Given that this is a book of short stories, it’s only fair to review it on a story-by-story basis.   With the knowledge of each of the stories, the reader can judge this book for his or her own basis.

Maneki Neko by Bruce Sterling

A gift economy has emerged in Japan, and not everyone’s happy about it.   This story explores the dark side of these gift economies.   The premise of the gift economy is this: money is unnatural, and you should do for your brother humans what you’d like them to do for you.   So hand everyone a beeper to let him or her know what’s needed where, and let him or her know when there’s something they can do without going to too much trouble.   But what happens when such an economy moves to protect itself?

This is not Sterling’s first study of theoretical economic systems, and he creates a good story from it.   This is a smart, well-written story.

Big Jelly by Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker

Jellyfish, chaos theory, and an unidentified slime collide in this implausible and fun tale.   It’s so bizarre that the only way to tell you more is to repeat the tale nigh verbatim.   So I’ll leave you with that.   It’s not the most realistic tale, but it’s written well enough to suspend your disbelief.

The Littlest Jackal by Bruce Sterling

The Russian mafia wants a place to launder money, and they think they’ve found just the place in a small Finnish island chain.   Of course, the Finns might have a problem with this, so they coordinate their efforts with the extremely small independence movement of these islands.   This is the premise of The Littlest Jackal.

Starlitz is back in this short story, and I think it’s the best story he’s been in yet.   This story is coherent and really quite good.

Sacred Cow by Bruce Sterling

An Indian director films in Britain in this story.   It takes place in a new world in which Britain, Western Europe, and America have fallen on hard times (aided by a plague) and the new world powers are India and Japan.

This story is mostly an exploration of the setting, but the setting’s convincingly detailed.

Deep Eddy by Bruce Sterling

Eddy goes to Europe to study a spontaneously organized riot called a “Wende”.   More social concepts here from Sterling, as well as some nifty gadget ideas.   The world now has three superpowers: NAFTA, Europe, and the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.   As for gadgets, “Spex” are centrally featured; a pair of “Spex” extends visual perception to include personal profiles (if someone’s broadcasting one), translations to other languages (if need be), different visual spectrums, etc.

A pretty good story, overall.

Bicycle Repairman by Bruce Sterling

The second story in the series that began with Deep Eddy.   This story takes place in NAFTA rather than Europe.   Lyle Schweik had Eddy as a roommate, but Eddy’s taken off for Europe again.   Eddy’s still using the place for storage, so when a package arrives it’s no surprise.   What the package contains, an old-fashioned cable box, is somewhat of a surprise, and Lyle hooks it up only to see some very odd political coverage.   But the source of that coverage throws intrigue Lyle’s way…

This is an excellent story involving an autonomous zone within a city, a spook, and mooks (personalized digital assistants that have the owner’s face and voice that do everything from answer phones to advise the owner).

Taklamakan by Bruce Sterling

The third story in the series that began with Deep Eddy.   This is set in the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.   The City-Spider from Bicycle Repairman, Pete, got involved in espionage after that story concluded.   The story begins with he and a partner waiting for their spymaster to arrive in a desert of the Sphere.   Soon they embark on a hunt for mysterious space ships in a post-atomic landscape controlled only by sheer evolution.

Lots of good ideas in this story, and they fit together nicely.