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Visionary In Residence by Bruce Sterling
01/08/2006 . Source: Tomas L. Martin 
pub: Thunder's Mouth Press. 294 page enlarged paperback. Price: $15.95 (US). ISBN: 1-56025-841-1. Buy Visionary In Residence in the USA - or Buy Visionary In Residence in the UK  check out website: www.avalonpub.com
Bruce Sterling is known as one of the finest Science Fiction writers that emerged from the cyberpunk era of the eighties. Together with William Gibson, he hit the best seller's list with 'The Difference Engine', a steampunk novel set in a Britain where computers are invented in the early 1800s and the computer age's repercussions begin early.
'Visionary In Residence' is a new short story collection from Sterling featuring thirteen stories of recent times and an interesting little blurb about each one. The little explanations Sterling gives for how a story came to be are fascinating. He comes across as a highly creative writer that puts as much thought into creating the scenarios as the reader does when enjoying them.
More than anything, these introductions reveal that most rewarding pieces of information: Sterling enjoys writing a lot! There are mentions of mischief and that's the overwhelming feeling that you get. This is fun for him and he really enjoys pushing the most ambitious and creative ideas that many other writers would either never try or try and fail.
The stories themselves always live up to the pre-match billing of the introductions. The collection starts with 'In Paradise'. A man who falls in love with a foreign girl with no common language, through a translating phone. They run away together, talking only through their phone even as the girl's Iranian family put pressure on them. The end is a fitting end to a whimsical and incredibly plausible scenario.
The next story 'Luciferase' switches tack completely and has a firefly for a protagonist, attaching human relationships to the insect world. Then 'Homo Sapiens Declared Extinct', a short obituary of the human race in a society of AI appears.
Elsewhere in the anthology we have 'Junk DNA', a story of a company that creates a real living version of the Tamagotchi and Furbie trend. This story is written with Rudy Rucker and there is another collaboration, the gritty and entertaining 'A Scab's Progress', with Paul Di Filippo in the same section. This is a sub-genre which Sterling and Di Filippo have named 'Ribofunk' - an equivalent to cyberpunk where genetic modification replaces computer software - to often entertaining ends.
'Visionary In Residence' would be an over-ambitious anthology title for many if not most writers on this planet. After reading the sheer imagination packed into the thirteen short stories in this volume, suddenly the title doesn't seem like such an exaggeration. Sterling manages to create thirteen really unique and audaciously creative stories but never drops the ball on the enjoyment factor.
Juggling originality and fun is never easy but Bruce Sterling seems to do it with ease. This collection is another example of how truly breathtaking Science Fiction can be.
Tomas L. Martin
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