Cicada Queen

Significant new talent seems to enter the SF world in waves, discrete generational groupings, usually at five-to-ten year intervals. One such influx of new talent came along in the early middle '60s, when new writers like Samuel Delany, Roger Zelazny, Thomas M. Disch, Norman Spinrad, R.A. Lafferty, and others ushered in SF's "New Wave" years. A few years later in the early seventies, another wave of talent arrived — made up of writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Gene Wolfe, Barry Malzberg, and James Tiptree, Jr. — and a few years after that, in the middle seventies, everyone was suddenly talking about writers such as Joe Haldeman, John Varley, Gregory Benford, Jack Dann, George R.R. Martin, Michael Bishop, Phyllis Eisenstein, and Edward Bryant.

Now, at the beginning of the '80s, we are clearly in the process of assimilating yet another generational wave of hot new writers, and in the years to come you will be hearing a whole lot more about writers like Michael Swanwick, William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, Kim Stanley Robinson, Leigh Kennedy, John Kessel, James Patrick Kelly, Greg Bear, Connie Willis, Pat Murphy, Lewis Shiner ... and Bruce Sterling, who even in this august company must be considered one of the really major talents to enter SF in recent years. As is more than amply demonstrated by the powerful story of intrigue and confrontation that follows, set in a bizarre far-future world where Shapers and Mechanists struggle to control the shape of human destiny ...

Born in Brownsville, Texas, Bruce Sterling sold his first SF story in 1976, and has since sold stories to Universe, Omni, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and The Last Dangerous Visions. His acclaimed story "Swarm" was both a Hugo and a Nebula Award finalist last year. His short story, "Spider Rose," was also a Hugo finalist. His novels include Involution Ocean and The Artificial Kid. Upcoming is a new novel, set in the Shaper/Mechanist universe, from Arbor House. Sterling lives in Austin, Texas. It began the night the Queen called off her dogs. I'd been under the dogs for two years, ever since my defection.

My initiation, and my freedom from the dogs, were celebrated at the home of Arvin Kulagin. Kulagin, a wealthy Mechanist, had a large domestic-industrial complex on the outer perimeter of a midsized cylindrical suburb.

Kulagin met me at his door and handed me a gold inhaler spiked with beta-phenethylamine. The party was already roaring. The Polycarbon Clique always turned out in force for an initiation.

As usual, my entrance was marked by a subtle freezing up. It was the dogs' fault. Voices were raised to a ce