A Good Old-Fashioned Future

A Good Old-Fashioned Future by Bruce Sterling.

They live as strangers in strange lands. In worlds that have fallen–or should have. They wage battles in wars already lost and become heroes–and sometimes martyrs–in their last-ditch efforts to preserve the dignity and individuality of humanity.

A hack Indian filmmaker takes the pulse of a wounded and declining civilization–21st-century Britain. A pair of swashbuckling Silicon Valley entrepreneurs join forces to make a commercial killing–in organic underground slime and computer-generated jellyfish. A man in a Japanese city takes orders from a talking cat while pursuing a drama of danger and adventure that has become the very essence of his life.