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Synopsis
From the pioneer of crucial, cutting-edge science fiction comes the stunning world of the Schismatrix, where Shaper revolutionaries struggle against aristocratic Mechanists for ultimate control of human destiny. Original.
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First Sentence
They shipped Lindsay into exile in the cheapest kind of Mechanist drogue. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
They shipped Lindsay into exile in the cheapest kind of Mechanist drogue. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is what SF is for. Books like this justify SF and excuse the torrents of trash. Schismatrix is unashamedly hard. It is about technology, and culture shock, and evolution. It is not literature 'masquerading' as SF but genuine genre in all its glory.
Once again, I am amazed and the level of detail and depth built into what is really a very short book. Sterling makes each choice, each detail count towards the bigger picture - many modern novels build worlds by cudgelling the reader under the weight of facts.
Schismatrix moves in ever accelerating leaps, without losing a sense of continuity and story (the longevity of the major characters helps), the pace of the narrative reflecting the accelerating disintegration of society, culture and eventually humanity.
Part of the story's strength lies in the appeal of the lead character - Abelard Lindsay. He's good without being perfect; smart without being infallible; purposeful with out being all powerful. Schismatrix - for all the technology - takes a fundamentally humane perspective on the future - reflecting the beauty and the tragedy of the individual successes and failures weaving into the large perspective of progress. Nothing lasts for ever - no person, no society, no philosophy - but neither are they pointless.
Schismatrix is breathtaking.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
With most books, you can read them several times and find something new in them each time through. With this book, it's an absolute necessity. The ideas expressed are so numerous, there must be at least two or three lurking on every other page. It would take probably a half dozen readings to really peg them all. The story itself is visionary, immensly complicated, and superbly executed, with a protaganist I couldn't help but admire and root for. This book definately has an incredibly unique flavor. This is one space epic absolutely worth owning.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Schismatrix would have to be one of my favourite ever novels. I first encountered this intelligent and thought provoking novel as a 15 year old High School student. While I may not have properly appreciated it or fully understood it at the time, I realised that there was a lot happening in those pages and I've constantly revisited it over the years. I love this book for the fact that every time I've read it I've got something new from it and have understood it as a whole just a little bit more. Schismatrix Plus is an enhanced book with the inclusion of the Shaper/Mechanist stories, which I feel add a richness to the main text. A particular favourite is "Sunken Gardens", not least because it has a believable timeframe for a project of such magnitude. However, I dearly love the concept of the failed factions. New technology isn't necessarily adopted, nor does it always work in the manner or for the purposes originally intended. William Gibson wrote, "the street finds its own uses for things" and I would add 'so do politicians'. I love this novel and its attendant stories and I'll continue to return to them as old and comfortably worn companions for years to come.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Post Humanism - the definitive volume
The most remarkable aspect of this fine piece of hard nosed science fiction writing is the fact Sterling manages to create in less than 300 pages a complex, multilayered future... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Mr. Timothy W. Dumble
Sundog millennium heirs
Sterling has an impressive imagination. He's created a rich, complex, and intriguing universe occupied by a range of so-called `posthumans', chief of whom are the Shapers and... Read more
Published 19 months ago by sft
Top stuff
Schismatrix and the allied mechanist/shaper stories rank as some of the best SF ever. I have recently re-read Schismatrix for about the fifth time over a period of about 15 years... Read more
Published on 29 Nov 2004
The best SF novel of the last 20 years. Easily.
The comments below say it all. It is a superb book; amazingly dense and quite difficult to parse on first reading, but it is truly worth perservering. Read more
Published on 28 April 2000
I loved it
This book is very very good. I understand now why Bruce Sterling is considered to be a co-founder of the Cyberpunk movement. This book reminded me of Alfred Bester's "Tiger! Read more
Published on 23 Jun 1999
Good but not Great
Having read the Shaper/Mechanist stories in their paperback anthology form, I was familiar with the worlds amd mechanics of the cycle. Read more
Published on 14 Jun 1999
The End of Science Fiction
This epic is so powerful and amazing, it cannot be classed merely with other pieces of science fiction. Read more
Published on 11 Jun 1998
Confusing but compelling
Not being well-read in the Science Fiction genre, there are quite a few allusions I am sure I missed throughout Sterling's Schismatric. Read more
Published on 14 July 1997
visionary, mystical, sci-fi as it must be
I've read hundreds of good books in my life, books that have altered my ideaologies, infused my writing style with subtle energy, reinvented my understanding of character, and... Read more
Published on 2 Jun 1997
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