Make Room for Funny in Cyberspace: A Review of Bruce Sterling’s Distraction

Think the cyberpunk genre is all gloom and doom? I thought so too, until Bruce Sterling’s Distraction proved that it doesn’t have to be. Distraction is very different than its cyberpunk predecessors, or at least the ones that I have explored, including the classics Neuromancer, The Diamond Age, and He, She, and It. As compared to these, the society of the future that Sterling envisions does not deviate too widely from where we stand in America today – at least on the surface. There are no enormous gleaming holographic signs, or colonized plastic space bases. No starships tooling around, or artificially intelligent cyborgs hiding among humans. Instead, though Distraction is about the future, it offers a view that we from the present can imagine is looming just over the horizon. It is this true-to-life approach, combined with the satirical tone with which this book is written, that truly sets it apart from its cyberpunk peers.

Distraction finds us in the America of 2044, with our main character, Oscar Valparaiso, and his group of campaign crewmembers at loose ends in rural Louisiana. They have successfully lobbied for their Senate candidate’s election, and it is here that our story begins. Most of what happens in Distraction is secondary to the environment and the characters that the action supports. America’s economy has collapsed and this has caused huge numbers of citizens to be jobless, homeless, and disenfranchised. Many of these people have joined large nomadic bands of ruffians, who are working together to scrounge what they can, gain points for loyalty to their groups, and intimidate the other guys. The world itself is drowning and entire species of plants and animals have become extinct – a scenario common among cyberpunk literature. But despite these tragic outcomes to culminating political and ecological events, Distraction just doesn’t take itself too seriously.

The story loops around from one dramatic development to the next. At the Senator’s urging, Oscar and crew have signed on to help reform a flailing federal science laboratory that has become bogged down in administrative meetings and corrupt board members. Every event in this book is a crisis, everything is developing at lightning speed, and it is all of vital importance – in the moment. But in the media-addled society that Sterling has created – again not too far from today’s overflowing, reactionary news providers – each crisis is dumped and forgotten when the next big thing comes down the line. Oscar, being a human clone created in a test tube, (which everyone seems to find offensive, but which the politically correct point out that they will overlook), is a quick-thinking quintessential politician. He always seems to be two steps ahead of everyone, his enemies and allies alike. The fact that I loved Oscar as a character, despite his often-inhuman qualities, speaks to the realities of Sterling’s ideas about the nature of our society. Oscar is efficient and cunning, and his slick politeness and take charge manner makes you root for him, regardless of his obvious faults.

Sterling steers our man through political ups and downs, through which Oscar usually remains the puppet master, silently orchestrating all within his far-reaching sphere of control. But even Oscar suffers from the hilarious absurdity of the situations Distraction creates, particularly when he and his security adviser drop out of political life to travel in cognito, as is so colorfully described here: "…Oscar brandished an accordion. Even in a land that had once favored accordion music, they were mostly avoided. It was a frightening thing to see two mentally incompetent sidewalk buskers, with battered folk instruments, who might at any moment burst into song" (501).

There were many such descriptions that caused me to laugh, either in a silent chuckle to myself or an aloud, all-out guffaw, prompting me to reread the funniest passages over and over just for kicks. I was constantly reminded that Sterling has taken a serious and intellectual genre, dealing with scary scenarios and depressing what-ifs, and made it accessible to the common reader. To someone who wants to be entertained, he allows the reader to look at cyberpunk from a teasing perspective. As readers, we expect an author to approach grim subject matter with a somber writing style, so it is refreshing when Sterling employs wit to tell his story, which to me is reminiscent of Tom Wolfe’s excellent social satire, ‘The Bonfire of the Vanities’. Both novels venture to point out the foolishness of our public selves and the flippant and tenuous social constructs within which we function.

A key plot thread in Distraction is the relationship between Oscar and his genius scientist love interest, Dr. Greta Penninger. The twists and snares the couple experiences offer many more chances for Sterling to poke fun at his view of the future. Greta is not at all like the women Oscar has dated, or even like the women who are esteemed in this society. Other female characters are flabbergasted that Dr. Penninger is not interested in trying to hone her semblance to fit what is considered desirable, professional, and so crucial that everyone who is anyone has a personal image consultant on staff. But Oscar chooses Greta for reasons other than her looks – in fact despite her looks. At first he shows interest in her in order to further his Machiavellian political agenda, but early on he develops a genuine affection for her, and he always highly values her intelligence. Indeed, the book ends with Oscar professing his great attraction to Greta’s new found ability to point her two eyes in multiple directions at once, like a chameleon would – that’s Distraction through and through.

This book is an enjoyable, satirical look at the Unite States of the future, and it employs humor ranging from subtle dry wit to laugh-out-loud inducing preposterousness. Fortunately, I found that the facetiousness of this novel was not a distraction from the social commentary Sterling offers about our present era and its potential future, but that it instead served to solidify it. It seems to me that Sterling would agree with this quote from Oscar Wilde, who said, "Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about".