Heavy Weather is set in the year 2031, a time after which major changes in weather patterns have swept the globe. Devastating agriculture and human health, a new take at life has emerged, one more minimalist yet tech-based. Convalescing in a Mexican clinic is Alex, a young man whose lungs are full of the detritus from the climate fall out. Having received treatment, Alex’s sister Jane decides to kidnap him from the clinic, and bring her onboard her Troupe of storm chasers. Reluctantly becoming a member, he stands in amazement as the Troupe uses the most sophisticated technology humanity has to offer to collect data from the massive tornadoes sweeping East Texas and Oklahoma. It isn’t long before the fever grabs him and he too looks to find the ‘big one’.
Two years after the publication of Heavy Weather, Hollywood released the film Twister. Using Sterling’s idea and dumbing it down, readers should feel comfortable that the novel being reviewed here adds a thick layer of cyberpunk which makes the whole a more imaginative, less operatic, and for me at least, a more engaging, experience.
In the end, Heavy Weather is an underestimated piece of cyberpunk. This is not to say it’s an overlooked masterpiece, more that lists which cite good cyberpunk don’t typically, if ever, include the novel. And yet is firmly in the genre. Climate occupies the title and is the main element of the setting the characters react to, but its technology and speculation on the near-future setting—earmarks of cyberpunk—are what is available for readers to sink their imagination’s teeth into. As mentioned in the intro, readers looking for a classic story arc should temper their expectations to something more in line with the mode of other of Sterling’s works—Islands in the Net, Schismatrix, The Artificial Kid, all of these novels move in the same style despite the difference in dance floors.
There was a time in the 1980s and 1990s when Sterling was the Thing Itself in terms of, as you say, presenting extended near-future speculative scenarios. Maybe more significant an author than William Gibson.
ReplyDeleteThis novel and the three others you've reviewed ISLANDS IN THE NET, HOLY FIRE, and DISTRACTION fall within that period, though with the latter he was starting to lose it.
And then he lost it, IMO. But he was really The Man for a while; as you say, some of the tropes he came up with in HEAVY WEATHER even got stolen by Hollywood.
I just checked out Sterling's isfdb page. I have not read either The Zenith Angle or Zeigeist, both novels published after Distraction. But I agree those three novels you note, and to some degree Schismatrix, form the core of Sterling novels yo'd most likely recommend to someone who has never read Sterling.
DeleteAll that being said, I still appreciate Sterling's writing today. It's off the beaten path (and there is so much beaten path today) and for that can at least be of more significance than many "award winning books". :)
Jesse: "There is so much beaten path today."
DeleteOh Lord, is that true.
I didn't mention SCHISMATRIX and the Shaper/Mech stories because (a) they weren't near-future and (b) they were giant in their day -- at least, in terms of their impact on me -- and one of the early exemplars of the New Space Opera, I would argue.
You raise a good question about Schismatrix: how to slot it into sf? I remember first reading the book and thinking that it wasn't cyberpunk, rather as you say, something in the general vein of space opera but certainly not precisely. Over the years I thought more about it, and decided that it was cyberpunk in the "post-human" sense. If you drop the space travel (which doesn't really play a huge role anyway) and ignore the fact that the lore loving, sensawunda side of readership put more stock in the "rivalry" between Shapers and vs Mechanics than Sterling does, you've got a good ol' fashioned examination of what it means to be human in a post-human world. But since coming to the realization Sterling is a writer of extended vignettes, as well as formulating what literary sf means to me, I think I would put Schismatrix into the literary texts, i.e. texts for whom type and genre are not as important as the degree and angle of humanity they are examining. While Sterling may have been a proponent of cyberpunk, I generally find his fiction defies categorization, focusing more on the interaction of humanity and technology, and what it means to be human in the settings he imagines. I don't know. Ask me again in a few years. :)
DeleteHave you read Love Is Strange by Sterling? I haven't and am curious...
Jesse: "If you drop the space travel (which doesn't really play a huge role anyway) and ignore the fact that the lore loving, sensawunda side of readership put more stock in the "rivalry" between Shapers and vs Mechanics than Sterling does"
ReplyDeleteWith respect, I disagree about the space thing not playing a huge role. In the Shaper/Mech stories, Sterling was one of the first SF writers to embrace the fact that free-range humans as currently constituted cannot live in zero-zero in cislunar space habitats for extended, indefinite periods -- and that's without even getting into the radiation hazards that will be involved in travel into solar space, beyond Earth's protecting magnetosphere (Luna lies within that magnetosphere).
A real Homo astronauticus would mean human speciation -- the engineering of new human sub-species, with, forex, radiation-resistant tardigrade genes engineered into humans. (One scheme proposed by the wilder minds at NASA who get paid to think about such things.)
So far as these taxonomies mean anything at all, I would therefore place SCHIZMATRIX Sterling as a progenitor of the New Space Opera. Also, I was reading and buying SF books in the 1980s, 90s, and early 2000s. So, forex, Alastair Reynolds's early work -- especially his short stories in places like INTERZONE, the British SF mag, were clearly -- even primarily -- influenced by Sterling's Shaper/Mech stuff.
Jesse: "you've got a good ol' fashioned examination of what it means to be human in a post-human world."
I know what you mean. Although technically Sterling makes the explicit point that there are technically no human characters in SHIZMATRIX: later in the book the protagonist goes to Earth and asks who lives there, and the reply is "humans" and everybody immediately loses interest.
I haven't read LOVE IS STRANGE because I gave up on Sterling with/after THE CARYATIDS. I have from time to time glanced at a recent Sterling short story and been amused, but am unlikely to invest time to read a novel again.
You raise a very fair point. I hadn't thought about the historical context to that degree. The bubble helmet and silver spacecraft were par for the course for so many, many years. I would guess there was some obscure writer who in 1947 imagined a sentient toaster flying through space, but in terms of normalizing the approach, you're right Sterling seems to have been on to something.
DeleteOn a broader topic, what is it about writers going through phases - most seeming to have several glory years before "losing it"??
"the massive tornadoes sweeping East Texas and Oklahoma."
ReplyDeleteMinor correction: West and central Texas are Tornado Alley.
Are you correcting me or Sterling? :)
Delete