DNF. While short, it took ages to get going. I didn't stick around long enough to see where it went. The concept was really cool, but I just didn't connect with it.

While the idea (and the cover) is interesting and the setting magnificent, I could not connect t0 either the story or the characters.

[Note: I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affected my opinion of the book, or the content of my review.]
I have now read some literature from Bruce Sterling and I have to say that, whereas the preconditions were always interesting (previously read books were "The difference engine" and "Love is strange"), the result did not appeal to me particularly.
So, in the end, this is the first Sterling's book I really appreciated, maybe due to the fact that it exploits a misknown fact in the Italian XX century history (even at high school there is usually no time to go through this), i.e. the establishment of the Free State of Fiume.
Sterling mixes virtuously real and imaginary characters (and sometimes the real ones are weirder than the imaginary ones) in a novelette, which is probably more a dystopian divertissement.
However he succeed in bringing life to this set of characters, leaving altogether the reader to try to imagine how this would have gone if this was true.

I DNF'd at 48%. I've kept trying to go back to it and start over, but I don't think this is the book for me because I feel as if those who are already familiar with 1920s Italy might find Sterling's interpretation of it wry and humorous, but for those of us, like me, who don't have that grounding are a little lost.

I loved the politics in this but not much happened.

DNF at 39%

The premise sounded very intriguing--pirates in a violently noir-ish Futurism ruled alternate history! Yes please!

Sadly, the world building just didn't do it for me. It wasn't exactly Sterling's writing style, it was the way that he seemed to try and cram WAY too much world-building and background info into the first two chapters, leaving little room for us to really get to know the characters. The background itself, as it was presented, wasn't very clear and while I started to understand the motivations for actions, it never felt engaging or interesting to me. I don't really know anything about this niche in history but it sounds interesting. However, I don't think that a fiction (that's supposedly supposed to be slightly satirical) is the way to learn it.

On September 12, 1919, acclaimed Italian war hero and poet Gabriele D’Annunzio stormed the city of Fiume, in what is now with Croatia, with 2,600 veterans of the Italian Army. He was angry that the Treaty of Versailles did not acknowledge Italian claims to the city. Thus the pirate utopia of scavenging weapons depots, more traditional piracy, extortion, free love, syndicalism, women’s suffrage, and casual drug use was born. To say nothing of the daily poetry readings D’Annunzio gave from a balcony, nightly fireworks, and uniforms that inspired many a European political extremist to come. It was a country where music was declared the fundamental principle of the state.

In our world, the fun ended on December 24, 1920 when the Italian navy bombarded D’Annunzio’s palace and declared the existence of the Republic of Fiume, an event known in fascist circles as the “Christmas of Blood”.

Sterling’s book is an alternate history of a sort and a work of “dieselpunk”. The departure from our timeline is the poisoning of Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference. And, while it doesn’t really play into the onstage drama, Hitler fatally catches a bullet during a “beer-hall brawl”.

The trouble is, it’s not really a very plausible alternate history. H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard are strangely working with the U.S. Secret Service, with Harry Houdini as their boss no less. Yes, Sterling certainly knows his Lovecraft and what an Anglophile he was, and his slangy talk here is certainly something that Lovecraft could do on occasion with his friends. And Lovecraft did have a business relationship with Houdini, but it started in 1923. And Lovecraft was an admirer of fascism and Mussolini though D’Annunzio’s ideas, specifically his love of Futurism, don’t seem very fascistic.

This is more of an emotional alternate history than you would get from Howard Waldrop, and it’s just as detailed. As you would expect from Sterling, he loves the hardware of the Italian armored cars (that would be “a standard Lancia-Ansaldo IZM”) and guns and fashions.

And it’s not very successful fiction. Sterling’s pirate utopia is populated by several historical figures and taps into the zeitgeist of pseudoscience, spiritualism, parapsychology, occultism, and rapidly advancing technology that makes the 1920s so interesting. The pirate utopia draws plenty of anarchists and revolutionaries and smugglers and money launderers. Oh yes, there’s plenty of color here.

Most of the story is told from the point of view of Lorenzo Secondari, a former artilleryman and engineer who dreams of the Pirate Utopia manufacturing flying torpedoes (enabled by our old friend Giulio Ulivi of death ray fame). Secondari shares D’Annunzio’s dream of a Futurist world run by supermen like themselves, men of destiny who will sweep aside the bourgeois who stand in their way of creating “a world fit for heroes”. Fiume is to build weapons to terrify the world.

I suppose the Futurism is there to partially amuse in its naiveté and obscureness and, in the light of the history of the twentieth century, irony. But artists spouting manifestos as to how their art will change the world (rather like the younger Sterling in his manifestos proclaiming how cyberpunk would save science fiction) don’t interest me or convince me. Art can change the world, but it seldom does so when trying.

Mostly, I just found the Futurist stuff to be crank ranting. Not that I mind crank ranting. I just have read enough not to find it novel.

But the larger problem is that the element of occult and mysticism undercuts Sterling’s realistic narrative even more than his improbable alternate history. That mythic feel is quite deliberate with most of the characters referred to, in the opening cast of characters, as things like “The Prophet” (D’Annunzio) and the Pirate Engineer (Secondari).

And Sterling hacks off the end of his story just when things get interesting. Mussolini seems to perhaps be out of commission for good, and the U.S., in the persons of Houdini, Howard, and Lovecraft, comes up with an intriguing proposition.

In fact, the whole thing has a bit of the air of a modernist poem, say T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”, sans footnotes. (Yes, I know Eliot’s poem didn’t originally have footnotes, but the fact that an editor thought it needed them does not speak in its favor.) Conclusions and allusions are not obvious in Sterling’s story (perhaps he was depending on Wikipedia erudition supplied by the readers).

Now, these problems are all solved in the Tachyon package which supplements Sterling's story. In effect, it supplies meaning and context for Sterling’s truncated story.

For instance, in an included interview with Rick Klaw, Sterling provides the story’s theme: “… the brotherly feeling between certain kinds of political ecstatic cult politics and the ‘sense of wonder’ of reality-bending science fiction”.

Christopher Brown’s concluding essay, “To the Fiume Station”, puts the Republic of Carnaro in the context of “Sterling’s recent observations about the ways network culture liberates the timeline of our minds from the constraints of historiographically sanctioned narratives”. In particular, he mentions Sterling’s thematically similar Islands in the Net. However, the older Sterling seems wiser and more restrained in the possibilities of these semi-utopian schemes and about the wisdom of technological engineers managing our political affairs. Though, to judge by the attention we pay Zuckerberg, Gates, and Musk and have brought engineering terms like “hack” into politics, evidently we are a long way from shunning the technocratic state by and for technocrats.

Graphic novelist Warren Ellis’s introduction sets things up with a good introduction about “old gunsmoke, exterminating art and war dreams within which” Sterling presents his story.

Illustrator John Coulthart provides some quite nice illustrations throughout the book inspired by Futurism and D’Annunzio’s symbols.

In short, as a self-contained work, Sterling’s story is something of a disappointment. But, as a total package, this book is worth picking up.

Lorenzo Secondari, veteran of the first World War and engineering genius, is a leader of the futurist revolution in the diminutive Adriatic port of Fiume! Together with Frau Piffer, a manufacturer of torpedoes in a women-run and women-owned factory, The Ace of Hearts, a sympathetic aristocrat and spymaster, and the Prophet, a womanizing warrior poet, they overthrow communism and capitalism in favor of free love, art, and poetry.

As SF alternate history, it is refreshing to read a story based on a lesser-known, localized event, instead of WWII. More of the story than you would expect is true, with elements of mood-setting and imaginative dieselpunk, including aerial torpedoes, mass produced single-shot pistols, the F-ray, trenchcoats, futurist uniforms, biplanes, and titles like, “Minister of Vengeance Weapons”. Hitler, Mussolini, Houdini, and Lovecraft all make some sort of pulpy appearance.

Together with the propaganda-style artwork and the title, I expected much more of a light-hearted character-driven romp. Instead, the reader is presented with a slow-moving plot and dense prose. None of the characters are immediately engaging, although Secondari dies on the battlefield and is brought back to life with advanced seance techniques, and he has a special admiration for Frau Piffer. But the more I think about the story, the more I like it. It’s smart but aloof. It’s a philosophical idea. This is what happens when an art revolution has the impetus and resources of technology and engineering.

Included with the novella is a transcript of an author interview, a short account of the true history of Fiume, and an artist statement regarding the works that open and close each chapter. I recommend reading these first, as they provide a lot of context and appreciation for the work. As Bruce Sterling is better known for his hard science fiction, I am excited to start reading his other works.

Recommended for Dieselpunk fans and history buffs!

Y acabamos con Pirate Utopia, una novela que me llamó la atención por su autor, Bruce Sterling, autor de sobras conocido mundialmente pero del qué todavía no había leído nada. Así, que viendo la oportunidad en Netgalley, me lancé a por él sin pensarlo teniendo la fortuna de conseguir una copia avanzada. Por desgracia, y como ya he dejado caer al principio de la entrada, el libro no ha cumplido con las expectativas que tenía sobre el autor.

Como bien indica el título, nos encontramos con una Utopía Pirata, término del que por cierto yo desconocía, y que se utiliza para describir pequeñas islas o lugares donde se han formado mini sociedades autónomas o protoanarquistas existentes fuera de los reinos y gobiernos de un país. Así nos encontramos dentro de una de estas sociedades, siguiendo a Frau Piffer, un veterano de la I Guerra Mundial y ahora sindicalista de una fábrica de Torpedos, con la única visión y obsesión de extender su magnífica sociedad al resto del mundo.

El problema principal con esta novela corta, es que creo que se ha quedado corta, dejando una historia contada a medias y con un final abrupto. Dejándome con una sensación rara de quizá no haber entendido realmente qué nos quería contar el autor. La sociedad en sí, su gente y cómo se organizan, me ha parecido interesante y divertido, con estereotipos de gente libertaria, dictadores y personajes que suelen aparecer en este tipo de sociedades, muy exagerados pero que resultan perfectos para la historia.

Otro de los detalles que antes de empezar a leer me gustó pero que al final no acabé de entender, es el uso de personajes históricos de la época en el que se sitúa, desde Hitler o Mussolini hasta HP Lovecraft o Robert E. Howard, el cuál parece que el autor ha utilizado simplemente por la gracia de ponerlos allí con otros roles y situaciones que por un motivo específico y con sentido para la historia,

Aún así, no es un libro que me haya disgustado del todo, y del cuál la brevedad del mismo ayuda a digerir mejor que si hubiera sido una historia más larga. Además al final del libro viene con unos extras que ayuda a poner más en contexto la historia y el propósito del autor para esta novela, y que quizá hubiera sido mejor leerla antes de entrar en la novela en sí.

En definitiva, no es una novela que pueda recomendar, pero que quizá pueda interesar al que le haya picado la curiosidad sobre este tipo de sociedad y ver los destinos e historias paralelas inventadas por Bruce Sterling de estos personajes históricos conocidos.

NOTA: 2 / 5

I start by saying that I am not a huge fan of Sterling's writing, that I find often simplistic up to seem hasty. The idea behind this ucronic novel is very good: to tell the 16 months of the rebellion of Fiume town led by Gabriele d'Annunzio, and the kind of social experiment that happened in those months. Praiseworthy initiative, since many events of our more or less recent history have been too easily forgotten, but the prose of Sterling really doesn't help, reducing everything to a series of sketches, in which the words Futurism, corporatism, plus other assorted isms, are used by way of trusted servant to hold together the narrative. I still found it funny and irreverent the castration of Mussolini at the hands of an ex-wife who decides to shoot him in the balls, and due the self-immolation of Adolf Hitler to save a communist comrade.
Thank Tachyon Publications and Netgalley for giving me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

A pulpy and cartoony tale that conjures an alternative history for a region of former Italy not willing to be folded into the artificial country of Yugoslavia formed after the end of World War 1. Our heroes are a military leader of the secret police known as the “Ace of Hearts” and his “Pirate Engineer” partner who set about taking all the industries away from the rich and putting them under the management of a syndicate committee of workers. The Adriatic city of Fiume becomes the new Regency of Carnaro under a constitution that adheres to the principles of Anarcho-Syndicalism. Bohemian artists and poets and revolutionaries of all stripes are drawn to move to Fiume for its freedoms, dominant among them being adherents to a new philosophy called Futurism.

The Ace seems the equal of the “most interesting man” of Dos Equis beer commercials:
"Even a Nietzschean Overman couldn’t ever possess such Milanese suavity as the Ace of Hearts.
The Ace had shot down six aircraft in mortal combat, and yet he was a mason, a mystic, a yogi, and a nudist; a forger, a wiretapper, a partaker of cocaine and marijuana; a philosophical anarchist with a superb devotion to music and free love. …
The Ace was a liberation mystic while Secondari was merely an engineer, but they were also two suffering human beings within the maelstrom of a profound political struggle. …They had to find a way to make Futurism work.".

Secondari pulls off his vision of innovative arms manufacturing, starting with revitalizing an old topedo factory abandoned by the Allies of the Great War. There is a market for their products and soon his genius is leading toward development of air missiles and electromagnetic weapons on the order of death rays, as consistent with his new government position, the “Minister of Vengeance Weapons”. Other governments are interested, and soon spies join the eclectic mix in Fiume. Spymaster Colonel House from President Wilson’s government sends Harry Houdini and his assistant H.P. Lovecraft under the guise of a magic performance to work out a secret deal. Along the way to this turning point, both Mussolini and Hitler get superceded

Thus, you can see there is the skeleton of a brilliant plot going on here, a variant of steampunk Sterling identifies as dieselpunk. Mostly it remains a skeleton. We get a series of vignettes with all these colorful characters, and the reader has to do the work of imagining them into life. Which is the way comics work. In fact, this would have been more satisfying as a graphic novel. In the place of art portraying the scenes we get a generous bounty of graphic art by the Futurist artist Fortunato Depero and some like the cover illustration a mash-up of his style with that of Soviet Constructivism.

Personally, I got as much reading satisfaction from the appendix materials as the novella itself. First of all it was great to catch up on what Sterling has been doing while living in Italy for the last decade. I last read Sterling a couple of decades back, including his early cyberpunk “Islands in the Net” (1988) and his wonderful initiation of steampunk with “The Difference Engine” (1990) (co-written with William Gibson). In a long interview piece, he explains his goal of contributing to the Italian tradition of “fantascienzia,”which fuses fantasy and science fiction and often with historical fiction elements. Instead of the literate model set by Calvino, this kind of writing celebrates service to a more popular base:
"They really like B-movies, horror, scandal stuff. They like spaghetti western aspects of it because they’re fed up with their high-flown literary writing. They want some stuff with guts. It’s why Lansdale is a super popular guy. Italians don’t want to read a lot of Stanilaw Lem—it doesn’t have enough vitamins.."

Also in the interview and coda pieces, Sterling fills out background on the real history of Fiume and the Regency of Carnaro and the connection to Futurism and proto-fascism. In reality, the political figure known as “The Prophet” in the tale, the journalist and poet D’Annunzio, did lead the takeover of Fiume in order to return it to Italy, but the government refused to accept it. After about 15 months of its independence, the Italian military whipped the rebels and the region was rendered to Yugoslavia (the town, now Rijeka, is part of current Croatia). Despite his lofty ideals, d’Annunzio saw himself as the embodiment of Nietzche’s superior Overman and as such was a model for Mussolini and full-bore fascism. Sterling is fascinated with how the fascist origins in Italy combined the ecstatic life of rallies and sacrifice and martial ardor with” a grimy little favor-driven society.”:
"There was this tremendous loftiness on one scale and on another there was this pathetic, grimy quality that robbed people of dignity. "

Still he notes how:
"Fascism does have the appeal of science fiction in some ways. …there’s this brotherly feeling between certain kinds of political ecstatic cult politics and the” science of wonder”, of reality-bending in science fiction. They both supply a lot of crypto-religious loftiness of 'What is it’s really like that?' and 'What if we could really …' and then it jumps to 'Italians, you have your empire!' "

Of more interest to me personally was an expansion of my perspective on Futurism. About a year ago, my mind was blown by the wonderful paintings by some of the pre-war Futurists in Italy, as presented in a book on the evolution of representations and meanings of chaos, “Chaos Imagined”. They try to capture movement and energy in delightful forms of swirling color and patterns, often with machines like trains and motorcycles on the move. Quite a contrast with the static images and forms of Cubism, Art Nouveau, and other Modernist movements. Sterling quotes this line from the manifesto of Depero and Giacomo in 1915:
'We will find abstract equivalents for all the forms and elements of the universe, and then we will combine them with the caprice of our imagination'.

From this innocent plan to revise artistic traditions, others, notably Marinetti, reformulated the vision to incorporate the technology of war and to idealize the cleansing power of violence and war. World War 1 kind of put the kibosh on such notions, but some of the roots of the politicized version fed into the fascism that led inexorably to World War 2. In this light Sterling’s alternative take for the Regency of Carnaro had its elements of brilliance. But I can’t see typical science fiction or fantasy readers being hungry to read this story without some broader interest. By contrast, his alternate history conception in “The Difference Engine” with the Nazis advancing Babbage’s computer prototype helped kick off the steampunk subgenre.

This book was provided by the publisher for review through the Netgalley program.

At some point, maybe right now, I have to just finally acknowledge that, with a few exceptions, Bruce Sterling's writing style is not for me. For the past 30 years, I have kept being intrigued by his books, picking them up, and more often than not, just not particularly enjoying them.

This one (as usual) sounded fascinating! An alternate history novel set in the tiny and short-lived state of Fiume (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_of_Fiume), with conflicts between Communists and Italian Futurists, with pirates somehow thrown into the mix, referencing the writings of the eccentric Peter Lamborn Wilson? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_utopia)

But - it didn't work for me. Over a third of the way through the book there was still no discernible plot, and nothing was happening that I particularly cared about. People who are already extremely knowledgeable about this particular time and place in real history may be tickled by the author's clever riffs and tweaks on it, and the absurdist style in which it's presented - but it wasn't doing it for me.