Islands in the Net, Bruce Sterling
Islands in the Net, Bruce Sterling
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Islands in the Net

Author: Bruce Sterling

Narrator: Rebecca Mozo

Unabridged: 16 hr 8 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/01/2020


Synopsis

In a near-future new age of corporate control, hacker mercenaries, and electronic terrorism, a public relations executive on the rise finds herself caught in the violent epicenter of a data war.Two decades into the twenty-first century, the world’s nations are becoming irrelevant. Corporations are the true global powers, with information the most valuable currency, while the smaller island nations have become sanctuaries for data pirates and terrorists. A globe-trotting PR executive for the large corporate economic democracy Rizome Industries Group, Laura Webster is present when a foreign representative is assassinated on Rizome soil during a conference for offshore data havens. Dispatched immediately on an international mission of diplomacy, Laura hopes she can make a difference in a volatile, unsteady world, but instead finds herself trapped on the front lines of rapidly escalating third-world hostilities and caught up in an inescapable net of conspiracy, terrorism, post-millennial voodoo, and electronic warfare.During the 1980s, science fiction luminary Bruce Sterling envisioned the future . . . and hit it almost dead-on. The author who, along with William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and Rudy Rucker, helped create and define the cyberpunk subgenre imagines a world of tomorrow in Islands in the Net that bears a striking—and disturbing—resemblance to our present-day information-age reality. Nominated for the Hugo and Locus Awards and winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, Sterling’s extraordinary novel is a gripping, eye-opening, and remarkably prescient science fiction classic.

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 Bradley on February 08, 2017

I grew up knowing that this was supposed to be a great cyberpunk novel right in the heart of the genre as it was a few years after Neuromancer, and I did eventually get around to reading his novel with William Gibson, The Difference Engine, which was pretty much a steampunk novel. Other than that, I......more

Goodreads review by Adam on August 10, 2009

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 len......more

Goodreads review by Tim on May 17, 2023

This is a pretty highly regarded sf book, althou I am not entirely sure why. I like Sterling's editing (he edited the fine anthology "Mirrorshades") but am not a big fan of his writing. He exemplifies both the strong and weak points of the genre. My main complaint is one that I have about other SF n......more

Goodreads review by Ira on May 15, 2025

Check out my full, spoiler free, video review HERE. Written in 1988, this novel takes place in 2022 and Sterling nails many aspects of where the internet would be and how it would affect people’s lives. There is also a lot of other technology that he gets really close but of course he has some misse......more

Goodreads review by Seth on September 19, 2007

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 countercult......more


Quotes

“A fast-paced novel of 21st-century techno-intrigue. Recommended.” —Library Journal“In his Islands in the Net, Bruce Sterling has written the high-tech Candide. . . . Good show.” —Roger Zelazny“A sophisticated near-future political thriller that asks all the hard questions but dishes out no easy answers.” —Norman Spinrad