Schismatrix (Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Bruce Sterling
- First Published: 1985
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Science fiction—cyberpunk
- Time of Work: An indeterminate time in the future
- Setting: Various artificial worlds in the Milky Way
- Genres: Long fiction, Science fiction
- Subjects: Future, Other worlds, Space flight or travel, Diplomacy or diplomats
- Locales: Fictional planets
The Plot
Schismatrix can be seen as an extension of three of Bruce Sterling’s early “Shaper/Mechanist” short stories—“Swarm,” “Spider Rose,” and “Cicada Queen”— contained in Sterling’s short-story collection Crystal Express (1989). In an interview with Larry McCaffery in Across the Wounded Galaxies (1990), Sterling admits that he “didn’t want to end up writing the same thing all my life, so I decided I would just burn it all with Schismatrix.”
The pace of Schismatrix is fast, and without the time and...
[The entire page is 971 words long]
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