[books] Bruce Sterling, Islands In The Net (1988)

After being a little disappointed with Heavy Weather, I was a little apprehensive about this book. I shouldn't have been. Islands in the Net is much more compelling than Heavy Weather, and is in much more of a cyberpunk vein. While a lot of "Earth-based" science fiction takes place after some kind of big disaster or war, Net brings us to a world in the aftermath of global peace. The superpowers have forsaken their arsenals, and a new world order has emerged where commerce and global communication reign. The story centers around Laura Webster, and up-and-coming star for Rizome, one of the huge multinational firms that effectively rule the world. Even this future has a seedy side, though, and here it is characterized by renegade banks in Europe, Central America, and the Pacific Rim. When Rizome tries to broker a peace between these outsiders at a facility in Texas run by Webster and her husband, one of the key negotiators from Grenada is killed, whisking Laura into their dark underworld as both a diplomat and a hostage.

The book shows an interesting future, where corporations are the big guns, and territorial governments have become much less of a factor. It also addresses the fact that there are people in the world who would be out of a job in a mostly peaceful society, and those people can be dangerous. All of the weapons that the superpowers gave up had to go somewhere.

I get the feeling that Sterling tries to do too much here. There are so many undeveloped or underdeveloped plot lines here that could become very interesting. Laura's husband David, for example, looks like he will be a major character early on, and then disappears for the second half of the book. While her adventures are definitely interesting, it seemed like, by the sheer volume of her experiences, she was never in one place for very long. Even when she was in jail for several years, the book seemed to move at an inhuman pace. Maybe that's the point. In any event, Islands in the Net could have easily been two or three very engaging books, rather than just one good, albeit busy, one.