Why read The Caryatids?

Book cover of The Caryatids

Book description

Alongside William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling stands at the forefront of a select group of writers whose pitch-perfect grasp of the cultural and scientific zeitgeist endows their works of speculative near-future fiction with uncanny verisimilitude. To read a novel by Sterling is to receive a dispatch from a…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Caryatids as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Andrew Dana Hudson

Author

Sometimes climate fiction can feel a little less technologically futuristic than its older cousin science fiction, and that’s often a good thing. But Sterling manages to put together a wild (and entertaining) tale of clones, augmented reality, ubiquitous computing, and other fantastica that also has a lot to say about the politics of environmental collapse. Years after reading it I still think a lot about the rival factions this novel invents, like the everything-is-entertainment Dispensation and the utopian hive mind Acquis. Plus, this book features one of my all-time favorite lines from speculative fiction: “I won’t hide from the bandits…

From Andrew's list on The best novels about the politics of climate change.