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mayor_of_taco_town's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
remi_yoyo's review against another edition
1.0
this was a dnf for years because its so bloody depressing, so misogynistic and then i finally finish reading it to find out it has an underwhelming and eugenicist ending???????
actual garbage
actual garbage
trike's review against another edition
4.0
This is by far my favorite Sterling book. Unlike his earlier Mechist-Shaper story cycle, this book still seems all-too-possible. Plus, I want that Jumping Jeep with the Smart Wheels. How awesome was THAT thing?! Daaaamn.
At times the clunky prose intrudes, as do some of the obvious "As you know Bob" moments, but overall this is solid stuff, and still feels like it could happen.
At times the clunky prose intrudes, as do some of the obvious "As you know Bob" moments, but overall this is solid stuff, and still feels like it could happen.
frasersimons's review against another edition
4.0
More reviews over at my blog: consumingcyberpunk.com
"I just can't believe that civilization is going to get off the hook that easy. 'The end of civilization'—what end? What civilization, for that matter?...the kind of trouble we got, they aren't allowed to have any end."
It's the year 2031 in Heavy Weather, and perhaps unsurprisingly, things haven't gotten better. Global economies have crashed. Governments hardly function. Currency, communication, and borders have rapidly changed due to the massive changes heavy weather has caused. Once lush and fertile land is now ravaged by drought.
"...so that's really what you're doing, huh? You chase thunderstorms for a living these days?
Oh, not for a living."
The book alternates between Jane and Alex Unger. Jane makes her way to Mexico to break out her younger brother Alex from a clinica. Alex is billed to the reader as having a lot of problems, not entirely uncommon after the collapse of 1st world nations as we know them. Alex ostensibly suffers from a myriad of retroviruses and Jane, believing the clinica is ripping him off and not curing him at all, decides to bail him out.
"...the code was cryptware—it reencrypted itself every goddamn month and demanded a payoff before unfreezing."
During the State Of Emergency, when the heavy weather first became a huge problem for mankind after constantly disregarding climate problems, almost all data and information systems went down. Society collapsed as countries were not prepared to deal with massive climate swings, some people decided to take matters into their own hands. Calling them "Structure hits", people would take down buildings that contributed to global warming and other systemic problems. Hell had a structure. It had a texture. The spinning inner walls were a blurry streaky gas, and a liquid rippling sheen, and a hard black wobbling solid, all at once. Great bulging rhythmical waves of hollows of peristalsis were creeping up the funnel core, slow and dignified, like great black smoke rings in the throat of a deep thinker.
The concept of hacking has undergone a bit of a change as well. "Hacking" seems to refer to any modifications to anything at all. From kites to ornithopters and especially--to heavy weather. After Jane breaks out Alex they return to the Storm Troupe. This band of misfits chase "spikes" in weather in an attempt to gather more information on it. Still little is known about it, apparently, but this troupe, each with their own way of hacking something, aim to find the mother of all tornadoes: the f6.
"I hack kites...Balloons, chaff, ultralights, parafoils...chutes are my favourite though, I like to structure-jump."
Throughout the novel, we find out that there are still spooks working for what is left of a functioning government. There are still border guards but they don't really care about the imaginary line on the ground anymore. Technology is still somewhat futuristic but not typically cyberpunk, ie, there are no cybernetics. There is no Internet, either. People live poorly and barely survive. All that is left is the individual drives people have. These punks only care about money in so far as how it can help them better hack heavy weather.
"...all workable standards of wealth has vaporized, digitized, and into a nonstop hurricane of electronic thing air."
This is where the book really shines. The world building, the technology, and the fiction specifically about these storm chasers and how they hack them is very cool. They use ultralight manned drones to scout out ahead. There are ornithopters with tech that casts the cameras feed into the helmeted view of people piloting them back at camp. When they send these into the tornado to "punch the core", they gain even more data. It's exciting and interesting.
As the Emergency had deepened, the packing Regime had rammed its data nationalizations through Congress, and with that convulsive effort, the very nature of money and information had both mutated beyond any repair.
Things lag a bit with character work, which is for the most part good. Marrying speculative climate change fiction with cyberpunk is genius and the characters mostly do the premise justice. Jane is a pretty well realized female protagonist but also used as the main vehicle for communicating her main drive, hunting these storms, is really the only thing that defines her. The troupers all substitute some aspects of their lives and only feel like truly functioning human beings when they are being adrenaline junkies, all other wannabees who don't feel the same way never stay.
"There is no more alternative society. Just people who will probably survive and people who probably won't."
This idea that Jane can only be whole while she is pursuing something only somewhat works due to the books ending, which I was pretty lukewarm about. The sins of the previous generation are visited upon the next generation of people. There are too many people in the world for it to sustain it. You're still only useful if you can contribute the way they want you to, despite it being post-capitalism and a mostly dystopia world.
"It's me alright, it's very much part of me, but it's not something I'm in command of and I don't control it. It's like a force, a compulsion, that tears at things, and shreds them, and chops them up, and comprehends them, and I don't control it, and I never have. I can't. You understand?
Yes. I do understand. It's like a spike, inside."
These are all somewhat interesting things to explore but they always end up on the peripheral and feel a little bit weird when injected. It wants to say so much more and sometimes comments on misogyny in organizations like the Texas Rangers, as well as what is expected of women like Jane. But this is mostly Twister with cyberpunk aesthetic and an interesting bit of speculation. It doesn't have the deep questions good cyberpunk fiction often has along with the action. It's too bad because it does dip its toes, it just never gets in.
"We were just trying to kill the machinery. Get rid of it. All that junk that had killed our world, y'know?"
The world and the action is worth the cost of admission and it is a fast read. This concept inspired a whole new game design I've been working on, in tandem with other fiction. More speculative fiction on climate issues married with post-cyberpunk is something I would love to see more of.
You can nab the hardcover of paperback cheap these days, interestingly though, you cannot get it digitally.
"Even the blackest cloud has a chrome lining."
"I just can't believe that civilization is going to get off the hook that easy. 'The end of civilization'—what end? What civilization, for that matter?...the kind of trouble we got, they aren't allowed to have any end."
It's the year 2031 in Heavy Weather, and perhaps unsurprisingly, things haven't gotten better. Global economies have crashed. Governments hardly function. Currency, communication, and borders have rapidly changed due to the massive changes heavy weather has caused. Once lush and fertile land is now ravaged by drought.
"...so that's really what you're doing, huh? You chase thunderstorms for a living these days?
Oh, not for a living."
The book alternates between Jane and Alex Unger. Jane makes her way to Mexico to break out her younger brother Alex from a clinica. Alex is billed to the reader as having a lot of problems, not entirely uncommon after the collapse of 1st world nations as we know them. Alex ostensibly suffers from a myriad of retroviruses and Jane, believing the clinica is ripping him off and not curing him at all, decides to bail him out.
"...the code was cryptware—it reencrypted itself every goddamn month and demanded a payoff before unfreezing."
During the State Of Emergency, when the heavy weather first became a huge problem for mankind after constantly disregarding climate problems, almost all data and information systems went down. Society collapsed as countries were not prepared to deal with massive climate swings, some people decided to take matters into their own hands. Calling them "Structure hits", people would take down buildings that contributed to global warming and other systemic problems. Hell had a structure. It had a texture. The spinning inner walls were a blurry streaky gas, and a liquid rippling sheen, and a hard black wobbling solid, all at once. Great bulging rhythmical waves of hollows of peristalsis were creeping up the funnel core, slow and dignified, like great black smoke rings in the throat of a deep thinker.
The concept of hacking has undergone a bit of a change as well. "Hacking" seems to refer to any modifications to anything at all. From kites to ornithopters and especially--to heavy weather. After Jane breaks out Alex they return to the Storm Troupe. This band of misfits chase "spikes" in weather in an attempt to gather more information on it. Still little is known about it, apparently, but this troupe, each with their own way of hacking something, aim to find the mother of all tornadoes: the f6.
"I hack kites...Balloons, chaff, ultralights, parafoils...chutes are my favourite though, I like to structure-jump."
Throughout the novel, we find out that there are still spooks working for what is left of a functioning government. There are still border guards but they don't really care about the imaginary line on the ground anymore. Technology is still somewhat futuristic but not typically cyberpunk, ie, there are no cybernetics. There is no Internet, either. People live poorly and barely survive. All that is left is the individual drives people have. These punks only care about money in so far as how it can help them better hack heavy weather.
"...all workable standards of wealth has vaporized, digitized, and into a nonstop hurricane of electronic thing air."
This is where the book really shines. The world building, the technology, and the fiction specifically about these storm chasers and how they hack them is very cool. They use ultralight manned drones to scout out ahead. There are ornithopters with tech that casts the cameras feed into the helmeted view of people piloting them back at camp. When they send these into the tornado to "punch the core", they gain even more data. It's exciting and interesting.
As the Emergency had deepened, the packing Regime had rammed its data nationalizations through Congress, and with that convulsive effort, the very nature of money and information had both mutated beyond any repair.
Things lag a bit with character work, which is for the most part good. Marrying speculative climate change fiction with cyberpunk is genius and the characters mostly do the premise justice. Jane is a pretty well realized female protagonist but also used as the main vehicle for communicating her main drive, hunting these storms, is really the only thing that defines her. The troupers all substitute some aspects of their lives and only feel like truly functioning human beings when they are being adrenaline junkies, all other wannabees who don't feel the same way never stay.
"There is no more alternative society. Just people who will probably survive and people who probably won't."
This idea that Jane can only be whole while she is pursuing something only somewhat works due to the books ending, which I was pretty lukewarm about. The sins of the previous generation are visited upon the next generation of people. There are too many people in the world for it to sustain it. You're still only useful if you can contribute the way they want you to, despite it being post-capitalism and a mostly dystopia world.
"It's me alright, it's very much part of me, but it's not something I'm in command of and I don't control it. It's like a force, a compulsion, that tears at things, and shreds them, and chops them up, and comprehends them, and I don't control it, and I never have. I can't. You understand?
Yes. I do understand. It's like a spike, inside."
These are all somewhat interesting things to explore but they always end up on the peripheral and feel a little bit weird when injected. It wants to say so much more and sometimes comments on misogyny in organizations like the Texas Rangers, as well as what is expected of women like Jane. But this is mostly Twister with cyberpunk aesthetic and an interesting bit of speculation. It doesn't have the deep questions good cyberpunk fiction often has along with the action. It's too bad because it does dip its toes, it just never gets in.
"We were just trying to kill the machinery. Get rid of it. All that junk that had killed our world, y'know?"
The world and the action is worth the cost of admission and it is a fast read. This concept inspired a whole new game design I've been working on, in tandem with other fiction. More speculative fiction on climate issues married with post-cyberpunk is something I would love to see more of.
You can nab the hardcover of paperback cheap these days, interestingly though, you cannot get it digitally.
"Even the blackest cloud has a chrome lining."
cathepsut's review against another edition
Gave up or rather drifted off after slightly over 80 pages. Sounds good, just not keeping my attention.
mburnamfink's review against another edition
5.0
Heavy Weather looks like an adaptation of the movie Twister on the surface: giant tornadoes, obsessed scientists, even that one scene with the flying cow, but it's actually a smart dark mirror that seriously asks and answers the question "What would it be like to live through the worst of anthropocentric climate change?"
In the year 2031, Alex Unger is dying in a private Mexican hospital when his sister Janey breaks him out and takes him for one last fling chasing tornadoes in blasted West Texas, where civilization simply dried up and blew away in a megadrought. It's bad everywhere: governments have collapsed into emergency management posses; pandemics strike with regularity; and the best that people can do is scrape out a shallow grave of a life before something kills them. The goal for the characters is the F-6 Super-Tornado, a storm a whole order of magnitude bigger than anything on this Earth. There's some amazing lyrical descriptions of storms across the Texas wastes, and the thrill of chasing tornadoes.
But where this book shines is its nihilistic shadow government. The Very Serious People who have decided that for civilization to survive, the population must fall. Nothing so crass as a Holocaust, just little tweaks here and there to ensure the birth rate falls and the death rate rises. All the chaos and suffering is careful planned by a distributed cadre of secret survivalists... Life boat cannibals who are willing to do anything to see that some of us get through, rather than none.
Heavy Weather is supremely creepy, and has only become more so in the past twenty years. Sure, an honest reviewer would note that some of the dialog is clunky, and that Janey might not be the best character, but it's got a solid dozen or so moments that make my hair stand on end, even after years of rereading.
I'll ask you, like Sterling asks in one of my favorite scenes in all of literature, "When did mankind lose control of its destiny?"
In the year 2031, Alex Unger is dying in a private Mexican hospital when his sister Janey breaks him out and takes him for one last fling chasing tornadoes in blasted West Texas, where civilization simply dried up and blew away in a megadrought. It's bad everywhere: governments have collapsed into emergency management posses; pandemics strike with regularity; and the best that people can do is scrape out a shallow grave of a life before something kills them. The goal for the characters is the F-6 Super-Tornado, a storm a whole order of magnitude bigger than anything on this Earth. There's some amazing lyrical descriptions of storms across the Texas wastes, and the thrill of chasing tornadoes.
But where this book shines is its nihilistic shadow government. The Very Serious People who have decided that for civilization to survive, the population must fall. Nothing so crass as a Holocaust, just little tweaks here and there to ensure the birth rate falls and the death rate rises. All the chaos and suffering is careful planned by a distributed cadre of secret survivalists... Life boat cannibals who are willing to do anything to see that some of us get through, rather than none.
Heavy Weather is supremely creepy, and has only become more so in the past twenty years. Sure, an honest reviewer would note that some of the dialog is clunky, and that Janey might not be the best character, but it's got a solid dozen or so moments that make my hair stand on end, even after years of rereading.
I'll ask you, like Sterling asks in one of my favorite scenes in all of literature, "When did mankind lose control of its destiny?"
riduidel's review against another edition
4.0
J’ai dû avoir un été extra-lucide. Parce qu’après avoir lu [book:Titan], qui est une vision très anticipée des souçis de la NASA, j’ai lu [book:Gros temps] de [author:Bruce Sterling], celui-là même de [book:Schismatrice] (fabuleux) et des [book:mailles du réseau] (formidable). Bref, un auteur dont on pourrait dire avec peu de mauvaise foi que j’en suis fan. Mais là n’est pas l’objet de cet avis.
Gros temps est un roman qu’on pourrait décrire comme un “Twister” (le film sur les tornades) remis à une sauce cyberpunk. Dans ce roman, on suit un frère et une soeur, aussi déjantés l’un que l’autre, qui aident un scientifique pas mal non plus à traquer les tornades dans les vastes plaines du middle west, à la recherche de LA tornade, l’énorme, celle qui pourrait rester permanente (comme le dit l’auteur, exactement comme la tache orange de Jupiter). Je n’en dirais pas plus sur l’histoire, ça n’est pas vraiment nécessaire.
En revanche, le sujet choisi mérite l’attention. En effet, son histoire de tornade lue durant l’été m’a, cet automne, frappé comme une anticipation assez formidable de ce que provoquent les cyclones sur les côtes américaines. Pardon ? Ma comparaison ne tient pas de bout , Tant pis, je l’aime bien quand même. je sais bien que la puissance des phénomènes météo aux USA n’a pu qu’inspirer les artistes, mais j’ai bien apprécié cette vision fondamentalement contemporaine qu’a l’auteur à la fois de la météo, de ce qu’elle peut faire subir à un pays réputé puissant, et de l’impact qu’elle a sur tout un chacun. M’enfin, tout ça, ça n’est peut-être, malgré son intérêt, qu’un décor, un peu comme [book:le monde inverti].
Ce qui me fait également apprécier [author:Sterling], c’est sa capacité à utiliser un décor, en adéquation avec un environnement techno-politique, qui ne peut que résonner à nos oreilles. Dans le cas présent, on retrouve des trouvailles propres au cyberpunk (la voiture sauteuse, les combinaisons caméléon, le réseau) dans un environnement très alter-mondialiste, je trouve, et du coup très approprié à la thématique du roman. Car finalement, cette tribu de chasseurs de tornades, qu’est-elle d’autre qu’une transposition, pour l’homme de la rue que je suis, de ces groupes survivalistes dont le message essentiel est “notre environnement mérite notre protection”. J’ai d’ailleurs été assez frappé par la similitude pouvant exister, dans certtains passages volontiers éco-guerriers, entre ce texte et certains passages de [book:Dune] (recyclage de l’eau et des déchets naturels, philosophie de la survie, etc, ...).
Quant à l’environnement proprement politique, c’est le bien connu et moult fois anticipé effondrement des Etats-Unis qui s’opère “par le bas”. C’est-à-dire que, par le moyen de la privatisation, [author:Sterling] développe le postulat, délirant mais finalement pas tant que ça, de la privatisation de … l’argent. Et d’un seul coup, l’Etat garantissant la monnaie disparaît, et ne devient plus qu’un fournisseur de services parmi tant d’autres. C’est sans doute la dénationalisation la plus terrifiante que j’aie jamais eu l’occasion d’envisager, parce que la plus réaliste. Une fois cet environnement mis en place, les personnages peuvent apparaître.
J’‘allais écrire que ce sont les seules déceptions de ce roman, mais en fait même pas. Car si les deux personnages principaux de l’intrigue ne sont que des pions, c’est sans doute une volonté délibérée de l’auteur qui nous permet de bien comprendre à quel point le noeud de l’intrigue n’est pas dans les occupations de ces pions, mais dans la puissance hors des proportions humaines que peut dégager la Terre. C’est, somme toute, très bien vu, non ? Car s’il s’était intéressé d’avantage au scientifique qui dirige ces chasseurs de tornade, peut-être que le récit aurait été moins subi, et que du coup la dévastation occasionnée par les tornades aurait été moins visible. Bref, c’est à mon sens un très bon roman, cyberpunk, mais pas trop.
Et, puisqu’on parle de Sterling, n’hésitons pas à forger le terme de cyber-écologisme. Mais, quelque soit l’étiquette sous laquelle on le range, ce roman est à mon sens à lire
Gros temps est un roman qu’on pourrait décrire comme un “Twister” (le film sur les tornades) remis à une sauce cyberpunk. Dans ce roman, on suit un frère et une soeur, aussi déjantés l’un que l’autre, qui aident un scientifique pas mal non plus à traquer les tornades dans les vastes plaines du middle west, à la recherche de LA tornade, l’énorme, celle qui pourrait rester permanente (comme le dit l’auteur, exactement comme la tache orange de Jupiter). Je n’en dirais pas plus sur l’histoire, ça n’est pas vraiment nécessaire.
En revanche, le sujet choisi mérite l’attention. En effet, son histoire de tornade lue durant l’été m’a, cet automne, frappé comme une anticipation assez formidable de ce que provoquent les cyclones sur les côtes américaines. Pardon ? Ma comparaison ne tient pas de bout , Tant pis, je l’aime bien quand même. je sais bien que la puissance des phénomènes météo aux USA n’a pu qu’inspirer les artistes, mais j’ai bien apprécié cette vision fondamentalement contemporaine qu’a l’auteur à la fois de la météo, de ce qu’elle peut faire subir à un pays réputé puissant, et de l’impact qu’elle a sur tout un chacun. M’enfin, tout ça, ça n’est peut-être, malgré son intérêt, qu’un décor, un peu comme [book:le monde inverti].
Ce qui me fait également apprécier [author:Sterling], c’est sa capacité à utiliser un décor, en adéquation avec un environnement techno-politique, qui ne peut que résonner à nos oreilles. Dans le cas présent, on retrouve des trouvailles propres au cyberpunk (la voiture sauteuse, les combinaisons caméléon, le réseau) dans un environnement très alter-mondialiste, je trouve, et du coup très approprié à la thématique du roman. Car finalement, cette tribu de chasseurs de tornades, qu’est-elle d’autre qu’une transposition, pour l’homme de la rue que je suis, de ces groupes survivalistes dont le message essentiel est “notre environnement mérite notre protection”. J’ai d’ailleurs été assez frappé par la similitude pouvant exister, dans certtains passages volontiers éco-guerriers, entre ce texte et certains passages de [book:Dune] (recyclage de l’eau et des déchets naturels, philosophie de la survie, etc, ...).
Quant à l’environnement proprement politique, c’est le bien connu et moult fois anticipé effondrement des Etats-Unis qui s’opère “par le bas”. C’est-à-dire que, par le moyen de la privatisation, [author:Sterling] développe le postulat, délirant mais finalement pas tant que ça, de la privatisation de … l’argent. Et d’un seul coup, l’Etat garantissant la monnaie disparaît, et ne devient plus qu’un fournisseur de services parmi tant d’autres. C’est sans doute la dénationalisation la plus terrifiante que j’aie jamais eu l’occasion d’envisager, parce que la plus réaliste. Une fois cet environnement mis en place, les personnages peuvent apparaître.
J’‘allais écrire que ce sont les seules déceptions de ce roman, mais en fait même pas. Car si les deux personnages principaux de l’intrigue ne sont que des pions, c’est sans doute une volonté délibérée de l’auteur qui nous permet de bien comprendre à quel point le noeud de l’intrigue n’est pas dans les occupations de ces pions, mais dans la puissance hors des proportions humaines que peut dégager la Terre. C’est, somme toute, très bien vu, non ? Car s’il s’était intéressé d’avantage au scientifique qui dirige ces chasseurs de tornade, peut-être que le récit aurait été moins subi, et que du coup la dévastation occasionnée par les tornades aurait été moins visible. Bref, c’est à mon sens un très bon roman, cyberpunk, mais pas trop.
Et, puisqu’on parle de Sterling, n’hésitons pas à forger le terme de cyber-écologisme. Mais, quelque soit l’étiquette sous laquelle on le range, ce roman est à mon sens à lire
spygrl1's review against another edition
Much like "Holy Fire," this just didn't work for me. I couldn't get a handle on the characters -- or maybe Sterling couldn't get a handle on them, because they just didn't seem real and compelling to me. I actually abandoned this after the first 150 or so pages, and when I did I was astounded that I had read so many pages, because it didn't seem like anything meaningful or interesting had happened yet -- Sterling still seemed to be setting something up.
From now on I think I'll stick to his short stories ...
From now on I think I'll stick to his short stories ...