Bruce Sterling's latest offering is a fantastical palimpsest of politics, conspiracy and satire.

Sure, it's 2001. However something is askew. No one seems to be shooting around in flying cars, and while the iMac is becoming ubiquitous, the HALs of this world remain in Marvin Minsky's dreams. The new century seems to have skittered away from the fantasies of the older generation of sci-fi writers. Instead, it would seem, we are awash with a strange stream of nostalgia, neo-mysticism and pseudo-religiosity. Arcane concepts lie hidden in the screenplay of The Matrix and metaphysics are the cornerstone of Being John Malkovitch.

And sci-fi itself? No doubt there is a mass of extraterrestrial travel abounding in the plethora of paperbacks out there somewhere. But three of the most influential writers of our times have come back to ground. In Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon we hurtle between the present and World War Two, a far hike from the dazzling future of Snow Crash. J.G. Ballard has restrained his more surreal impulses – at least in terms of landscape – by setting his most recent novel, Super-Cannes, within the confines of a contemporary European business park.

Bruce Sterling is one of the gurus of cyberpunk and has had far more influence than most. His non-fiction The Hacker Crackdown was one the first publications to let the world know that code was the new currency. His novels Schismatrix and Islands In The Net are cyberpunk classics. However, despite the ongoing issues of politics and environment that have run through his work, it was not until Distraction that he became overtly political in content, following the story of an election campaign in the not too distant future.

With Zeitgeist, however, Sterling has taken a distinctly new turn. Politics on a global level pumps through these pages, but so does a bizarre sense of fantasy. Set largely in Cyprus in the decidedly retro 1999, Sterling depicts the travails of his most roundly depicted character to date, the morally fascinating Leggy Starlitz. Leggy, a semi-washed up pop music entrepreneur manages the multi-national girls group G-7. Amidst a world of conspiracy, drugs, smuggling, greed, war and mayhem, Leggy faces his greatest challenge: meeting his daughter.

While Zeitgeist has more than its fair share of gritty mayhem and cynical language, the term "magic realism" is given new life in Zeitgeist. It is indeed a 'magical' book - a term that seems to make Sterling squirm. However it is also a landmark book in Sterling's ouvre for the simple fact that it is not so much about the future as a concise dissection of the present. Has science fiction run its course?

"A 'futurist' is an increasingly old-fashioned thing to be," says Sterling. "I don't think this has much to do with weariness of subjects or genres, though. I think the culture's sense of historical continuity has broken down. There's no Progress myth, there's no Titanic Manichean Death Struggle.

"Societies still have a future," says the reformed futurist. "That's very obvious, but they've rejected consensus myths of The Future. The Future is discredited; no one dares to declare that their dreams will surely come true. To declare that the Forces of History favor you is seen as 'ideological,' 'fanatical,' 'imperialistic,’ 'phallocentric,' 'anti-market,' 'deterministic,' 'statist,' 'arrogant.' Pick your dismissal."

It's not that these myths are entirely gone, says Sterling. "But they're fragmentary, they're presented as nostalgic, and they're mostly framed through consumption patterns. Like AT&T's ill-fated 'You Will' campaign, the fully commercialized version of a sci-fi epic. 'You Will send AT&T's stock reeling in the day-trader market.’"

"People feel little need to believe in the New New Thing. They'd much rather place bets on it (if they're in the market) or throw eggs at it (if they’re anti-WTO). They don't want to pick up arms, wear uniforms, march in drumming lockstep toward the radiant dawn and become the AvantGarde of Humankind.

"Enough with the hokum, already," says Sterling. "Show us the demo, let's download the beta and see if it boots."

The older narrative snapped when the Cold War ended. Philip K. Dick's most masterful paranoia was penned under the shadow of the Bomb, however much of the visionary material Sterling and his contemporaries have created was created post-Rapture, unless you take Ronald Reagan's trigger finger into account. Sterling's response seems to suggest that without the threat of Armageddon we cannot visualize a future, or at least we will be totally discredited. Do we need impending Armageddon to imagine a bright future?

"No," says Sterling. "It goes deeper than that. We're entering a different conception of history, in which Armageddons and Utopias are seen as simple-minded. Because they're the same thing: a bogus method to stop thinking about the passage of time. In a Utopia, history ends because everything's perfect; in an Apocalypse, history ends because everyone's dead. The problem here is not that we need pie in the sky or death-threats in order to feel awake. The problem is that the clock doesn't stop ticking just because we might find that intellectually convenient."

It is strange indeed to hear the warrior of words and the creator of many alternative worlds so cynical, or at the least so pragmatic, especially in a day and age of genetic miracles. However sci-fi manages a redeeming commentary. "It may very well be that science fiction is tired," says Sterling. "But science is tired, and fiction is even more tired. Science fiction looks considerably jollier than either of those. Science Fiction doesn't even need taxpayer money or arts grants, it can run around the landscape turning somersaults all by itself."