Crystal Express
book by Bruce Sterling
Crystal Express is a collection of science fiction and fantasy stories by American author Bruce Sterling. It was released in 1989 by Arkham House. It was initially published in an edition of 4,231 copies and was the author's first book published by Arkham House.
Many of the stories appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and the first five stories are set in Sterling's Shaper/Mechanist universe.
Contents
Crystal Express contains the following stories:
"Swarm" (1982; set in 2248) – Shaper Captain Simon Afriel joins a fellow researcher in an interstellar embassy: an asteroid belt inhabited by colonies of insect-like aliens. Afriel also briefly appears in "Twenty Evocations" and Schismatrix. This was also Sterling's first "officially" published short story.
"Spider Rose" (1982; set in 2283) – An ancient Mechanist from the fringes of the Solar System buys something new from the Investors: a pet. Spider Rose herself appears very briefly during happier times in Schismatrix.
"Cicada Queen" (1983; set in 2354) – A Shaper named Landau comes of age politically inside Czarina-Kluster, a habitat independent of faction where backroom deals and social cliques dominate, and whose stability is becoming increasingly fragile.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Crystal Express” is book by Bruce Sterling. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Crystal, Express and book, not as a finished interpretation.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5191186. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1982 and 1983.
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This entry incorporates text from “Crystal Express” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.