Gary Poster, with essential assists from Galyn Norwood, Phiroon Phihakendr, Jose Quijada, Pavandeep Kalra. Ah, to be young and in love. The American sickness, to Sterling, derives from the way the same science that built our world threatens to decouple us from our own tenuous humanity.
Distraction is catnip for smart people.
In person, the author comes off like first-draft Oscar. Interviewing him is like watching a frog hopscotch across a lily-padded pond and wondering when he'll land in the water. He doesn't answer questions so much as wield them, like any good pol, in furtherance of his own idiosyncratic conversational agenda, launching into highly literate, if often ill-focused, disquisitions on, you know, whatever. Well, Bruce, you keep writing good books, and we'll keep letting you ramble into our microcassette recorder. At 44, Sterling is a married and prosperous father of two, but he wears his hair as long as the boomer teen he remains at heart and sets it off with the jeans and logoed black T that was the cyberpunk uniform way back when.