- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Gollancz; New edition edition (3 Mar 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1857998847
- ISBN-13: 978-1857998849
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.8 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 536,919 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
A chance encouter with a twenty year old turns 93 year old Mia into twenty year old Maya - and sends her to a Prague bursting with creative energy, to a society of artists and artisans filled with the 'holy fire'. A new life as a photographer beckons, but is Maya/Mia just too old and wise to care about art for art's sake.
About the Author
Bruce Sterling burst onto the SF scene with the birth of Cyberpunk and co-authored THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE with his colleague William Gibson. His biggest UK success was with THE HACKER CRACKDOWN. He lives with his wife and daughters in Austin, Texas.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If Margaret Atwood had written this book it would have won literary prizes all over the world. Sadly, Sterling is not one of the select few authors licensed to write science fiction and have it still count as literature.
Most of all, this book is a tour de force of characterisation - we are treated to an utterly convincing hybrid between the emotional intelligence of a successful career woman with ninety years life experience and the appetite for life and experimentation of a twenty year old. But can the 'holy fire' of artistic inspiration touch such a post-human creature?
Sterling creates an utterly convincing near-future world for Mia/Maya to inhabit. The central idea is that medical science is advancing at a pace that is extending average useful lifespan by more than one year every year. The world has become a gerontocracy run by an elite, which without actually being immortal, does not die or retire. It is a safe, sane and comfortable world, but the young are marginalized and robbed of a future, being unable to compete with the experience and accumulated capital of the previous generation.
Mia Ziemann, bored, jaded and lonely, is reminded of an opportunity she lacked the courage to take in her youth. She decides to liquidate her considerable assets to buy a new and experimental treatment that promises to rejuvenate the mind as well as the body.
I am not a great fan of Sterling's work in general, but this is a masterpiece.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The book is a highly intriguing piece of writing and the world Sterling creates - a 2095 Earth, where life extension treatments have created a society run and designed by gerontocrats poses some very real and interesting questions about our future.
Mia Ziemann (aka Maya) - the book's protagonist - is a typical responsible gerontocrat working for the medical-industrial complex. Eventually she decides to participate in a relatively new medical treatment, which promises better life extension possibilities (at a greater risk) and she emerges with the body, urges and desires of a 20 year old woman, with most of her 95 year old mind and experience remaining intact. In the sense of the conflict created that way, Sterling does a wonderful job in the book. He also directionally points out most of the issues that would arise from a gerontocratic society - issues that are slowly creeping up even now.
Where I find him less convincing is that I cannot shake the impression that a lot of this 2095 world is hedged bets, in an attempt to make it more similar to the world of today and hence more easy for current readers to identify with. In that ense some more holy fire on his part, where he jumps into the world a bit more wholeheartedly, would be welcome in my opinion.
The other reason I feel the book is not quite a 5 star in my opinion is the somewhat rushed ending - as if there was a maximum page number to work with and the book had to come to a close.
Overall this still makes for a very fascinating read and should be on every futurologists to read list.
Mia Ziemann (aka Maya) - the book's protagonist - is a typical responsible gerontocrat working for the medical-industrial complex. Eventually she decides to participate in a relatively new medical treatment, which promises better life extension possibilities (at a greater risk) and she emerges with the body, urges and desires of a 20 year old woman, with most of her 95 year old mind and experience remaining intact. In the sense of the conflict created that way, Sterling does a wonderful job in the book. He also directionally points out most of the issues that would arise from a gerontocratic society - issues that are slowly creeping up even now.
Where I find him less convincing is that I cannot shake the impression that a lot of this 2095 world is hedged bets, in an attempt to make it more similar to the world of today and hence more easy for current readers to identify with. In that ense some more holy fire on his part, where he jumps into the world a bit more wholeheartedly, would be welcome in my opinion.
The other reason I feel the book is not quite a 5 star in my opinion is the somewhat rushed ending - as if there was a maximum page number to work with and the book had to come to a close.
Overall this still makes for a very fascinating read and should be on every futurologists to read list.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Fantastic stuff from Sterling; moving, beautifully written, full of believable 'post-human' characters, and above all wonderfully strange. A 'real novel' for those genre-snobs out there who think SF is all space-opera.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Good science, less good fiction
The speculation about a gerontocracy, life extension and its implications for what it means to be human and for society worked well. Read more
Published on 19 April 2003 by Robert Lauder
Fantastic
In a time when SF seems to be consuming itself and producing quirky little pieces of retro nostalgia or clever variations on exhausted themes Holy Fire manages to be an insightful... Read more
Published on 18 Dec 2002 by Arthur Wyatt
Beautiful and thought-provoking vision of the future
This book is about inter-railing in the year 2095. How cool is that? You travel around futuristic Europe, and see strange and magical places, and meet fascinating characters. Read more
Published on 15 Mar 2001
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