It seems that no one much seems to care about this novel anymore. It may evoke the “spirit of an age” or, with a moral literal translation of the German, be a “time ghost”, but either way no one much seems to care about it anymore. In my quick perusal of the Web of a Million Lies, I find not much in the way of reviews since 2018.

That’s understandable. This is not only a goodbye to international trickster Leggy Startlitz, smuggler and entrepreneur of questionable goods and services, but, as the Science Fiction Encyclopedia’s “Bruce Sterling” entry says “a mocking homage to the forever-disappeared twentieth century”.

With guest cameo references to George Soros, Osama Bin Laden, and Slobodan Milošević, this isn’t even a science fiction novel though it has interludes of magical realism. It’s a vivid and often funny look at the gaps in the global order’s wainscoting that a man like Starlitz thrives in, or, as he puts it, the places where the global order is fraying and he shapes a counternarrative. And the world it describes is one I mostly remember: Russia and the other former countries of the USSR coping with economic and often demographic devastation, Turkey trying to become the leader of the Islamic countries of central Asia, its more secular Islam a counterpoint to Iran, and the bombing of Kosovo in 1999. I didn’t remembered the self-immolation of Kurds to embarrass their old enemy Turkey.

Y2K is a major concern of Starlitz all throughout out this book, and it wasn’t published until October 2000. This is not a book about millennial anxiety that wasn’t published timely like James Gunn’s The Millennium Blues nor was it blindsided by events like Norman Spinrad’s Russian Spring. It starts toward the end of the millennium and in Istanbul. Leggy Starlitz, as part of a bet with genius music producer Makoto — essentially that they can make money out of a girl band – the G-7 – that has interchangeable members and whose music is crap.

Starlitz teams up with a rich Turk, Ozbey, to take the G-7 on a tour of Islamic countries including some that were formerly in the USSR. But, eventually, Starlitz finds out that Ozbey is tied up with the Turkish Deep State that is going to use the band to culturally destabilize those countries and make them more secular and less fundamentalist Islamic countries like Turkey. Not only will Turkey be sort of a leader of a new Caliphate, but Ozby will make some money heroin smuggling too.

Starlitz doesn’t want any of the girls dying before Y2K which is the absolute shutdown of the whole project. When he finds out what Ozbey is up to, Starlitz leaves the group, has some odd experiences in Mexico and America and Hawaii, and returns to confront Ozbey in Turkish Cyprus.

Characters from all the previous Starlitz adventures show up: Khoklov and Tamara (now residing in Hollywood) from “Hollywood Kremlin”, Vanna and ex federal prosecutor Jane O’Houlihan and Leggy’s daugther Zeta from “Are You for 86?”, and, maybe, characters from the “The Littlest Jackal” (no, my blogger due diligence didn’t cover re-reading that story).

The fantastical content enters in the weird interlude when Starlitz and Zeta leave Cyprus for Mexico. There he tosses their passports and ID papers and money. They slip across the border and end up squatting in some abandoned buildings in New Mexico.

It’s all part of a weird ritual to bring Starlitz’s father into existence, so Zeta can meet him before he vanishes for good at the end of the century. Starlitz’s father has a strange, obscure past, but the relevant point is that, when trying to steal some valuable metal around America’s first atomic bomb, he was in the device when it was detonated turning him into a sort of ghost haunting the twentieth century whose central narrative event was that first detonation. He can be evoked by use of old objects and music and dance. And, since the century is coming to an end, Starlitz’s father won’t be showing up again.

There is plenty of humor in the book and bizarre characters and a surprising number of bodies that need disposing of.

Upon finishing it about three weeks ago, it seemed fresh and delightful.

But thinking about it gradually generated annoyance. And that comes from Sterling’s seemingly sincere buy-in of post-modern notions of reality merely being a narrative. As Starlitz tells Zeta, when expressing his respect for French semioticians and structuralists and post-structuralists. It’s impossible to escape the world of language, that “social discourses” creates our reality. Granted, as he tells Zeta, there is a physical reality but then he goes to talk about how only French deconstructionists understood reality and it did them no good. Starlitz sees himself as existing in the places where the master narratives of the world are fraying and coming up against new, counter narratives.

This motif of politics and society as a narrative shows up elsewhere. Ozbey, when he confronts Starlitz towards novels’ end, says his destiny, his narrative, won’t allow him to be killed. Likewise, he has decided not to kill Starlitz since that seems an incongruous part of Starlitz’s narrative. It will be better if Leggy just disappears on New Year’s Day. The whole G-7 affair is an attempt to impose a narrative on Islamic countries.

Turkey is astounded that NATO has let it bomb Christian Serbia. Tim from ECHELON seems to be trying to impose some order, part of the US government’s new concern with international terrorism and the drug traffic. If Sterling was using this version of “narrative” as just a metaphor for making plans or using propaganda or lies we tell ourselves and others, that would be one thing. But the story seems to embrace the idea that things like rock bands can shape reality. “Controlling the narrative” and its variant phrases may have been the stated goal of many a would be politician and bureaucrat throughout the world, but it turns out that mere narratives don’t determine the amount of munitions someone can produce or even the desire to use them.

At novel’s end, Zeta tells her father’s he’s bad,

"totally provisional and completely without morality. You can personify the trends of your day, but you never get ahead of those trends. You never make the world any better."

People aren’t happy to him show up. However, when she grows up (she’s only 11), people are going to be happy to see her since she’ll make sure they get fed, watered, and bathed. (Zeta has been exposed to much squalor and poverty in the trip with her dad in Mexico, and he makes sure to tell that this is how most of the world lives. Her education is complete when she helps her dad bury some bodies in Cyprus.) The twentieth century’s problems, she says, are “crude and lousy”. The new century will have “serious, sophisticated problems”

Nor is she going to emulate her lesbian parents and their friends: “lame hippie crap” and petty criminals high on drugs.

The book seems to imply that hope of the world is NGOs or even a blatantly corrupt UN as Khoklov’s nephew thinks. Perhaps, Sterling foresaw the possibility of a do-good grifter like Chelsea Clinton or a Greta Thunberg. However, you can’t be absolutely sure with Sterling. Starlitz’s new idea, at novel’s end, is helping people with bad consciences spend their money. It sounds a lot like many a NGO scam today with a hardy skimoff for the people managing the NGO. Perhaps Sterling is once again ironically undercutting his seeming moral point.

Of course, few trend lines of the novel continued. Or, shall we say, those narratives couldn’t be imposed on reality. Russia revived. Turkey did not dominate Central Asian Moslems as it hoped. Turns out bombing Serbian Christians didn’t make Moslems any less tractable in their dealings with Europe, and Osama bin Laden introduced a new phase in the (failed) War on Terror. Still, it was an enjoyable book and is genuinely full of humor. ( )

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This book really didn't pull me in. The slang felt affected and annoying. The characters were ugly - perhaps human, but less than human. They were all slothful. The theme of the book is controlling people - manipulating them through the media. Starlitz wants to "create the demand and then fulfill it". I skimmed the last part very quickly(read: flipped through it) because it was so boring. I don't think I'm getting bored by books. It's just this one. ( )

I pulled Zeitgeist off the book shelf looking for a contemporary science fiction novel that would be entertaining, narrative in style and a relatively light read. This wasn't it. Instead I found myself ploughing through a melange of post modernist, magic realist and spiralist writing.

Zeitgeist; means the spirit of the age and Bruce Sterling has set his novel at the very end of the 20th century. His main character Leggy Starlitz has successfully promoted and exploited a talentless all girl pop group, but fears that their bubble will burst as the 20th century draws to its close. (Remember Y2K when some people thought that the computerised world would seize up and aeroplanes would fall out of the sky.) Starlitz has got rich through aggressive marketing of G-7 (the ironic name for the group) and it's spin offs: lip gloss, bags, action dolls, underwear etc. As the end of the century approaches Starlitz finds himself battling for control of G-7 with a powerfully connected Turkish drug baron, however his machinations are brought to a halt with the unexpected arrival of his estranged 11 year old daughter. Suddenly priorities change and Starlitz embarks on a journey with Zeta to discover their roots and to find some sort of redemption.

This basic outline is merely a convenient hanger on which Sterling can demonstrate his wit and writing skills. The relentless pace and the cut and paste techniques remind me of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius books. The action is every bit as overcooked, the characters are just as super cool and all outcomes appear totally meaningless. His characters can vomit money, rise from the dead, survive impossible firepower and be winked in and out of existence as Sterling sees fit.

Starlitz says very early on in the novel; in answer to a protagonists claim to be able to sell the big picture that "it's the spirit of the times it's the soul of post modernity." Everything and everybody has its price and Sterling uses his razor sharp wit to mock, criticize and lampoon the world of big capital, gangsters and war mongers. His pyrotechnics flash and burn, but leave no lasting impression. How can they when his anti-hero the irrepressible Starlitz on hearing of a scheme that will lose other peoples money says "I am so with this! I can't wait to get started! This is the spirit of Now!" Sterling never lets character development or story line get in the way of a smart one liner or a witty anecdote. More often than not he hits the mark with his splatter gun technique but it makes for exhausting reading. Sterling strains hard to be cool or legit: politicians, poets, film makers , fashionable contemporary authors and pop musicians are all name dropped in a "look man, I know my stuff" kind of way. I kept getting the feeling when reading the book that Sterling was looking over his shoulder to make sure the reader was keeping up with him. He allows his characters to argue about whose narrative they should be following: "You can't argue with me because my language defines the terms. You can't discuss it any further because it never took place" says Starlitz.

Bruce Sterling has proved he is at home with post modernism. His writing is well up to the task and there are some brilliant flashes. However Sterling's description of modern cinema comes very close to being a description of his novel:

"It had abandoned merely Modernist plot structure for a steady, rhythmic round of stunt violence, expensive sets, and a hot babe. Sadism, Snobbery and Sex, a Free world formula that was the twentieth century's catnip for the masses." ( )

I wasn't expecting this to be anything more than an enjoyable post-cyberpunk thriller, perhaps along the lines of Spook Country. Sterling doing magic realism took me completely by surprise, both as a new tangent for his writing and in terms of how well it suited him. For me, Zeitgeist fills a similar niche to The Crying of Lot 49, but couched in terms that I can better relate to. It also has better jokes and less song lyrics. Recommended. ( )