Book Review: Islands in the Net

Book Review: 'Islands in the Net' by Bruce Sterling

3 / 5 Stars

‘Islands in the Net’ first was published in 1988 by Arbor House. This Ace Books paperback (396 pp.) was issued in March 1989.

The cover illustration is by Jose Royo; as PorPor Blog reader Fred points out, this same illustration was used as the cover for the Winter 1989 issue of Heavy Metal magazine:

For 'Islands in the Net', Royo's illustration gives the impression that the novel is about a multitalented Danger Girl who is involved with intrigue and adventure in a cyberpunk setting. 

In fact, ‘Islands in the Net’ really is more along the lines of ‘Hi and Lois Meet Cyberpunk’……….

The novel is set in 2023. The Cold War has ended, nuclear weapons have been outlawed, and corporations – along with multinational bodies, such as the Vienna Convention - are the de facto rulers of the planet. Tying all these polities together, and serving as the medium for global commerce and communication, is the internet (the ‘Net’ of the book's title).

In the opening chapters we are introduced to the heroine, Laura Webster, who, along with her husband David, runs a beachfront lodge in Galveston. The Websters work for an enlightened international conglomerate called Rizome. Along with their infant daughter Loretta, the Websters are the perfect representatives of the 21st century All-American family: photogenic, and unselfconsciously banal.

The only fly in the ointment of this idealized New World is the presence of the data pirates: states that harbor, and nurture, hacker infrastructures designed to steal and sell corporate data. In an effort to co-opt, and ultimately de-fang, the data pirates, Rizome has scheduled a conference with representatives from the pirate states of Grenada, Singapore, and Benelux. Laura and David are nervous, but also energized, to host the conference at their Galveston lodge.

However, when an untoward event disrupts the conference, the fragile amity among the parties begins to fray. Desperate to salvage a deal, Rizome arranges for Laura to be its official liaison to the mistrustful data pirates, reasoning that her blonde wholesomeness and naivety will go further than that of a professional interlocutor.

As ‘Islands’ unfolds the reader joins Laura, David, and Loretta as they journey to the lands of the data pirates, and in so doing, become aware that their comfortable existence has shielded them from a clandestine conflict……one that threatens to bring a new era of destruction to the nations and peoples of the world. 

And it will be up to Laura, the unassuming housewife, to undergo all manner of trials and tribulations if she is to reveal the true identity of the cabal that is winning the conflict………….

I found ‘Islands’ to be a middling example of first-generation cyberpunk. While the idea of having a housewife be the lead character certainly has novelty, the passivity of the character of Laura Webster prevents the narrative from gaining much momentum; the reader, along with Laura, is in continuous reactive, rather than proactive, mode.

The final 80 pages of the book take place amidst Third World misery, and by so doing lend a much-needed tone of grimness and grittiness to the plot, although in these pages author Sterling tends to use lengthy dialogue passages as a vehicle for pontificating on First World’s neglect of the Third World. The denouement takes an optimistic path that wraps things up a bit too neatly for my tastes, but then, as I stated at the outset, this is not a novel where the lead character salvages the world through her intrepidness. 

Summing up, perhaps the best thing about ‘Islands in the Net’ is its segments dealing with the decaying landscape of the Third World as it struggles to cope with the economic and environmental derangements imposed by the advent of the New World Order. These prefigure the more impactful stylings of newer cyberpunk practitioners like Paul McAuley (‘White Devils’, 2004), Paolo Bacigalupi (‘The Windup Girl’, 2009), as well as Sterling’s own 2009 novel, ‘The Caryatids’.