A review by roxanamalinachirila
Pirate Utopia by Bruce Sterling
1.0
When I worked for a TV show, the producer would come into the editing room and have a look at the episode for that week. The show was crap and no mistake, but even so, there were standards.
"So what's going on here?" the producer would ask.
"This guy over here goes to work and-"
"What the hell are you telling me for?!"
"Well, boss, you asked and-"
"And are you going to go to each and every member of the audience and explain what the hell's going on? No? Well, then, redo this shit so it's comprehensible."
It was a memorable thing - you can't edit video and add footnotes. The movie, the show, the whatever needs to stand on its own, without you whispering in the ears of each member of the audience what's going on.
"Pirate Utopia" has an intro explaining what's going on and an interview at the end explaining even *more* what's going on, which is great if you plan on reading those, because it's pretty hard to figure out what's up without them. Some people might enjoy that, but I consider it sloppy.
This is an alternate history novel set in Fiume in 1920, a city between Italy and Yugoslavia which becomes its own little country. It has all sorts of political factions in it, such as communists and futurists. They took over the means of production and are doing something with them. That something seems to be making torpedoes, to prove the world that they... can?
I'm not sure why this is a pirate utopia. The author assures us in the interview at the end that they steal everything, but aside from stealing their way into a cinema where a probably pirated movie is projected, I can't see anything else getting stolen. There are just a number of people presented and vaguely discussed. Mussolini is mentioned, Houdini shows up and it's implied Hitler is killed defending a friend, but this makes no difference to the plot, because there is none. Also, it's hard to care about the big names that are getting dropped because they could be any names at all, there's nothing invested in the characters to make them resemble the real people (except Houdini, who shows up to do a magic show).
There didn't seem to be much point to this. It's a soulless alternate history regarding a bit of history which could be interesting, but which isn't known by nearly anyone, really.
"So what's going on here?" the producer would ask.
"This guy over here goes to work and-"
"What the hell are you telling me for?!"
"Well, boss, you asked and-"
"And are you going to go to each and every member of the audience and explain what the hell's going on? No? Well, then, redo this shit so it's comprehensible."
It was a memorable thing - you can't edit video and add footnotes. The movie, the show, the whatever needs to stand on its own, without you whispering in the ears of each member of the audience what's going on.
"Pirate Utopia" has an intro explaining what's going on and an interview at the end explaining even *more* what's going on, which is great if you plan on reading those, because it's pretty hard to figure out what's up without them. Some people might enjoy that, but I consider it sloppy.
This is an alternate history novel set in Fiume in 1920, a city between Italy and Yugoslavia which becomes its own little country. It has all sorts of political factions in it, such as communists and futurists. They took over the means of production and are doing something with them. That something seems to be making torpedoes, to prove the world that they... can?
I'm not sure why this is a pirate utopia. The author assures us in the interview at the end that they steal everything, but aside from stealing their way into a cinema where a probably pirated movie is projected, I can't see anything else getting stolen. There are just a number of people presented and vaguely discussed. Mussolini is mentioned, Houdini shows up and it's implied Hitler is killed defending a friend, but this makes no difference to the plot, because there is none. Also, it's hard to care about the big names that are getting dropped because they could be any names at all, there's nothing invested in the characters to make them resemble the real people (except Houdini, who shows up to do a magic show).
There didn't seem to be much point to this. It's a soulless alternate history regarding a bit of history which could be interesting, but which isn't known by nearly anyone, really.