Schismatrix Plus

Abelard Lindsay is a shaper and his cousin Constantine is a mechanist. The shapers see the future of humanity in genetic enhancement. The mechanists see it as physical futurism with enhanced body parts. They can't both be right. And they choose not to be. This book is the story of Lindsay, a shaper diplomat, as he travels the interplanetary spread of humanity to promote the shaper ideology. And on his heels is Constantine. Each of they appear and disappear as they take different identities, trying to influence other civilisations and to defeat each other. On his travels Lindsay takes on not only different names but different body structure and abilities. At the end it seems as if the future of humanity is to return to the sea as sub-oceanic beings on the moons of Jupiter. Or something. It gets confusing at the end.

The characters start out being engaging as the conflict between them is slowly revealed. However, by the half way point it's become something of a travelogue with different planets or asteroids requiring different body forms for Lindsay. He gets into danger on one asteroid and escapes to another, rinse and repeat.

At about the 75% point the narrative descends into long conversations where the sociopolitical advantages and disadvantages of various views of post-humanism are discussed. It's like sitting in a bar with the people at the next table talking about the obscurities of their work and all the while the reader wishes he'd accepted the invitation to play darts instead.

Overall the book is reminiscent of Accelerando where the increasingly complicated language of hard SF is played out like a game of UNO.

Fascinating world-building revolving around humanity evolving with the technology, and then adding some aliens.

The story itself though started out well enough but after a while, it was a pattern not a plot. Fast-talking Shaper, Lindsay, finds himself in various difficult situations but talks his way into successful enterprises (some fraudulent) and gets all the major power players on board. He jumps ship when the going gets tough.

All of his adventures are structured this way and it happens about half a dozen times before finally wrapping up. The novel was actually quite short so I'm not sure why I should have lost interest since I liked the character, I liked the premise. Even the conflict with his frenemy Constantine didn't give the novel enough tension.

Big love for the short stories at the end though, especially “Spider Rose” which was both a heart-breaker and a mind-bender.

Sterling's version of a space opera brimful of ideas and visions of the future. The evolution of humanity splits into two main factions/ideologies: the shapers (gene manipulation) and the mechanists (cybernetic enhancements). Either you're pro bacteria or con. The storyline jumps from world to world, constantly reinvents itself and never stays put. Everything is political and it's gritty and you love it.

If I'm not wrong, Ilya Prigogine is the only one to be referenced as a person of the past, as humanity is approaching his 5th level of complexity, posthumanism.

Sterling sees a dark future. The future is coming and you cannot do a damned thing to stop it.