Pirate Utopia

Starred review from October 3, 2016
Cyberpunk progenitor Sterling’s alternate history novella is bizarre, chock-full of famous people in improbable situations, and wildly entertaining, even when the worldbuilding seems to go a little off the rails. Lorenzo Secondari, a veteran of the recently ended Great War and forever changed by it, is the head engineer of the titular utopia, the Italian free state of Fiume. He and his compatriots build flying boats and fight communism while dealing with American secret agents, including Harry Houdini and Howard Lovecraft (who’s now working as Houdini’s publicity agent after going into advertising). Hitler died saving another man’s life in a bar fight, Wilson was poisoned, and Mussolini’s been disabled by a pair of bullets aimed “where a man least likes to be shot,” so the Europe in which Secondari is attempting to create his radio-controlled airborne torpedoes and other gizmos is already massively different from ours. An introduction by Warren Ellis and an interview with Sterling sandwich the novel, both bearing an air of false gravitas, but the actual story is wacky and fun what-if-ing at its finest.

Starred review from September 15, 2016
Noted sci-fi maven and futurologist Sterling (Love Is Strange, 2012, etc.) takes a side turn in the slipstream in this offbeat, sometimes-puzzling work of dieselpunk-y alternative history.Resident in Turin, hometown of Calvino, for a dozen years, Sterling has long been experimenting with what the Italians call fantascienza, a mashup of history and speculation that's not quite science fiction but is kin to it. Take, for example, the fact that Harry Houdini once worked for the Secret Service, add to it the fact that H.P. Lovecraft once worked for Houdini, and ecco: why not posit Lovecraft as a particularly American kind of spook, "not that old-fashioned, cloak-and-dagger, European style of spy," who trundles out to Fiume to see what's what in the birthplace of Italian futurism-turned-fascism? Lovecraft is just one of the historical figures who flits across Sterling's pages, which bear suitably futuristic artwork, quite wonderful, by British illustrator John Coulthart. Among the others are Woodrow Wilson and Adolf Hitler, to say nothing of Gabriele D'Annunzio and Benito Mussolini. "Seen from upstream, most previous times seem mad," notes graphic novelist Warren Ellis in a brief introduction, but the Futurist project seems particularly nutty from this distance; personified by Lorenzo Secondari, a veteran of World War I who leads the outlaw coalition called the Strike of the Hand Committee in the "pirate utopia" of the soi disant Republic of Carnaro, its first task is to build some torpedoes and then turn them into "radio-controlled, airborne Futurist torpedoes," not the easiest thing considering the technological limitations of the time. A leader of the "Desperates," who "came from anywhere where life was hard, but honor was still bright," Secondari and The Prophet--D'Annunzio, that is--recognize no such limitations and discard anything that doesn't push toward the future. So why not a flying pontoon boat with which to sail off to Chicago, and why not a partnership with Houdini to combat world communism? A kind of Ragtime for our time: provocative, exotic, and very entertaining.

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November 15, 2016

Welcome to the Regency of Carnaro, otherwise known as the city of Fiume, after the League of Nations callously tried to exile its Italian brethren to Yugoslavia. Within this metropolis live many Futurists, including World War I veteran Lorenzo Secondari, and his tiny band of pirates, the Strike of the Hand Committee. Raiding their European border areas for materials, Secondari turns to Frau Piffer and her ladies to build cheap guns and torpedoes in a quest to fulfill his engineering dream of developing "radio-controlled, airborne Futurist torpedoes." After a successful demonstration of the weapon's might, the pirates' next step is world domination. To accomplish this goal, Secondari will need the assistance of a couple of shady Americans by the name of Harry Houdini and H.P. Lovecraft. VERDICT The fused edge between alternative history and historical fact elevates this shorter work by cyberpunk pioneer Sterling (Love Is Strange).--KC

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2016
After the Great War, the Adriatic seaport city of Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia) became an autonomous state. Spearheaded by the one-eyed, decadent poet-aviator and Nietzschean, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Fiume, for a brief time became the Italian Regency of Carnaro, a haven for pirates, dadaists, syndicalists, spiritualists, free lovers, futurists, and fascists. This little-known historical moment, with its odd mixture of technology and politics, becomes the irresistible setting for Sterling's (The Caryatids, 2009) latest novel, a fantastic, comical, alternate historical dieselpunk affair starring Lorenzo Secondari, a pirate engineer whose success with a radio-armed torpedo gets him appointed Carnaro's Minister of Vengeance Weapons and makes himand the regencya world power to contend with. Sterling's provocative novel may be slender, but it is filled with astonishing characters, fine dialogue, and an abundance of ideas and is packaged with John Coulthart's cool Futurist-Constructivist-inspired graphics, an introduction by graphic novelist Warren Ellis, and an interview with the author. Cameos by Houdini (a magician and leader of the American spy delegation), H. P. Lovecraft (Houdini's publicist), Hitler, and Mussolini add to the atmosphere.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)