero passes through a universe which changes in terrifying speed. Sterling attempts the kind of paradigm shifting SF story telling, as evident in such works as Clarke's Childhood's End, and in the process comes up with some very nice touches - a particularly lovely scene is the final meeting between Lindsay and his long friend/Archi Nemesis Constantine.

All in all the novel, and the stories, portray a wonderfully realised world. But they lack the kind of plot structure and advances necessary to make this kind of work appealing to me, and the ideas, while sometimes fascinating are often reduced to merely new Jargon versions of old clisches.

My own high expectations damaged my enjoyment of the novel, but Í have enjoyed it nonetheless, and would recommand it to others. Schismatrix is a seminal work of Cyber Punk, and an immaginative attack on the age old tradition of SF - and for that it deserves to be read.

Superb Sci Fi Reminiscent of Heinlein and Gibson, July 29, 2003

The Schismatrix novel, and the short stories that accompany it in this edition, take place in the future, where human beings have migrated to space stations and circumlunar colonies within the solar system. The schism at the heart of the universe is between two sects; the Shapers, who are genetic engineers; and the Mechanists, who believe in cybernetics. The Schismatrix novel follows the character Abelard Lindsay through his several hundred years of life, first starting out as a Shaper revolutionary, then after his exile becoming a pirate, and eventually the father of a new sect called Posthumanism. The book is reminiscent of Heinlein's "Time Enough For Love" -- we follow Lindsay through his several re-creations of himself much like we do Lazarus Long in Heinlein's work.

The book has an eery beauty to it; the posthuman universe, although melancholy, is not without charm. Central to the work is a distrust of ideology -- the blood feuds in the work between the various sects are extremely destructive of the characters' personal relationships; but Sterling's message is still positive -- all narrow sects are doomed in the end by the shock of the new future, and all old revolutionaries are outdone by their descendants.

The short stories that accompany the novel are also very good; and they are helpgul in explaining, in shorthand, the universe of the author. Sterling does not coddle the reader -- his universe is believable in part because he does not explain its cleverness in long narrative passages -- you discover it as you go. This makes the book's many turns seem as shocking as they are to the characters themselves.

An excellent work, a must for any modern sci-fi collection.

5 stars for the short fiction, 3 for the novel, May 11, 2002

By	David Bonesteel (Fresno, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Fortunately, this volume also contains Sterling's short fiction set within the same universe. Every one of them is a gem--a rabbit punch to the mind with sharply drawn characterizations. I would recommend reading the stories before the novel. They supply an introduction to the Shaper/Mechanist universe and a firm grounding in its realities that probably would have increased my appreciation of the novel.