A provocative, insightful yet chilling tale of the very possible near future. A world where the oil driven industrial/military complex is replaced by a purely medically driven bureaucracy. Originally initiated as an emergency measure that was enacted to save the world from man made plagues and retro-viruses, the bureaucracy slowly evolves into a world culture that is obsessed with the ideal of longevity. An entire generation bends the will and resources of the world to combat the effects of aging and the extension of the human lifespan. The result; a slowly stagnating geriatric hierarchy that refuses to die and relinquish power. The young have become a tiny minority who are becoming strident,despondent and even militant in a world where they may never be aloud to "come of age". The story revolves around a mid-level bureaucrat (Mia) who is granted access to a radical new and experimental rejuvenation treatment as a reward for good service and behavior. The conflict of newly rediscovered youth and the geriatric bureaucracy that she helped to create is compelling and even poignant. The author's insights and critical examination of the ideas of aging,life extension and the ultimate cost of government control/interference/regulation in and of the lives of the people are particularly relevant to this day .
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6 books in catalog
The emergence of cyberpunk transformed science fiction by blending high-tech futures with gritty, decentralized subcultures. Michael Bruce Sterling helped shape this movement as both a novelist and as the editor of the influential 1986 collection Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology. His early novel Schismatrix explored posthuman evolution across space colonies, establishing key speculative ideas within late-twentieth-century science fiction.
Born on April 14, 1954, in Brownsville, Texas, Sterling grew up as the son of an engineer and a registered nurse. He attended the University of Texas at Austin from 1972 to 1976, where he engaged with science fiction fandom, wrote for fanzines, and participated in literary workshops. He sold his first science fiction short story, 'Man-Made Self', in 1976 for the Texan anthology Lone Star Universe. He followed his short fiction debut with the 1977 novel Involution Ocean, a story featuring dustwhalers on a cratered planet influenced by Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, and the 1980 novel The Artificial Kid.
Throughout the following decades, Sterling broadened his output to include non-fiction work, journalism, and essay writing. In 1992, he published The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier, an investigative book detailing digital law enforcement and computer crime. Beyond his books, he has written for online outlets such as well.com and bruces.medium.com, appeared in documentaries such as Freedom Downtime, TechnoCalyps, and Traceroute, and had his work documented on reference sites such as Wikipedia.
Sterling's writing frequently focuses on near-future extrapolation, political structures, surveillance, and ecological dynamics. His stories analyze how rapidly changing technologies alter human social behavior and governance. In novels such as Islands in the Net and Holy Fire, he explores global data networks, corporate power, and biomedical life extension.
His broader literary work encompasses alternate history, hard science fiction, steampunk, and modern horror contributions. Sterling has also engaged with international speculative traditions, writing fiction designed to align with the Italian fantascienza subgenre. His narrative approach highlights broad worldbuilding, technological infrastructure, and human adaptability.
