Crystal Express by Bruce Sterling
"Crystal Express" is a collection of stories that explores diverse themes through a blend of science fiction and fantasy. The narratives are divided into three sections, with the first focusing on a future where humanity has ventured into space and interacts with various intelligent life forms, particularly a reptilian species known as the Investors. Within this context, humanity is divided into factions: the Shapers, who utilize genetic engineering, and the Mechanists, who enhance themselves through surgical procedures. Key characters include Simon Afriel, a genetically modified Shaper, and Arkadya Sorienti, a Mechanist who transitions to a terraforming role within the Regal faction.
The second section shifts to cyberpunk stories, featuring characters such as Turner Choi, a Chinese Canadian engineer, and an assassin known as Spook, who employs unique abilities in his pursuits. The final section delves into fantasy, with tales that include magical elixirs and encounters with supernatural beings. Overall, "Crystal Express" offers a rich tapestry of speculative fiction that invites readers to reflect on identity, technology, and the nature of transformation across different contexts.
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Subject Terms
Crystal Express
First published: 1989
Type of work: Stories
Type of plot: Science fiction—future history
Time of work: Various times between the medieval period and several centuries into the future
Locale: Various locations on Earth and in space
The Plot
The stories in Crystal Express are grouped into three sections. The first five stories belong to a future history in which the human race has gone into space and contacted other intelligent life-forms. The alien species that appears most often is a reptilian one called the Investors. They are interstellar traders. Humanity itself has split into factions, the two most important of which are the Shapers and the Mechanists. They are similar in that they insist that human beings must change. The Shapers practice genetic engineering, especially on their own offspring. The Mechanists change themselves surgically, substituting prosthetics for natural limbs and organs.
There are two recurring characters. Simon Afriel is a minor character in “Twenty Evocations” and the main character in “Swarm.” He is a member of the Shaper faction and is genetically engineered to have no appendix, along with other improvements. In “Swarm,” he travels to another star system to investigate a nonintelligent spacefaring species. Arkadya Sorienti first appears in “Cicada Queen” as a Mechanist living in the space colony Czarina-Kluster. At some point between the end of that story and the beginning of “Sunken Garden,” she defects to the Regal faction. She then goes to live in Terraform-Kluster, a space station in orbit around Mars and tethered to its surface. The main work of the Regals on that planet is terraforming, or physical transformation of the environment to meet the needs of human and other life.
The middle three stories in Crystal Express are science fiction that can be categorized as cyberpunk. The main character in “Green Days in Brunei” is Turner Choi, a Chinese Canadian engineer. He is on assignment in Brunei, a sultanate completely surrounded by the country of Malaysia. There he meets and falls in love with a member of Brunei’s royal family. The title character in “Spook” is an assassin. As one weapon, he uses his sinuses, which produce a toxin that induces schizophrenia. In “The Beautiful and the Sublime,” Manfred de Kooning is an artist free to indulge his aesthetic sensibilities because of advances made in artificial intelligence technologies.
The final four stories are fantasies. “Telliamed” is De Maillet spelled backwards. It refers to the pseudonym that Benoit De Maillet, an elderly eighteenth century scientist, uses when he publishes a book on the ocean. In “The Little Magic Shop,” James Abernathy buys an elixir of youth. A teaspoon taken each year slows twenty years of aging down to one. In the “Flowers of Edo,” a former Japanese samurai confronts an electricity demon. A clairvoyant is invited to a “Dinner in Audoghast,” at which he makes some predictions that his host and the other guests do not like.