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Zeitgeist Audiobook
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(2.99) - 630 listener ratings
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Publisher Description
Bruce Sterling is "perhaps the sharpest observer of our media-choked culture working today" (Time), offering haunting visions of a future shaped by a madness of our own making. His latest novel is a startling tragicomic spectacle that takes a breathtaking look at a world where the future is being chased down by the past.... Zeitgeist It's 1999 in Cyprus, an ancient island bejeweled with blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers and littered with rusting land mines, corroding barbed wire, and illegal sewage dumps. Here, in the Turkish half of the island, the ever-enterprising Leggy Starlitz has alighted, pausing on his mission to storm the Third World with the "G-7" girls, the cheapest, phoniest all-girl band ever to wear Wonderbras and spandex. And his market is staring him in the face: millions of teenagers trapped in a world of mullahs and mosques, all ready to blow their pocket change on G-7's massive merchandising campaign--and to wildly anticipate music the group will never release. Leggy's brilliant plan means doing business with some of the world's most dangerous people. His business partner is the rich and connected Mehmet Ozbey, a man with many identities and a Turkish girlfriend whose beauty and singing voice could blow G-7 right out of the water. His security chief is Pulat Romanevich Khoklov, who learned to fly MiG combat jets in Afghanistan and now pilots Milosevic's personal airplane. Among these thieves, schemers, and killers, Leggy must act quickly and decisively. Bombs are dropping in Yugoslavia. Y2K is just around the corner. And the only rule to live by is that the whole scheme stops before the year 2000. But Leggy gets a surprise when the daughter he's never met arrives on his doorstep. A major fan of G-7, she is looking for a father--and her search forces Leggy to examine his life before making a madcap journey in search of a father of his own. It's a detour that puts his G-7 Zeitgeist in some real jeopardy. For in Istanbul, Leggy's former partners are getting restless, and the G-7 girls are beginning to die....Zeitgeist is a world-beat tale of smugglers, paparazzi, greed, war, and a new era of cultural crusades. Here Bruce Sterling proves once again that in the fiction of imagination, he is one of the most insightful writers of our time.
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"Fascinating ideas, excellent prose style, but no plot to speak of. More like a book of aphorisms than a novel."
— Aaron (4 out of 5 stars)
Zeitgeist Listener Reviews
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" "Really bizarre romp through the Third World with Leggy Starlitz and an all-girl rock group. Leggy does business with some very dangerous and strange folks. It's a futuristic pop thriller, a funky and fun read." "
— Judy, 12/7/2013 -
" Meta-fiction and lampooning pop culture is my bag, baby. "
— Dustin, 10/14/2013 -
" Spice World for sci-fi nerds. "
— Jason, 9/24/2013 -
" Post-cyperpunk Sterling: A good story with an unfortunate tendency to wander. If you've never read Sterling, start someplace else. "
— Ted, 9/6/2013 -
" Strange, yet awesome. "
— Lennard, 5/10/2013 -
" Another one for the Sterling completist, but not one I'd recommend in general. It's a little to disconnected, and in the end I didn't care much about anything that had happened. "
— Chris, 1/24/2013 -
" This book was all over the place, with characters that all sounded like they were making speeches and a plot that made no sense. It had some interesting social commentary. Perhaps it would have worked better as an essay than a novel. "
— Eric, 12/23/2012 -
" I get all the self-aware "narrative" bullshit - it is called Zeitgeist, after all - and it's really quite clever, and I appreciate it, but god is it ever irritating. "
— Bria, 10/31/2012 -
" Weird. I thought it was one kind of book and it turned out to be another. I'm not sure I got it. "
— Aneel, 8/5/2012 -
" Like most of Sterling's main characters, I hated this one at the beginning. But, also like most of Sterling's work, by the end I sympathized with the character enough to appreciate the changes he'd gone through. "
— Shoryl, 3/5/2012 -
" Not Sterling's best, but entertaining. "
— Leighton, 10/29/2011 -
" Zeitgeist is a little all over the place. Weird. A world where 1/1/2000 was a funhouse mirror held up to the world. It probably made more sense a decade ago, which puts the joke on me. Not unpleasant to read, but ultimately not that rewarding. "
— Toby, 8/14/2011 -
" <em>Zeitgeist</em> is a little all over the place. Weird. A world where 1/1/2000 was a funhouse mirror held up to the world. It probably made more sense a decade ago, which puts the joke on me. Not unpleasant to read, but ultimately not that rewarding. "
— Toby, 3/10/2011 -
" Weird. I thought it was one kind of book and it turned out to be another. I'm not sure I got it. "
— Aneel, 2/9/2010 -
" This book was all over the place, with characters that all sounded like they were making speeches and a plot that made no sense. It had some interesting social commentary. Perhaps it would have worked better as an essay than a novel. "
— Eric, 9/4/2009 -
" "Really bizarre romp through the Third World with Leggy Starlitz and an all-girl rock group. Leggy does business with some very dangerous and strange folks. It's a futuristic pop thriller, a funky and fun read." "
— Judy, 1/5/2009 -
" Post-cyperpunk Sterling: A good story with an unfortunate tendency to wander. If you've never read Sterling, start someplace else. "
— Ted, 8/20/2008 -
" Another one for the Sterling completist, but not one I'd recommend in general. It's a little to disconnected, and in the end I didn't care much about anything that had happened. "
— Chris, 5/8/2008 -
" Like most of Sterling's main characters, I hated this one at the beginning. But, also like most of Sterling's work, by the end I sympathized with the character enough to appreciate the changes he'd gone through. "
— Shoryl, 9/6/2007 -
" Meta-fiction and lampooning pop culture is my bag, baby. "
— Dustin, 6/12/2007
About Bruce Sterling
Bruce Sterling is an American science fiction writer and Net critic, internationally recognized as a cyberspace theorist who is also considered one of the forefathers of the cyberpunk movement in science fiction. He has won a John W. Campbell Award, two Hugo Awards, and an Arthur C. Clarke Award.
About Jeff Woodman
Jeff Woodman is an actor and narrator. He is a winner of the prestigious Audie Award and a six-time finalist. He has received twenty Earphones Awards and was named the 2008 Best Voice in Fiction & Classics, as well as one of the Fifty Greatest Voices of the Century by AudioFile magazine. As an actor, he originated the title role in Tennessee Williams’ The Notebook of Trigorin and won the S. F. Critics’ Circle Award for his performance in An Ideal Husband. In addition to numerous theater credits on and off Broadway, his television work includes Sex and the City, Law & Order, and Cosby.