The Artificial Kid (Context (San Francisco).)
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The Artificial Kid (Context (San Francisco).) by Bruce Sterling
In a future world of rampant inequality, a martial-arts video star finds himself in a real fight for survival, in this novel by the author of Schismatrix.
Founded centuries ago by the enigmatic genius Moses Moses, the planet Reverie can either be heaven or hell, depending on whether you live on or above it. The superrich orbit the world in luxury abodes, keeping their sometimes-lethal ennui at bay by watching homemade sex and violence videos created by the peons dwelling on the coral continents miles beneath them. The most popular entertainer of all is the Artificial Kid, an unbeatable combat artist whose bloody, self-produced martial arts videos have made him beloved both above and below. But the Kid is about to stumble onto something no one was ever meant to discover--a mind-boggling conspiracy of science and antiquity that forces him to run for his life into the strange and dangerous wilderness known as the Mass. And when Moses returns to Reverie after seven hundred years of cryogenic sleep, things are about to get much worse.
Written long before the era of YouTube, Ultimate Fighting, and reality TV, Bruce Sterling's prescient, thoughtful, and wildly satiric novel previews the nascent cyberpunk sensibilities of the acclaimed author's later works.
In the 1980s, Bruce Sterling became a leader of the 'cyberpunk' revolution -- a literary movement that combined the artistic ambition of science fiction's 1960s New Wave with the hard-core speculation associated with Verne, Wells, Heinlein, and Clarke. Cyberpunk's chief theme was the way technologies evolve us even as we evolve them, and its influence can be seen in almost every science fiction writer of note today, from Ken MacLeod to Alastair Reynolds to Cory Doctorow. Neuromancer author William Gibson may have been the best-known of the cyberpunks, but the movement's chief theorist and propagandist was Sterling, whose writing covered far more territory than that of his peers.... Sterling lives in Austin, Texas. He is a design professor at the moment -- the Visionary in Residence at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He has appeared on Nightline, The Late Show, MTV, and is the author of nine novels, three of which were selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year. The Difference Engine, co-written with William Gibson, was a national bestseller. He has also published three short-story collections and two nonfiction books. He has written for many magazines, including Newsweek, Fortune, Harper's, Details, Whole Earth Review, and Wired, where he has been a contributing writer since its inception. He does public speaking as a hobby, and has addressed academics, market experts, experimental media groups, phone regulators, state bureaucrats, and architects, among others.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781888869163 |
| ISBN 10 | 188886916X |
| Title | The Artificial Kid (Context (San Francisco).) |
| Author | Bruce Sterling |
| Series | Context Ser |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Hardwired |
| Year published | 1997-11-06 |
| Number of pages | 309 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |