Distraction
a novel
by Bruce Sterling · first published 1998
46% recommend54% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Near-future political thriller about tech-driven disruption, unemployment, and Washington gridlock, with net-smart nomads and a US-China trade war. For readers who like speculative fiction close to real events.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
It's November 2044, an election year, and the state of the Union is a farce. The government is broke, the cities are privately owned, and the military is shaking down citizens in the streets. Washington has become a circus and no one knows that better than Oscar Valparaiso. A political spin doctor, Oscar has always made things look good. Now he wants to make a difference. But Oscar has a skeleton in his closet. His only ally: Dr. Greta Penninger, a gifted neurologist at the bleeding edge of the neural revolution. Together they're out to spread a very dangerous idea whose time has come. And
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I love this idea. I suspect it is utterly wrong, but it is wonderful speculation nonetheless. Both Snowcrash by Neal Stevenson and Distraction by Bruce Sterling make good use of some of the concepts from it, so even if it is wrong, it has helped in the genesis of some great fiction.
on “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” ↗Accelerando by Charles Stross, The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, Diaspora by Greg Egan, Distraction by Bruce Sterling
on “The Realism of Our Times: Kim Stanley Robinson on how science fiction works” ↗Bruce Sterling's Distraction. He touches on net-smart nomads, technology-driven disruption and the resulting unemployment, gridlock in congress, something similar to the Occupy movement in DC, a trade war with China that ended when…
on “Ask HN: What's your favourite sci-fi/fantasy book?” ↗We're definitely in more of a Bruce Sterling cyberpunk future than a William Gibson cyberpunk future. Distraction has been feeling eerily prescient recently.
on “William Gibson says today’s internet is nothing like what he envisioned” ↗…Distress, but I guess I don't think of him as new. Which is sort of silly I guess, given that he's still putting out stuff. If we're including him might as well do Bruce Sterling as well. I'm rereading "Distraction" at the moment and it hold up pretty darn well - except for failures of understanding about the economics of software development.
on “Is science fiction dying?” ↗Distraction by Bruce Sterling has held up very well except for missing open source software.
on “What Science Fiction Movie or Novel Is Most Prescient Today?” ↗Distraction by Bruce Sterling sometimes seems like it's literally just right around the corner.
on “What Science Fiction Movie or Novel Is Most Prescient Today?” ↗I'll second Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon (but not the sequels) and Vinge's Rainbows End. You might also consider some of Bruce Sterling's stuff, Distraction, Holy Fire, and The Caryatids. Sterling has a more instrumental view of AI but I think he does a better job of addressing the social issues of technology than most of the other recommendations here.…
on “Ghost in the Shell remains our most challenging film about technology” ↗Bruce Sterling: Distraction ...also Heavy Weather
on “Domino's Pizza unveils U.S. infrastructure project filling potholes” ↗Read the Math textbook or ftw. Makers is by a large margin the worst thing I've read by Cory Doctorow. Distraction by Bruce Sterling covered a great many of the same the same themes first and better.
on “For the Win, Cory Doctrow's new novel about economics and gaming blackmarket” ↗I really wish the cyberpunk novels I read in my youth would stop becoming reality. Especially Distraction by Bruce Sterling comes to mind. It’s just so crazy that political entities run false campaigns, and that the impact of these campaigns is so profound. I’m happy YouTube is fighting back, but at the…
on “YouTube shuts down 210 Chinese channels posting about Hong Kong” ↗IIRC "Distraction" by Bruce Sterling covers that sort of thing.
on “A ‘Grass-Roots’ Campaign to Take Down Amazon Is Funded By Its Biggest Rivals” ↗The endpoint of this line of development is exemplified in Bruce Sterling's novel Distraction. A politician, annoyed by criticism, commissions a spider which crawls the net, and when it finds a sufficiently annoying and influtential critic of the pol, posts their name and details to a hitlist…
on “Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense” ↗Have you read/reread Bruce Sterling lately? I reread Distraction recently, and it's scary how much closer real politics have come to his satire since publication.
on “William Gibson, the Art of Fiction No. 211 (2011)” ↗In Bruce Sterling's novel Distraction, there's a bot trawling the net for opponents of a particular politician, and posting the names of the leading ones on a blog, where fans (in the original sense of fanatic followers) of the politician…
on “I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my perceived political views” ↗