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From Wikipedia's Bicycle Repairman:

"Bicycle Repairman" is a postcyberpunk short story by American science fiction writer Bruce Sterling. It deals with the eponymous character, who lives in a functioning anarchist community in the near future and has an encounter with the misguided authorities. As is common in Sterling's stories, it deals with issues of markets, governance and the tensions between the two.

"Bicycle Repairman" was first published in Intersections in 1996. It won a Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 1997. It was reprinted in a 1999 collection of Sterling's work, A Good Old-Fashioned Future,1 and again in 2007 in Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology.

My question is about the mook. From @starpilotsix's recent answer:

People communicate with proxies called mooks:

"He flicked on Eddy’s mediator, to boot the wallscreen. Before he could try anything with the cablebox, his mother’s mook pounced upon the screen. On Eddy’s giant wallscreen, the mook’s waxy, computer-generated face looked like a plump satin pillowcase. Its bowtie was as big as a racing shoe."

Is this mook a one-off idea by the author for this story only, or has the mook been used in other stories by the same author?

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  • @starpilotsix I've just asked this. Also, I am grasping at straws for tags, I am sure these are not the best choice.
    – uhoh
    Commented May 10, 2018 at 3:58
  • 1
    ...trying to avoid inevitable Monty Python reference....oops failed...sorry...
    – Spencer
    Commented May 10, 2018 at 5:37

1 Answer 1

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I don't have every book published by Bruce Sterling, but I have a lot of them and I cannot find any mention of a mook apart from in the Bicycle Repairman story.

For reference, the books I looked in are:

  • A Good Old-Fashioned Future

  • Ascendancies

  • Crystal Express

  • Distraction

  • Heavy Weather

  • Holy Fire

  • Involution Ocean

  • Islands In The Net

  • Pirate Utopia

  • Schismatrix Plus

  • The Caryatids

  • The Hacker Crackdown

  • The Zenith Angle

  • Zeitgeist

Also in collaboration with Rudy Rucker:

  • Transreal Cyberpunk

  • Colliding Branes

Also in collaboration with William Gibson:

  • The Difference Engine
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  • Wow, thanks for checking! Just curious, do you have any favorites there?
    – uhoh
    Commented May 10, 2018 at 11:11
  • Schismatrix Plus contains the very good story "Swarm". Commented May 10, 2018 at 11:44
  • You have all of those but not The Difference Engine?
    – Spencer
    Commented May 10, 2018 at 13:47
  • @Spencer: I do have The Difference Engine, and it doesn't have any mention of mooks. I'm not sure how I managed to miss it off the list. Commented May 10, 2018 at 14:47

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