Heavy Weather is Twister in book form - pure and simple.

In some ways the parallels are amazing. The book and the movie came out within two years of each other (can't remember which came first. Both works depict a storm chasing group in the midwest whose lead protagonist is trying to prove a theory. Both even depict...flying cows!

Sterling is one of the best known "cyberpunk" authors, but its important to realize that this book is not cyberpunk in any real sense. It is more "post-apocalyptic" in the Mad Max sense. So, write Twister as a book, and change the setting to a near future environmental post-apocalyptic scenario, add in a dash of medical issues, and you've got a good bit of Heavy Weather.

The book does suffer from a lagging middle. Sterling does a good job with his characterization to a large extent. The ideas produced near the ending, I thought, were worthy of the book, and a bit surprising.

All in all, pretty good.