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July 20, 2017

Bruce Sterling’s PIRATE UTOPIA visits Rijeka

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized bruce sterling, croatian, john coulthart, Marty Halpern, More Red Ink, pirate utopia, review, rijeka, start

Bruce Sterling’s took his Sidewise Award-nominated PIRATE UTOPIA on a photo tour of Rijeka.

The Croatian START reviews the book.

Right on the track of the storyline of THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE, Sterling in PIRATE UTOPIA prints events in a “temporary free zone” in which the military occupation of the orchestra of Gabriele d’Annunzi did not stop but turned into a permanent technical-art lab that transforms futuristic manifestations and ideas In everyday reality, and residents futurist-soldiers are fighting against all forms of ideology, and engineers and poets collaborate on conceptual anarchist techno-projects. The book is inspired by Italian futurism, and when you get it in your hands you feel like a libretto of authors from the best years of visually-verbal experiments by Marinetti, Depera and others.

The book would be interesting to translate into Croatian language and to offer it as a model of interpretative thinking about the past, in a context that is still burdened with discomfort with irreconcilable versions of history. Perhaps this act, and also the translation of other similar literary attempts in the domain of alternative history, could stimulate public opinion on a more proactive social attitude towards past events. Unlike Cohen’s experimental (some hard and first postmodern) novel, Sterling’s traditionally structured, the only elements of the story and the overall concept are very strange, but again typical of his idea of alternative history.

The protagonists of one and the other novel are losers, but in Sterling’s novel, they do not know it yet. They know, when they end up in the broader perspective, as insignificant in the overall context of the global forces of political and media power, which nowadays produces alternative facts in real time, not just material for a future alternative history.

(Translation from Croatian courtesy of Google)

On his MORE RED INK, Marty Halpern discusses the book’s Sidewise Award nomination.

From the Awards’ website: “The Sidewise Awards have been presented annually since 1995 to recognize excellence in alternate historical fiction.” This year, Bruce Sterling’s PIRATE UTOPIA is among the six finalists in the Best Short-Form Alternate History category. The award winners will be announced on August 20, 2017.

Fortunately, PIRATE UTOPIA is still available in hardcover, which is a must-see format for the period-specific (and quite marvelous) illustrations by John Coulthart. I’ve posted some of these illos in my blog posts of June 14, 2016, and July 14, 2016. Keep in mind these few illustrations are only a sampling, but hopefully enough to give you a taste of what’s included in the book. (And let’s not forget that the book also includes an enlightening 1,000-plus-word essay entitled “Reconstructing the Future: A Note on Design” from the illustrator himself.)

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

Cover and images by John Coulthart

January 24, 2017

PIRATE UTOPIA is indisputably extraordinary and cool

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized bruce sterling, christian endres, croatian, davor mandic, die zukunft, fiume, german, john coulthart, novilist, pirate utopia, review, rijeka

For the German site DIE ZUKUNFT, Christian Endres praises Bruce Sterling’s PIRATE UTOPIA.

The key to the story is, however, only in the appendix, which consists of an afterword by the author, editor and world-fantasy-award-winner Christopher Brown, a remarks by the accomplished illustrator John Coulthart and above all a long interview with Bruce Sterling himself. In this interview he assigns “Pirate Utopia” as its environment-related contribution to the Italian subject of fantascienza a – and as an allegorical warning that should show in grotesquely distorted mirror image of the alternative world and the Alternate History how much the present policy has lost its connection to reality How easily extreme political ideologies can mix, and how violently people are looking for individual life models and solutions.

Not a simple book, even a very strange book, but also an indisputably extraordinary and cool, gorgeously styled book, which especially as a hardcover some.

(Translation from German courtesy of Google)

Davor Mandic on the Croatian site NOVI LIST writes about the book, Sterling, and Rijeka.

Just as a few years ago promised, one of the most famous SF writers in the world, Texan Bruce Sterling action his new novel,“Pirate Utopia” , situated in the – river.

One of the creators of cyberpunk has for some time inspired period of Rijeka’s history from the twenties of the last century, known as the Free State of Rijeka , or perhaps better said period is closely related to Gabriellea D’Annunzio.

If he wanted to write a book about it, has announced another 2013 when hosting the Rijeka Festival Republic. Speaking in a lecture at the festival, Sterling is a river of that time described as the then world capital of piracy and a kind of social laboratory with positive, but negative outcomes, but this week the US magazine Wired repeated his fascination with this part of Rijeka’s history.

– Believe me, what was happening in Rijeka is truly one of the strangest things that happened in the 20th century, said the famous writer stating that Rijeka then got a brief period of independence under the rule of artists and revolutionaries, and as such was fruitful ground for various kinds of radical ideas – of socialism, anarcho-syndicalism over to fascism.

Although the book is “fresh”, criticism that can be found on the Internet are a row of praise and talk about the “fantastic and fun alternative historical story” with “a series of crazy, interesting characters” through which Sterling examines alternative social arrangements.

As it is one of the most respected authors SF genre, there is no doubt that this the novel have a large number of readers around the world, which will certainly contribute to the introduction that the book gave another world-famous writer, the Englishman Warren Ellis.

(Translation from Croatian courtesy of Google)

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

Cover and illustrations by John Coulthart