Review copies of the Hugo Award winner, pioneering Bruce Sterling’s quasi-alt Futurist history PIRATE UTOPIA are now available via NetGalley.

These copies are only for reviewers and librarians. For more details, visit NetGalley.

And while you are there, check out the other Tachyon titles for review.

“A wild satire about serious issues. Sterling’s wonder-romp is perfectly matched by Coulthart’s superb designs. The best of their brilliant generation, Sterling and his collaborator have produced a book to treasure. Bravo!”

—Michael Moorcock, author of the Elric of Melniboné series and THE WHISPERING
SWARM

PIRATE UTOPIA

by Bruce Sterling

• Original introduction by Warren Ellis, author of TRANSMETROPOLITAN and GUN MACHINE
  
• Cover, illustrations, design, and design notes by John Coulthart
  
• “Afterword: To the Fiume Station” by Christopher Brown
  
• Interview with Bruce Sterling by Rick Klaw
  

Who are these bold rebels pillaging their European neighbors in the name of revolution? The Futurists! Utopian pirate-warriors of the tiny Regency of Carnaro, the unlikely scourge of the Adriatic Sea. Mortal enemies of communists, capitalists, and even fascists (to whom they are not entirely unsympathetic).

The ambitious Soldier-Citizens of Carnaro are lead by a brilliant and passionate coterie of the perhaps insane. Lorenzo Secondari, World War I veteran, engineering genius, and leader of Croatian raiders. Frau Piffer, Syndicalist manufacturer of torpedos at a factory run by and for women. The Ace of Hearts, a dashing Milanese aristocrat, spymaster, and tactical savant. And the Prophet, a seductive warrior-poet who leads via free love and military ruthlessness.

Fresh off of a worldwide demonstration of their might, can the Futurists engage the aid of sinister American traitors and establish world domination?

Praise for Bruce Sterling

“He understands technology’s present and future better than anyone in the field.”
—Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother

“And if you miss the sensation of having science fiction stretch your brainmeat a bit, of those powerful and irreversible up-endings of the way you see certain things, and you’re not aware of Bruce Sterling? Go find him.”
—Strange Horizons

“[H]is highly caffeinated energy is hard to resist.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Bruce Sterling has managed to pen a delivery vessel for a futuristic, anarchistic dystopian idea of human potential.”
—New York Journal of Books

“Science fiction that makes the rest of near-future SF look toylike by comparison. It’s as if Sterling is the only writer paying attention to what’s happening in the real world.”
—Locus

“Love him or hate him, Bruce Sterling always has something important to say… .”
—Booksmark Magazine

“Bruce Sterling remains one of the key SF writers”
—SFRevu

Excerpt

The Pirate Cinema

I. Occupied Fiume, January 1920

To celebrate his new, improved torpedo, the engineer took his pirates to the movies.

The spectacles in Futurist Fiume amazed the pirates. They’d never seen motion pictures.

The engineer’s pirates were refugees and criminals. They felt rather shy about leaving their safe haven in the engineer’s Torpedo Factory. To encourage themselves, they sang a Croatian sea ditty and whistled loudly at the passing girls.

Using his cane, the engineer wobbled along in the wake of his nine pirate crewmen. His female companion helped him over a tangled mess of harbor rope. Frau Blanka Piffer was a native of Fiume. She served as the engineer’s business manager, interpreter, and purchasing agent.

The pirates left the dockside, with its dense mass of cranes, quays and railway tracks. Downtown Fiume had a stone broadway with tall, peculiar gas-lamps. The church and the clock tower were the tallest buildings in the town.

The Croatian pirates were vividly conspicuous. All nine of them wore women’s stolen fur overcoats, cinched by thick leather army belts festooned with daggers, pistols, and hand grenades.

As the pirates swaggered by, the dames of Fiume fled inside the dress-shops. The gentlemen dropped their newspapers and abandoned their sidewalk cafes. Children hid themselves behind the horse-carts and fruit-stands. Even stray dogs ran off.

For more info on PIRATE UTOPIA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover and images by John Coulthart