Heavy Weather
by Bruce Sterling

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Book Reviews of Heavy Weather

Book Review: "Forecasting" the Future
Summary: 4 Stars

What would it be like to chase massive storms in the year 2031? Bruce Sterling does a great job of "forecasting" what the future may hold in his book Heavy Weather. I liked Heavy Weather because it had good plot, the characters were well developed, and the technology was great. Really the only thing I did not care for was the ending.

The main portion of the story pertains to the adventures of the Storm Troupe. The Storm Troupe is a small group of people that "hack" heavy weather in the year 2031. "Heavy weather" is a summer cycle of storms, caused by the out-of-control greenhouse effect, which produces tornadoes that ravage Texas and Oklahoma. The Storm Troupe leader, Jerry Mulcahey, has predicted the F-6, a super tornado that will be unimaginable in scale. The troupe's ultimate goal is to be there when the F-6 comes down. The reader is taken through the journey for the F-6 using the eyes of the main characters Alex and Janey Unger.

One of the reasons I really liked this book was because of the characters Alex and Janey. The characters are well developed, interesting, and each has their own distinct personality. The brother-sister tandem of Alex and Janey is really kind of humorous as they argue and smart-off to each other just like a stereotypical brother and sister. The minor characters are also well organized. Sterling definitely took the time to be precise with minor characters, too.

The technology was another reason I liked this book. The gadgets were always interesting to read about. One of my favorite techs was the ornithropter. The ornithropter was a machine that acted very much like a bird, but had two cameras mounted on it and was controlled with virtual reality. These machines were used to drop measuring instruments into the funnel cloud, and sometimes flew into the vortex.

A great thing about Sterling's Heavy Weather is how easy it is to read and understand. This book is written in a clear and concise way that is easy to comprehend. I would say this book is a much easier read than Brunner's Shockwave Rider and Gibson's Neuromancer.

There were quite a few good parts in the book, but the ending disturbed me. I would compare the ending of this book to that of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. In Snow Crash the ending keeps getting built up and built up, but at the end it kind of leaves you guessing. I felt the same way after I finished this book. It kept building and building, but kind of fizzled out.

Even after what happened with the ending, I would still consider Heavy Weather a great book. The plot, characters, and technologies outweighed the one weakness of this story.

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