I don't remember "cyberpunk" book that was more unsettling than this - pure in-depth horror of our future where the very essence of humanity will become completely and routinely correctable. This book gives more perspective on that subject than any dystopian book I read or heard of. Because author creates not simple story to tell some warning, send a message or paint a bleak picture, he creates absolutely balanced and self-contained normal world where people live and prosper, going forward and spreading... but the Change! I can argue with it, say some strong words like "price", "never" and so on, I can fear and hate it, but I still believe in possibility of this. ( )

Swanwick, Michael. Vacuum Flowers. 1987. Open Road, 2016.
Michael Swanwick is a writer who should be better known than he is, despite one Nebula award for his novel Stations of the Tide and three Hugo awards for his short fiction. He caught the cyberpunk bus early on, and in Vacuum Flowers he extends its reach into the kind of space opera I usually associate with John Varley’s Eight Worlds series. The story is set in a solar system that is inhabited all the way to the Oort Cloud with “cannister habs,” “Dyson trees,” and a partially terraformed Mars. Most of the solar system is dominated by large corporations, but not Earth. It has been taken over by an AI that has incorporated all its residents into a hive mind. Our heroine, Rebel Mudlark, is resurrected into a body not her own after her death by suicide. Her persona with all its memories and skills is owned by a corporation, but Rebel lives up to her name. She is “wetware” who does not accept her programming. Her story is fun to follow, and if I have one complaint about the novel it is that the world-building too often leaves Rebel in the background. Nevertheless, Swanwick is a writer I will revisit. ( )

Dear Vacuum Flowers,

I will not miss reading your pages, as far fetched, right on and eco-cyber-futurist as they may be. I guess if an abridged graphic novel version comes out I'd read that, but you were a bit of a slog for me.

So why'd I keep reading?

What i liked: imagery, futurist scene setting & plot devices, kick-ass female lead (except when not) , promiscuous female lead who faces few negative consequences for casual hookups, characters who move fluidly between socio-economic strata

what i didn't: no sense of humor (or one i don't share? ), kick-ass female lead (who wasn't ? ), promiscuous female lead who faces few negative consequences for casual hookups, stereotypes instead of archetypes

Worth reading for the "going to the bank scene" alone - i'll remember it a long time .
( )

https://speculiction.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/review-of-vacuum-flowers-by-michael.... ( )

This doesn't feel like a cyberpunk novel, because most cyberpunk feel very much of their time, whereas this has a freshness to its exuberant vision that seems to disdain such strictures.

Rebel wakes up in Eucrasia's body. Rebel is an artificial persona that has come to life, though she is marked for death by the corporation that owns her. Literally of two minds, she escapes and goes on the run with Wyeth, a friend of Eucrasia's with an interesting mind-state of his own, and they jaunt across the cylinder cities and dyson spheres and ice comets of the solar system looking for answers and adventures and finding both.

It's a marvelous read, bright and energetic and crisp and fun, full of invention and strangeness. The cover for my edition is awful, but it isn't inaccurate and as such is just a single glimpse of the dizzying wonders of Swanwick's strange and alien future. ( )