Books like Distraction

This is my favorite book.It's so much my favorite book that I wrote an article on its 20th anniversary for Slate. I interviewed Bruce Sterling on what inspired him while writing, and why this book is still relevant right before the 2018 midterms. ...Okay, that's not a review. Let me explain why this is my favorite book. Distraction paints a picture of a world gone down the tubes in an all too familiar way, but unlike the usual dystopian moanings, Sterling has the guts to imagine a way out; a characteristically optimistic American faith in the endless frontier of science, technology, and freedom from any kind of notion of responsibility.But there are three things that I really, truly love about Distraction. First is the setting, which after 15 years smells more like the future than when it was written. An American political system that has descended into an insane farce. An economy that no longer has jobs for half the people; most of whom have dropped out to join a perpetual nomad carnival run off of weird reputation servers. Ecological Cold War with the Dutch and a coalition of low-lying Third World nations. A lost economic war with the Chinese over intellectual property. And information warfare as the basic fact of life--a world where bugs can be bought in bulk at flea markets, spam email servers orchestrate assassinations, and the US Air Force has to hold a bake sale to keep the lights on. It's a rich tapestry, and all of it hangs together beautifully.Second, the aphorisms. Bruce Sterling knows how to turn a phrase, and he has some great ones around science and politics in this book. I'm a science policy professional by a living, and personally, I think Sterling has a better understanding of how this all works than 90% of the boring scholarly types involved. You want a mind-expanding quote about science and society, this is your book. Sterling doesn't bash you over the head with abstruse STS theory, but you can feel it deep underneath the writing. And third, I really enjoy the plot and the characters: the genetically altered political strategist, the Nobel prize winning scientist, the mad governor of Louisiana, and the intricate scheme of neural engineering and power machinations that draw them into collision. Sure, some of the more important plot points proceed by random happenstance, but history doesn't have good reasons. In the real world, strange stuff that nobody could've seen comes in and upsets the board all the time. Just sit back, relax, and let the ride take you.Read it.