Thursday, April 20, 2000
Title: Heavy Weather
Author: Bruce Sterling
Publisher: Gollancz
Bruce Sterling has a reputation as one of the prime movers in the so-called "cyber punk" scene, for his non-fiction The Hacker Crackdown and his involvement as editor/contributor of the genre defining anthology Mirror Shades. Yet the novel most touted when I explored initially was The Artificial Kid - set in a strange far future, different planet that didn't have the same gritty near-future Gibson had led us to expect from the genre. So it really didn't do much for me, partly due to the style, partly setting. However his short story collection Our Neural Chernobyl turned me on more to his work. While hit and miss at times it still comes recommended as a collection.
Which led me to picking up his Heavy Weather novel when it came out a couple of years ago. Extrapolating from today Sterling gives us an increasingly hostile environment - with an increase in breathing disorders and blips in weather patterns. Alex has one of those disorders and is undertaking treatment in an illegal clinic. Convinced he is being taken for his money and is likely to be killed, his sister breaks in one night and kidnaps him. Which sees him as unwilling inductee to a group of storm chasers. A group led by a master mathematician convinced a hurricane of unprecedented scale is due to hit and that if they can monitor it they can learn to predict its recurrence in future so that they can save lives.
Coming out about the same time as Twister there is a certain common theme. But the big themes here are the characters and how they deal with events and why they deal with them like this. Alex is a strong lead, even as an oxygen junkie who could care less, his introduction to the group allows us to be in a similar position. In addition to the Heavy Weather of the title there is also politics and conspiracy threaded through the plot - making this a much stronger read than The Artificial Kid.
RVWR: PTR
April 2000
