William Gibson C/D

(didn't know he had a new book out, never finished all tomorrow's parties)

Why is the sky BLUE, aha!

raleigh scattering.

Alan - I have a mental image of you explaining raleigh scattering to a bemused three year old. "But Daddy, WHY do the particles reemit the electromagnetic waves?"

And yes, for someone who claims not to be much of an internet user (?!?) he's got a great grasp of online forum dynamics.

Some of the best lines are (paraphrased):
"We had no idea that the Internet, developed by the DOD in case of nuclear attack, would be primarily used by Midwestern Art School girls flashing their tits."

"I didn't dodge the draft in Canada for any kind of sympathy for the Viet Kong... It had much more to do with hippie girls and hashish.. much more."

And of course it has the obligatory appearance by Bono and The Edge, who are just gushing WG fanboys.

The whole Lord of the rings thing bores me to death too Alan.

¹REIFIKATION!

His strengths are in 'cool' geeky concepts extrapolated from now to whenever his story is set. As Ess Kay touches on above the biotech-fetishists have him as a grandaddy. He was writing about chip implants/bio interfaces long before they had been seriously considered (AFAIK).

Whatever, "Pattern Recognition" is great. If you live in London, Tokyo or NYC and read message boards, you will love it.

Jordan - did you know the Curta is a real calculator? Look 'em up - you can get them on ebay!

I told my editor the heroine was allergic to Prada and she wasn't happy about it.

and it's great. started it late last night and am 222 pages into it already, would've been more but i had to go and sign on 8)

particularly fond of the cover and the way all the london places he mentions (apart from the vegan restaurant) are places i know well. and the way that every other page he'll just throw a phrase in that has never been coined before but which is just perfect and instantly recognisable ('Zaprudered', the whole 'mirror-world' thing...)

andy

Did anyone else who's read it see the bits about 'Fetish:Footage:Forum' and just think of Ilx?

Some else recommend me more William Gibson. I'm liking this one so far. The London-ness, and the fact that it's not set in the future, surprised me. I always thought his books would be all about hackers 'jacking in' to 'CyBerSpace' whilst on the run from the Feds and mainly feature flying taxis driven by androids.

I really like the Difference Engine too although I don't know if anyone else does.

I found a digital camera in the woods [not for 56k]

Definitely classic.

I haven't actually read the nineties ones.

steer clear of the neuromancer trilogy then 8)

actually, no, it's well worth a read. it was written in 1986 by someone who wasn't that up on the technology and it's interesting to see how well he 'predicts' (or not) how things turned out. plus it has space rastas in it.

> Gibson's real strength to me is presenting outrageously bizarre
> concepts as though they're commonplace, like that thing in orbit
> that does nothing but make wooden boxes.

Liz to thread. she once pointed out to me that this is a reference to some real artist. and he does a lot of this - there's a passing reference to Duchamp's Large Glass in Neuromancer for instance.

I finally read Pattern Recognition earlier in the year, It was great. The thing that stands out in Gibson's writing the most, more than any other writer I can think of, is his attention to artifacts. For example, his detailed description of the Rickson jacket. Not only is there description of the Cayce's personal connection to the jacket, but also a strange genealogy of the jacket's manufacturing history and the cultural motivations that created such an item.

When Gibson describes these artifacts (some technological, some not) I get a sense of the world of the narrative. He shows the output of a strange set of equations that are fundamental processes of the setting. And it's even more interesting when he's talking about present day stuff.

Just that it got me into Joseph Cornell is like reason enough for me to love Gibson forevah.

;)

and i just finished Pattern Recognition! details: incisive, insightful. story: a little too well made i think. Should a novel self-conscioiusly documenting Our Time tie everything up neatly in the final chapter?

i think i did read MLO before Neuromancer but it's been so long and they've been reread so many times i don't remember what it was like. not that different, prob! they're only obliquely related, nicely...

Lucas just stood there, facing the doorway, his face expressionless, the tip of his cane planted neatly on the sidewalk and his large hands one atop the other on a brass knob. "First thing that you learn," he said, with the tone of a man reciting a proverb, "is that you always gotta wait..."

Thanks for the recs, folks

milo z is right, the beginning of the Peripheral is worse than an Agatha Christie novel, dude is throwing so many names at you it is v. confusing

The section of Virtual Light where Rydell describes his mom and how he grew up in Knoxville is maybe a bit too on the money for 2020.

There's no easy way into Gibson, you just have to take a dice so Neuromancer is as good a place as any really. Although if you are in the mood for something other than hard dystopian sci-fi then I would say Pattern Recognition also is a good place to begin.

every time i read a new one of his books i want to start a william gibson mad libs like "In the year [YEAR NO MORE THAN 15 NO FEWER THAN 3 YEARS IN THE FUTURE], a renegade [HACKER/BIKE MESSENGER/BOUNTY HUNTER WITH MADE-UP SCI-FI JOB NAME] comes into possession of [URBAN PLANNING DOCUMENTS/PASSWORD TO SOMETHING/ORPHAN CHILD WITH SPECIAL SKILL] and has to battle off [RUSSIAN GOONS/OTHER HACKERS/OTHER BOUNTY HUNTERS WITH MADE-UP SCI-FI JOB NAMES/SENTIENT COMPUTER] in a race to save [CITY/COUNTRY/WORLD].

― max, Wednesday, January 28, 2009 3:36 AM (ten years ago) bookmarkflaglink

^This, though is still pretty much on the money for much of his career.

I read Neuromancer for the first time last year and the treatment of the main (and p much only) female character has aged very badly, I would say.

razorgirl molly millions is not the most well-drawn character in the gibson canon, it’s true

Agency feels like he was rushing to wrap up the ending, the Clinton stuff is cringeworthy. Worst of the post-Pattern Recognition novels.

My copy arrived yesterday, and now slotted in reading pile after a few library borrows. I like the tactile cover's feel!

erm, but you know what they say...?

I liked it, but it's definitely a little light. The "present-day" characters are much more interesting than the "alternate-future" characters, something that wasn't true of The Peripheral. And the initial protagonist is a passenger in the plot — like, she literally spends a lot of the book being driven here and there and given things that will be necessary for the plot later. The book is called Agency, but she has very little. (Which may be ironic and deliberate.) I'll re-read it in a few months.

re-reading the peripheral ahead of the new one.

he talks about one of the peripherals being a "washing machine", which is an actual thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_6p-1J551Y

also, the wheely boy is also a thing (which i posted at the time). as seen on Community.

http://www.doublerobotics.com/

finished the new one. agree with unperson about Verity. not entirely sure a lot of the other characters did much either. ash? wilf? rainey? all pretty much only there because they were in the last book.

still, was a good excuse to reread the peripheral.

Should note that I read an interview with Gibson where he said that Verity's lack of agency was deliberate.

Smiled wryly on page 54, as Rainey and Wilf are discussing Verity's stub (timebranch):

"...Why aren't they happy there?"

"The drivers for the jackpot are still in place, but with less torque at that particular point." He took a seat at the table. "They're still a bit in advance of the pandemics, at least."

Reading the Fractured Europe quadrilogy instead of re-reading the Blue Ant books. They make for an interesting comparison as a series that could be set in the same universe - more Le Carre, less Japanese denim.

Reading Burning Chrome, it's funny that his foreword has a bit about the big sci-fi guys of his adolescence (Asimov, Heinlein) reading the future incorrectly... then it's just "wot if Japan took over the world" in every other story.

The story about the guy dropping into visions of the perfect art deco sci-fi version of the '80s was great.

Was Neuromancer the last time anyone in a Gibson book had sex?

been working through the sprawl trilogy myself

Count Zero has a merc in rehab having sex in the first act. Gibson definitely shied away from writing sex for the most part as time’s gone on

Who needs sex when you can have selvage denim devoid of branding or decoration?

Gibson pioneered consumer affect pornography, the scene mh mentioned is in the fact the only thing he's written post-Neuromancer that ISN'T a sex scene

I kinda remember the security contractor/private eye guy from Knoxville in Virtual Light getting it on, but maybe that is just what you think Private dicks do in books.

(virtual light ebook is 99p on amazon.co.uk (and kobo.com) at the moment btw. last month it was idoru. i am waiting for ATP.)

I ordered the UK Penguin paperbacks of the Bridge trilogy from Blackstones last night. I like the matching covers and haven't read the books since they were new, so birthday present to myself (I turn 50 next month).

yeah, i re-bought the original trilogy (and the matching Burning Chrome) after i lost the first set to a flood.

virtual light was the first i bought, remaindered in a bookshop in leicester. everything since has been the hardback. and ATP is signed "merry xmas '99" (was a present, i didn't get to meet him).

There’s probably something Gibsonian to the fact that I own paperbacks of the sprawl trilogy but the idea of digging out a yellowed, dusty copy that’d make me sneeze and turn my reading light up made me just procure the ebook

The footage forum stuff in Pattern Recognition reads like early ILX. You lurk in’, William?

reminded me of newsgroup conspiracy theories tbh

Gibson's best joke is reducing all of Pattern Recognition to creating "Trope Slope, for instance, our viral pitchman platform" in Spook Country

First teaser trailer for The Peripheral tv series is out...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSaWHbCSmRI

I did not imagine the pre-Jackpot humans with Appalachian accents

that trailer is actively making me not want to see it

production design-wise it looks not too far off what i had in my head when i read it but that's not MY flynne and burton ffs, casting seems way off

this reminds me i need to get back to slogging through the last quarter of AGENCY, which i am not enjoying at all

Revive made me think he'd Prokofieved it

I did not imagine the pre-Jackpot humans with Appalachian accents

Yeah, that's where the book takes place, out in the sticks.

It's pretty explicitly mentioned in the book!

I think this looks really good myself and very closely matches up with both how I envisioned the setting and the characters, so I'm excited for it.

this reminds me i need to get back to slogging through the last quarter of AGENCY, which i am not enjoying at all

I had the same experience. The first half was good and felt like it was building toward something; the end of the book is seriously underwhelming.

I don't have a lot of confidence that they'll pull off anything great, but I usually enjoy Chloë Grace Moretz's acting and Nolan/Joy have pulled off some decent television on occasion, so..

Agency was very whatever, but (I’m hoping) planted seeds that will sprout in the next book.

I watched the trailer. Dunno how I feel about it. Not gonna spring for Amazon Prime to watch it, but if DVD sets are available for rent at some point, might check it out.

Out in the sticks does not mean "up in the holler" - the contemporary setting seemed more decaying rust belt Ohio or Pennsylvania, empty Kansas town maybe, rather than east Kentucky. It doesn't matter but it just didn't sound right for the characters to me.

Looks pretty cool. I don't mind if they take some liberties with this book/series, because the source material isn't perfect.

A Blue Ant trilogy series by the guy who did Mr. Robot could be good - in terms of visual style at least.

i really should read those (I did Pattern Recognition which I loved but never got to the follow ups)

Spook Country is really good. Zero History is pretty good until it sinks in that the whole thing is just a love letter to Gibson's obsession with selvedge denim jeans.

haha I love the fabric history detours!

I like selvedge denim jeans so I'll probably enjoy it

I mean, it's a good book, I've read it a few times, but I distinctly remember on my first read thinking, "Wait...is this whole book...about pants?"

Unperson, did you read that long New Yorker profile about Gibson a couple years back?

Gibson got a couple of clothing collabs off of Pattern Recognition, that plotline in the third book was VMIC.

http://www.selfedge.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=647

Only $990