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,...

Bruce Sterling (born April 14, 1954) is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his seminal work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which defined the cyberpunk genre. He writes Catscan, for the SF Eye. In 2003 he was appointed Professor at the European Graduate School where he is teaching Summer Intensive Courses on media and design.Sterling is widely considered to be, along with William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, John Shirley, Lewis Shiner, and Pat Cadigan, one of the original founders of the early 1980s creators of the pessimistic and dystopian cyberpunk genre of science fiction. His first novel, Involution Ocean featured the world Nullaqua where all the atmosphere was contained in a single, miles-deep crater; the story concerned a ship sailing on the ocean of dust at the bottom, hunting creatures called dustwhales that lived beneath the surface.

It's 1999, and in the Turkish half of Cyprus, the ever-enterprising Leggy Starlitz has alighted -- pausing on his mission to storm the Third World with the G-7 girls, the cheapest, phoniest all-girl rock group ever to wear Wonderbras and spandex.His market is staring him in the face: millions of teenagers trapped in a world of mullahs and mosques, all ready to blow their pocket change on G-7's massive merchandising campaign -- and to wildly anticipate music the band will never release.Leggy's brilliant plan means doing business with some of the world's most dangerous people. Among these thieves, schemers, and killers, he must act quickly and decisively. Y2K is just around the corner -- and the only rule to live by is that the whole scheme stops before the year 2000.But Leggy's G-7 Zeitgeist is in serious jeopardy, for in Istanbul his former partners are getting restless -- and the G-7 girls are beginning to die....From the Paperback edition.

Two dozen tales of future shock and twisted history from an undisputed king of cyberpunk science fictionTime 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...

From the subversive to the antic, the uproarious to the disturbing, the stories of Bruce Sterling are restless, energy-filled journeys through a world running on empty--the visionary work of one of our most imaginative and insightful modern writers.They live as strangers in strange lands. In worlds that have fallen--or should have. They wage battles in wars already lost and become heroes--and sometimes martyrs--in their last-ditch efforts to preserve the dignity and individuality of humanity.A hack Indian filmmaker takes the pulse of a wounded and declining civilization--21st-century Britain. A pair of swashbuckling Silicon Valley entrepreneurs join forces to make a commercial killing--in organic underground slime and computer-generated jellyfish. A man in a Japanese city takes orders from a talking cat while pursuing a drama of danger and adventure that has become the very essence of his life.From "The Littlest Jackal", a darkly hilarious thriller of...

The 21st century is coming to a close, and the medical industrial complex dominates the world economy. It is a world of synthetic memory drugs, benevolent government surveillance, underground anarchists, and talking canine companions. Power is in the hands of conservative senior citizens who have watched their health and capital investments with equal care, gaining access to the latest advancements in life-extension technology. Meanwhile, the young live on the fringes of society, ekeing out a meagre survival on free, government-issued rations and a black market in stolen technological gadgetry from an earlier, less sophisticated age.Mia Ziemann is a 94-year-old medical economist who enjoys all the benefits of her position. But a deathbed visit with a long-ago ex-lover and a chance meeting with a young bohemian dress-designer brings Mia to an awful revelation. She has lived her life with such caution that it has been totally bereft ofpleasure and adventure. She has...

A popular home-video star and ultimate warrior on a planet dangerously divided by class and wealth distinctions discovers the lethal truth about his world and its origins in this satiric science fiction masterwork Founded centuries ago by the enigmatic genius Moses Moses, the planet Reverie can either be heaven or hell, depending on whether you live on or above it. The superrich orbit the world in luxury abodes, keeping their sometimes-lethal ennui at bay by watching homemade sex and violence videos created by the peons dwelling on the coral continents miles beneath them. The most popular entertainer of all is the Artificial Kid, an unbeatable combat artist whose bloody, self-produced martial arts videos have made him beloved both above and below. But the Kid is about to stumble onto something no one was ever meant to discover—a mind-boggling conspiracy of science and antiquity that forces him to run for his life into the strange and dangerous wilderness...