Schismatrix

'''Sterling, Bruce. Schismatrix.''' New York: Arbor, 1985. New York: Ace, 1986.

In "The War of the Coin's Two Halves" (q.v. under Literary Criticism), T. Maddox analyzes this novel as the culmination of BS's Mechanist/Shaper series and crucial for BS's views of the ideological conflicts among those who would maintain human beings as we are versus the "Posthumanists" who would modify us mostly through cybernetic means (Mechanists) or through more strictly biological manipulation (Shapers). See for cyberpunk visions of a cybernetically mediated, drug-enhanced duel where "The Arena . . . [is] a fist-sized dodecahedron" (214); immanent godhead in female flesh (ch. 10, esp. 265); the interestingly posthuman "Lobster navigator . . . sealed within a matte-black permanent spacesuit" (268); and death, immortality, and transcendence (ch. 11).

Focussed on in John Moore's Shifting Frontiers: Mapping Cyberpunk and the American South.

Expanded RDE, Initial Compiler, 11May19