William Gibson C/D

how much freakin time was spent on "locative art" when it actually had nothing to do with the plot, etc?

very otm

also he repeats himself a lot lately. for example i just noticed that in "pattern recognition" he uses the phrase "semiotic neutrality" twice in 30 pages. when a dude writes this spare it sort of leaps out at you.

AINT NO TELLIN WHEN IM DOWN FOR A JACK MOVE

exactly

he has neat little moments of people interacting with an object (uh that sounds kind of lame). what stuck with me from PR is the bit where Cayse teaches the dutch weirdo how to put on a fedora

also the very next line after that "semiotic neutrality" bit.

"Her own place, in New York, is a whitewashed cave..."

which is how he described the mexican hotel at the beginning of "count zero". "The room was a tall cave. Bare white plaster reflected sound with too much clarity ..."

is this riffing on one's own themes or is he literally re-writing the matrix trilogy here?

yeah that was rather cool

maybe he's just not very good!

re: dutch weirdo. i have no idea what "tom cruise fed a diet of truffles and virgins blood" (or however he puts it) would look like, so i am imagining joseph beuys.

it would look just like tom cruise amirite

I just recently finished Pattern Recognition; I need to make sure I read every single fucking thing this man has written.

awesome awesome awesome book.

Is that one good? The last thing I read by him was Idoru and I swore that was the last time I got sucked into reading a Gibson book.

It was a very interesting take on Internet memes and marketing; the ideas flying around in it were really fascinating (suzy I'm not at all surprised you liked it; it seems like the stuff he was talking about would be right up your alley).

yup usually I find him really boysy so this was pretty good, ha ha girl allergic to branding!

I never finished Pattern Recognition! I couldn't get past the first 100 pages. I kinda feel obligated to try again though.

Pattern Recognition was one of my favorite Gibson novels, I really like his writing about the present. Idoru is one of my other favorites (along with Count Zero). I still haven't read the latest one. But Dan, yeah, you should probably read everything; the only ones that kind of dragged for me were Virtual Light and Mona Lisa Overdrive (which was probably better than I remembered).

oh and I think he very definitely references his own work as pointed out before, note that the character is named Casey and the main character of Neuromancer was Case. I dont' think it "means" anything, but it's done with purpose.

Pattern Recognition was awesome .... Spook Country (sort of a sequel?) I didn't like that much

have not read PR, just picked up Spook Country at a book exchange and am enjoying it, although it seems almost stereotypical for him as stet notes above.

HI DERE u should definitely read the first three as well. I didn't like Idoru much.

I found an audiobook of Gibson reading Neuromancer, and was addicted to it for the most part of last year. I couldn't stop listening to it. (His voice is so hypnotic!) But it made me realize that I probably wouldn't have made it through the book if I'd been left to my own devices. Now I want to gobble up everything he's written. Pattern Recognition is next on my list, I think. Neuromancer blew my mind though, I couldn't get over how...original...it was. I felt like I'd just discovered this 'new' thing, even though the story's, what, 24 years old? Crazy. What a guru..

Spook Country seems a little recycled after Pattern Recognition, but it still has its good points. I'd say PR is probably the stronger book. I'm looking forward to whatever comes next.

Did everyone catch the Chris Cunningham references in the director character in Pattern Recognition?

William Gibson-designed shoes
http://www.selfedge.com/shop/images/br_wg_low_cut/gibsonchucks1_main.jpg

I liked Pattern Recognition BUT the story just recycles the plot of his Count Zero, and then Spook Country recycles PR a bit.

damn, those gibson shoes look ugly.

one of my favorite parts of gibson's work is the part of virtual light that deals with the AIDS messiah, j.d. shapely. watching all the images of obama this past fall often made me think of "virtual light". i especially like the scenes set on the golden gate bridge. so lovely.

i think "virtual light" is pretty underrated, though i'm not as crazy about "idoru" and i can't remember a single thing about "all tomorrow's parties"

i think there was a hitman? and some hackers?

actually was it "ATP" that started with a scene in the tokyo subway involving an old man who's like a gundam otaku? who lives in a cardboard box? that scene was pretty great. don't remember anything else, though.

i bet that at some point gibson was like researching samurai and stuff for his cyberpunk novels and he read that one part of "the art of war" that goes "be subtle to the point of formlessness" and he decided to start applying that to his plots, i still have no idea what happened at the end of the last five novels.

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].

Or you could just read Snow Crash.

Pattern Recognition seemed to lose a lot of steam in the last quarter or third, becoming more of a generic thriller than you would have expected.

i dunno man, neal stephenson gives me the fear. makes me think of fat bearded dudes dressed like morbius from the matrix sitting in cafes.

yeah i know hes got his fans on this board but to me william gibson represents the best of what wired magazine readers have to offer the world while neal stephenson represents the worst

makes me think of fat bearded dudes dressed like morbius from the matrix sitting in cafes.

If you want to scare these people, walk up casually to them and say, "So, it's been ten years since The Matrix came out," and noted their pained expressions.

http://sci-toys.com/scifoo/neal_stephenson__jaron_lanier.jpg

"So how was the Rush show?"

i just finished all tomorrow's parties, which i picked up without even realizing it was the the end of a trilogy. actually reads fine on its own. i thought the set-up was nice, the bridge community was a good touch, but the follow-through sort of predictably a let-down. i liked pattern recognition, but it already felt sort of dated i thought. all the riffs on marketing, viral video, web communities, smart enough but also sort of superseded. but cayce's a good character, and i think it's interesting how gibson had to rework the book to accommodate sept. 11 (speaking of being superseded).

http://blog.williamgibsonbooks.com/2010/05/31/book-expo-american-luncheon-talk/

Thanks!

WG is doing a reading/signing at Moes Books in Berkeley in September...I believe it is my duty to attend :D

Anybody reading Zero History?

I am!

It's very enjoyable so far. I don't know if this is planned as the final novel of a trilogy (as he seems to do a lot of trilogies) but I'd happily read as many Blue Ant books as he wants to write.

i also am.

realised last night that the little grey dashes on the first page of each chapter are stitching...

nice to see a reference to flying penguin as well.

(was actually disappointed on finding on this was another 'clothes as design objects' book as i'm not a fan of fashion (whereas the gadgets of earlier books are fine). but he makes it interesting.)

Anybody reading Zero History?

I am too!

finished.

wouldn't be a gibson book without a vaguely disappointing denouement. good run-up though. plus it takes place about 20 minutes north of where i'm sitting.

also wishing i'd taken the time to read the previous two again beforehand.

The reveal surprised me waaaaaay more than it should have, but I was delighted nonetheless.

He did a signing at Moe's Books in Berkeley this weekend and read a little from ZH. Cool stuff. Even super-tired from travel as he obviously was, I could listen to him read all day. (I told him how much I enjoyed the Neuromancer podcast and he said he did that reading over 3 solid days and it almost killed him.)

So now I have Zero History, and Spook Country, and my inlaws loaned me Pattern Recognition which I just started today. Excited to see this all the way through!

ugh "podcast" should be "audiobook". Brain fail.