Bruce Sterling (Schismatrix, The Zenith Angle, Zeitgeist) is an internationally-bestselling author, journalist, editor, columnist, and critic. He is perhaps best known for his ten visionary science fiction novels, as a founder of the cyberpunk movement, and as the editor of the quintessential cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades. His much-heralded nonfiction includes The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier, and The Epic Struggle of the Internet of Things. A renowned expert on technology, Sterling has appeared on ABC's Nightline, the BBC's The Late Show, MTV, andTechTV, and in Wired where he is a featured blogger, as well as in Time, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Fortune, Nature, La Stampa, La Repubblica, and many other venues. Sterling splits his time among the cities of Austin, Turin, and Belgrade.

John Coulthart (Cover art and interior illustrations) is the World Fantasy Award-winning illustrator and designer of the iconic Steampunk anthology series, Lovecraft's Monsters, and Clive Barker's A–Z of Horror. Coulthart lives in Manchester, England.

Pirate Utopia by Bruce Sterling

Who are these bold rebels pillaging their European neighbors in the name of revolution? The Futurists! Utopian pirate-warriors of the tiny Regency of Carnaro, the unlikely scourge of the Adriatic Sea. Mortal enemies of communists, capitalists, and even fascists (to whom they are not entirely unsympathetic).

The ambitious Soldier-Citizens of Carnaro are led by a brilliant and passionate coterie of the perhaps insane. Lorenzo Secondari, World War I veteran, engineering genius, and leader of Croatian raiders. Frau Piffer, Syndicalist manufacturer of torpedos at a factory run by and for women. The Ace of Hearts, a dashing Milanese aristocrat, spymaster, and tactical savant. And the Prophet, a seductive warrior-poet who leads via free love and military ruthlessness.

Fresh off of a worldwide demonstration of their might, can the Futurists engage the aid of sinister American traitors and establish world domination?

 

REVIEWS

  • [STARRED REVIEW] "Wildly entertaining."

    – Publishers Weekly

  • [STARRED REVIEW] Provocative, exotic, and very entertaining."

    – Kirkus

  • "Sterling delivers us a brilliant and surprising jolt of vividly rendered counter-factualism."

    – Alastair Reynolds, author of the Revelation Space series
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

The Pirate Cinema

I. Occupied Fiume, January 1920

To celebrate his new, improved torpedo, the engineer took his pirates to the movies.

The spectacles in Futurist Fiume amazed the pirates. They'd never seen motion pictures.

The engineer's pirates were refugees and criminals. They felt rather shy about leaving their safe haven in the engineer's Torpedo Factory. To encourage themselves, they sang a Croatian sea ditty and whistled loudly at the passing girls.

Using his cane, the engineer wobbled along in the wake of his nine pirate crewmen. His female companion helped him over a tangled mess of harbor rope. Frau Blanka Piffer was a native of Fiume. She served as the engineer's business manager, interpreter, and purchasing agent.

The pirates left the dockside, with its dense mass of cranes, quays and railway tracks. Downtown Fiume had a stone broadway with tall, peculiar gas-lamps. The church and the clock tower were the tallest buildings in the town.

The Croatian pirates were vividly conspicuous. All nine of them wore women's stolen fur overcoats, cinched by thick leather army belts festooned with daggers, pistols, and hand grenades.

As the pirates swaggered by, the dames of Fiume fled inside the dress-shops. The gentlemen dropped their newspapers and abandoned their sidewalk cafes. Children hid themselves behind the horse-carts and fruit-stands. Even stray dogs ran off.