The Artificial Kid by Bruce Sterling
"The Artificial Kid" is a speculative fiction narrative that centers around a character known as Arti, the Artificial Kid, who combines performance art with the chaotic dynamics of youth gangs in a Decriminalized Zone. Utilizing drone cameras and the support of his gang, he films elaborate combat performances to entertain an audience residing on orbiting space platforms. The story unfolds as the Kid, alongside allies such as Mr. Richer Money Manies and the religiously devoted Saint Anne Twiceborn, confronts threats from shadowy organizations and a malevolent professor named Angeluce.
As the plot progresses, the Kid grapples with the complexities of friendship, love, and survival, particularly after losing a close companion, Armitrage, who reveals a hidden affection for him. Their journey takes them to a mystical floating balloon that introduces them to Professor Crossbow, who has played a paternal role in the Kid's life. The narrative explores themes of identity, governance, and the nature of reality, culminating in a revelation about the true power dynamics at play in their world. Ultimately, the Kid and his companions navigate their newfound relationships and roles within a society that is both self-governing and steeped in myth.
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Subject Terms
The Artificial Kid
First published: 1980
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Science fiction—cyberpunk
Time of work: Undefined
Locale: The planet Reverie
The Plot
Arti, the Artificial Kid, introduces himself and explains his persona and his performance art, which he produces assisted by his gang members and drone cameras. In the Decriminalized Zone, rival youth gangs strut and challenge one another, filming all the while. He and his friend and patron, Mr. Richer Money Manies, produce films for people living off-planet on orbiting platforms called oneills (a pun on Irish migrants and “one ills”). The Kid is recognized as the best of the combat artistes.
When one of the ritualized gang combats turns serious, the Kid suspects involvement by the Cabal, a shadowy group that supposedly rules Reverie. It later emerges that the problems are instigated by the evil professor Angeluce. The Kid, along with Saint Anne Twiceborn, a virginal religious fanatic, and Moses Moses, a recently self-resurrected former leader of Reverie, find themselves on the run from enemies. An attack at sea results in the death of Armitrage, one of Kid’s closest friends. Before he dies, Armitrage declares his previously hidden love for the Kid.
Saint Anne, Moses Moses, and the Kid tell their life stories while floating in the ocean waiting for death. They are rescued by a vast floating organic multicelled hydrogen balloon that carries rich mud from the ocean bottom to dump it in the biological stew of the Mass on a mysterious closed continent. In the balloon, they discover Professor Crossbow, the gilled neuter who had overseen the conversion of Rominuald Tanglin, who chose brain suicide but whose body is now the Kid’s. Crossbow, an exquisite parody of a boring academic, had served as surrogate father to the Kid, who had Tanglin’s adult body when he awoke with a child’s consciousness. Crossbow and Moses exchange selves, and the former Moses helps Anne and the Kid across the mysterious continent, first through a phantasmagoric jungle and then through the Mass until he falls into it. He then mutates gradually into a tree, exclaiming about the miraculous biological process of which he is a part.
Annex and the Kid are rescued and find themselves heroes of extensive films of their adventures, the influence of which has also aided in the overthrow of the evil Cabal. In the first stage of the denouement, Money Manies explains that there was no Cabal at all but that Reverie replicates in social forms the complex molecular pattern of the Mass; therefore, the planet is its own government. In the second stage of the denouement, the Kid explodes this myth and correctly accuses Money Manies of being the power on Reverie. The Kid and Annex, who have both enthusiastically discovered sex, go off to a retreat where they make films and live in a state of uneasy balance with Manies, coexisting because the Kid can provide Manies with original footage.