Twenty Evocations: Life in the Mechanist/Shaper Era
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Jump to navigationJump to searchSterling, Bruce. "Twenty Evocations: Life in the Mechanist/Shaper Era." Interzone Spring 1984. Rpt. as "20 evocations" in MR47/48: 122-29 (see under Literary Criticism, L. McCaffery, guest ed.). [1]
A Mechanist/Shaper story elliptically evoking the life of Nikolai Leng, a Shaper ideologue. Stressed "evocations" include the Mechanists' drones repossessing the prosthetic arms and legs of an old man and Nikolai having young people demand from him "Those idiot video ideologies, those antique spirit splits. Mechs and Shapers, right? The wars of the coin's two halves!" (128). See under Literary Criticism, T. Maddox, "The War of the Coin's Two Halves: Bruce Sterling's Mechanist/Shaper Narratives."
