Ascendancies, Bruce Sterling
Ascendancies, Bruce Sterling
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Ascendancies
The Best of Bruce Sterling

Author: Bruce Sterling

Narrator: Pavi Proczko, Brian Nishii, Mikael Naramore, Brian Holden, Fajer Al-Kaisi

Unabridged: 26 hr 37 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/29/2020


Synopsis

Two dozen tales of future shock and twisted history from an undisputed king of cyberpunk science fiction, including Nebula Award finalists “Sunken Garden” and “Dori Bangs.”Time magazine describes Bruce Sterling as “one of America’s best-known science fiction writers and perhaps the sharpest observer of our media-choked culture working today in any genre.” Sterling’s abilities are on full display in Ascendancies, a collection of speculative fiction from a world-class world-building futurist, alternate historian, and mad prophet operating at the peak of his extraordinary powers. Here are twenty-four stories that span the illustrious career of the author who, along with William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, injected the word cyberpunk into the science fiction lexicon. These tales not only traverse galaxies and employ mind-boggling technologies, they also cut back across the centuries into a richly imagined past with style and a sharp satiric edge.Sterling’s unparalleled imagination and courageous originality carry the reader into the future universe of the warring Shapers and Mechanists, rival sects of exiled humanity with radically opposed views of human augmentation. Several stories feature the questionable adventures of the footloose con man Leggy Starlitz in a somewhat-skewed and still-dangerous post–Cold War world.Sterling explores the cyberpunk trope of technology gone wild and the resultant decline of civilization with appropriate gravity, while presenting parables of strangers stuck in very strange lands in a more whimsical vein. Whether chronicling an alien’s encounter with Crusaders in disputed Palestine, depicting the discovery of the key to immortality in a nineteenth-century Times Square magic shop, or portraying bicycles and bad guys in a near-future Tennessee, Sterling’s stories are smart, surprising, genre bending, bold, and outstanding, one and all.

About Bruce Sterling

Bruce Sterling is an Austin-born science fiction writer and Net critic, internationally recognized as a cyberspace theorist who is also considered one of the forefathers of the cyberpunk movement in science fiction. He has won a John W. Campbell Award, two Hugo Awards, and an Arthur C. Clarke Award.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Gavin on December 30, 2021

Sterling is broad. He's most famous for techno body horror, but his historical fantasies and economic stories are distinct and equally good. In fact I think his Exotic (But Non-Japanese) Cyberpunk is probably his key style. Here’s his Balkan SF, roadside kiosk as vanguard of the future: These stra......more

Goodreads review by Oleksandr on September 25, 2021

This is a collection of shorter works (from short stories to novellas) by Bruce Sterling, with several works – nominees of prestigious SF awards. The works are quite different in scope, execution and kind, from hard SF to pastiches. Their quality (for me) also differs from 1 to 5 stars. Overall, it......more

Goodreads review by Riju on September 22, 2011

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 th......more

Goodreads review by Jaime on August 21, 2016

Sterling tiene mas de 30 años escribiendo, y aun lo hace de un modo mas fresco y original que muchos autores novatos, todas las ideas que se te ocurren Sterling ya las desarrollo hace 20 años......more

Goodreads review by Jay on April 19, 2018

Bruce Sterling, on his birthday April 14 A bizarre and hilarious absurdism, full of original ideas and strange insights, vivid oddball characters filling wonderful stories, Bruce Sterling's fiction is as great as we might expect from the cofounder of cyberpunk, but it is great because it is built of......more


Quotes

“The godfather of cyberpunk demonstrates his full range, from far future to forgotten past, in this well-stocked career-spanning collection of his finest SF pieces. . . . Readers who like a hard-eyed view of the future combined with a wry wink at the past, with a few inventive postmodern narrative kicks mixed in, will be greatly rewarded.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review“Sterling’s speculative fiction dazzles from the get-go, bombarding the reader with one extraordinary concept after another. . . . This significant retrospective of Sterling’s career reveals a prescience that is bold and astounding.” —Booklist“Sterling is a writer of excellent fineness. In point of fact, I am somewhat awed by his abilities.” —Harlan Ellison