The Caryatids

By Bruce Stirling
Del Rey, $25.00, 304 pages

Sterling, like William Gibson, sees the future with international lenses on. Both write books nailing trends and fads as they happen, or even potentially seeing them still gestating, and project them into the future. Gibson’s latest book Spook Country is about a future of tomorrow, or maybe as far as next week, while Stirling jumps out fifty years into a world past the brink of survival, yet competing groups still fight for control of the potential left.

Enter the modern caryatids. From Greek architecture, caryatids were statutes of women that replaced columns or pillars, in The Caryatids they are four remaining clones of a Balkan war criminal, now exiled into orbit. Each is part of a different surviving faction; Vera a part of the Acquis Green movement trying to reclaim her home in Croatia, Radmila is an star in the Dispensation, a high-tech entertainment corptocracy centered in Los Angeles, Sonja is a medical specialist working in China, one of the last functioning nation-states. The last sister? That would be Biserka, freelance terrorist. Tying them all together is John Montgomery Montalban, Radmila’s husband and envoy for the Dispensation.

Stirling pleases on so many levels – his characters and plots keep him at the forefront of the science fiction field and his use of language makes his books a pleasure to read.