Her change is astonishingly well-portrayed - here are a few self-analytical thoughts from the new Maya: "The Mia thing was meek and obliging and accommodating, and not very interesting. But then she takes the new treatment, and everything changes dramatically (traumatically?). She begins as a rather rational person, and we fall right into line with her reactions to the crazy things around her. However, our interest in her only grows over time - she never pales in the reader's mind. Mia Ziemann is the main character and she is in every scene. While the ending was somewhat too schmaltzy and predictable for me (take a glance at the final line of the book if you don't believe such a thing could happen in a Sterling novel), it did at least give closure to Mia's adventures. I won't say anything further about the plot, but I felt that Sterling moved Mia convincingly from one picaresque event to another. Off she goes to Europe to have a few adventures, calling herself Maya. But when this radical procedure gives her the body of a twenty year old, she doesn't think the same way any more either.
Mia Ziemann, at 94, is one of the most exemplary old people around - she has lived a careful life, she has lots of money, and she decides to devote these two things (which are actually the same thing - this society rewards healthy lifestyles) to a new life rejuvenation technology. I will say that I enjoyed the story of Holy Fire, but I know that some will find it too episodic. Sterling takes this simple premise and extrapolates all of the logical conclusions such that the reader is left wondering, well, how else could it be? Combine this with some particularly apt speculations about information technology, and the book has an extremely solid "what-if" underpinning.īut even the best bit of extrapolation into the future needs a story and some characters and things like that in order to keep the readers interested.
They invest in promising medical technologies, which of course leads to an even longer life span for those with money.
A hundred years from now, the older segments of the demographic have all the money. In Holy Fire, Sterling convincingly posits just such a thing. What comes to mind when you hear the phrase "the medical-industrial complex"? Perhaps some vast network of corporate giants, looking out for their own interests no matter the effect on society as a whole.
Holy Fire, Bruce Sterling, Bantam Spectra, 1996, 326 pp.
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