Book review: Distraction by Bruce Sterling

It's 2045. The United States is on the ropes. The government is completely dysfunctional, the armed forces are committing robbery to support themselves, there is a new cold war between Holland and the United States, and there are 16 political parties with seats in Congress. Louisiana is under the control of "Green Huey", a populist with a personality cult. Things are looking pretty grim.

Enter Oscar Valaparaiso, political spin doctor extraordinaire, and chief strategist for Alcott Bambakias, billionaire architect and candidate for senate from Massachusetts. Valapariso has a "personal background problem" (he's not exactly human) but he doesn't let that stop him.

Soon, Valaparaiso is off to Louisiana, where he falls in love with a genius neurologist named Greta Penninger. Together, they need to derail Huey, channel the neural revolution into more benign paths, rescue American science, restore the country and stop a war. And they are up to it.

Distraction by Bruce Sterling is a brilliant book. Distraction portrays a dystopian near future that nevertheless has room for hope. The extrapolation of the current political and scientific milieus is fascinating, and Sterling is up on his science. The ideas just keep coming; one example is smart building material, where each brick and pipe is programmed to tell the builder where it should go. Another is the existence of gangs of people who have dropped out of society completely. Another is neural modification that allows people to think of multiple things at once.

Distraction reminds me, in some ways, of The Grapes of Wrath another novel set in a dystopian America (although one that didn't need to be imagined), but Sterling's style is nothing like Steinbeck's. And "Green Huey" is obviously reminiscent of Huey Long, who also governed Louisiana during bleak economic times. Strengthening that analogy, the president in <i>Distraction</i> (an American Indian known as Two Feathers) unites the country, engages in a war, and has revolutionary ideas.

In short, if you like well-written science fiction that throws ideas at you at lightning speed, Distraction is for you.