I met Bruce Sterling a few years back in Austin Texas. He opens his house to the SXSW Interactive folks so they can chill out somewhere and not have to wear their dorky badges. He has tons and tons of books and a nice house. I didn’t get to talk to him because everyone else was busy chatting up the poor guy and besides, I’d hardly read a thing he’d written. I took a few of his books on a trip with me and this was one of them. I have been reading a lot of William Gibson lately and was looking for more smart-person futuristic computer-y sci fi. Some of this was good, some of it seemed like it was spawned from a buncha guys sitting around getting stoned and saying “Howabout jellyfish the size of houses that you could ride on...?” "Aw yea, man!" Basically some of the stories were fleshed out and some seemed like one-offs, one good idea surrounded by filler plot. Not as good as the other Sterling book of stories I read, by a longshot.