Robot Artists and Black Swans by Bruce Sterling

Published in an illustrated edition by Tachyon Publications on April 27, 2021

Seven Bruce Sterling stories are collected in Robot Artists and Black Swans. I liked a couple of them, was amused by a couple more, and didn’t understand the rest. That’s consistent with my experience of Sterling’s work.

A forward explains that these stories of “fantascienza” are written by Bruno Argento, a Turinese writer whose pen name is Bruce Sterling. The stories are linked by their connection to Italy. Neal Stephenson contributes an introduction that extols the virtues of cyberpunk, which some of these stories might be.

The robot artist in the collection’s title is a wheelchair that once belonged to a Japanese artist. Now it roams around the world, making art in various ways, assembling “mosaics of pebbles” or weaving “great lattices from twigs and dry grass, creations like fantastic bird’s nests.”  The wheelchair is followed by Ghost Club intellectuals who document its creations for the appreciation of the Beau Monde. Its current follower is Wolfgang, who defends it from those who view science as being at war with the humanities. Wolfgang is convinced that the wheelchair is producing important art, but he is struggling to find a “clear line of critical attack” to explain to the world exactly why the wheelchair must be valued. He likens the robot artist to beautiful cities like Verona, “authentic entities, growing from landscapes,” loved for their beauty despite (like the robot artist) not being alive or intelligent. A scientist who accuses Wolfgang of belonging to a cult wonders why he would “walk the Earth making up weird artsy bullshit about a cheap parlor trick,” prompting the retort that science is “notoriously useless for seeking metaphysical truth or establishing ethical values.” Both arguments have merit. The story dramatizes culture wars, asks whether there might be artistry in computer code, ponders the role of art, science, and critics in life, considers whether there is a “third state of being,” and asks whether art can be good if we don’t understand it. Add a post-anthropologist who considers herself to be superhuman and you’ve got quite a story. While it sometimes drags in its exploration of plot tangents, “Robot in Roses” showcases Sterling’s far-ranging imagination.

The other story that grabbed me is “Esoteric City,” a tongue-in-cheek tale of the supernatural. A necromancer named Achille Occhietti conjures a demon mummy as his guide to the dark spirits. The mummy leads Occhietti down a spiral staircase to Hell, a “keenly tourist-friendly” path with glossy signs “that urged the abandonment of all hope in fourteen official European Union languages.” Dead Italian journalists and literary critics make the most noise in Hell. Occhietti is fated to return to the world of the living to meet Satan, who has rejected “Cold War-style metaphysics.” To make a deal for souls now, he offers global solutions to climate change — at a price.

“Black Swan” is about a tech journalist whose source, Massimo Montaldo, hacks “chip secrets” to manipulate the industry. Montaldo wants to release his hack of a revolutionary memristor to an Italian company so that Italy will no longer be a second-rate tech power. When the journalist insists on learning the source of the technology, Montaldo explains his knowledge of 64 Italys that exist in 64 universes. In one of them, the tech writer made more of himself than he did in the universe he occupies.

“Kill the Moon” is a cute story about Italians who followed American astronauts to the moon. Instead of sending scientists, Italy sent a billionaire and “his busty actress girlfriend.” Because Italy.

Three other stories did nothing for me at all, so I can only recommend half the collection.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Schismatrix Plus by Bruce Sterling

Schismatrix first published in 1985; Schismatrix Plus first published in 1995; published digitally by Open Road Media on December 30, 2014

Remarkable in many ways, Schismatrix is a brilliantly imaginative future history. The multi-faceted story considers the political, cultural, and social impact of trans-human and post-human existence. It is a difficult novel -- Bruce Sterling gives no shortcuts to the lazy reader -- but that makes it all the more rewarding. I read and admired it years ago but reading it a second time, after its rerelease in digital form, I got more out of it. I suspect I would have an even better understanding of Sterling's insights if I were to read it a third and fourth time. The story is a bit disjointed and I can't say that I felt an emotional connection to it, but the novel provides ample food for the intellect even if it fails to nourish the soul.

The solar system has been colonized. Most colonists live on space stations or asteroids, each operating as an independent government, some consisting of a handful of people. The colonies collectively comprise the Schismatrix. Deeper space travel is possible only with the help of the Investors, a spacefaring alien race of a decidedly capitalist bent that has no intention of sharing the secret of interstellar travel (although they are happy to act as bus drivers for the right price). The Investors are the most accessible of the various alien races, most of which stay in the background during the course of the novel, apart from one that becomes significant near the novel's end.

The novel follows Abelard Lindsay through an eventful life, sometimes lived under other identities, often changing alliances as friends become enemies and (sometimes) friends again. Lindsay begins as a diplomat, having been trained and genetically modified by Shapers, giving him an exceptional talent for manipulating others. The counterpart to (and enemy of) the Shapers are the Mechanists, who rely on mechanical enhancements (rather than genetics) to transform the human body. Having been born to a Mechanist family but serving the Shapers, Abelard is in an ideal position to encourage détente, which would benefit the human race by presenting a united front against competing alien races.

Détente, like most everything in Abelard's life, falls by the wayside as events overtake ideals. It is all Abelard can do to keep up or, failing that, avoid death. He is at times a revolutionary, at times an entrepreneur, at times a leader, at times a criminal, but usually a combination of many different roles. He falls in and out of relationships with women. He experiences ups and downs on his way to his final stage of life. Abelard experiences and sees so many changes that this review would be as long as the book if I tried to mention them.

As I indicated, I love the story for its rich imagination and its insight into how genetic, mechanical, or digital changes in humans might affect both the human race and the political, social, and economic institutions they create. At the same time, the story is so episodic, cramming so much into a mid-length novel, that I felt little emotional connection to Abelard, even when he is forced to do some soul-searching about the kind of human, trans-human, or post-human he wants to be. Schizmatrix is more like a documentary than a novel that touches the inner core. Still, but I would not discourage any sf fan who relishes a challenge from reading the novel.

Schizmatrix Plus includes the short stories that Sterling wrote within the same universe. They are quite strong and, in some ways, compensate for the novel's weaknesses.

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