"The Diamond Age" is better, though, I think
― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 12:30 (nineteen years ago) link
― VengaDan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 12:36 (nineteen years ago) link
― koogs (koogs), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 12:50 (nineteen years ago) link
Wait, you think the pizza delivery car chase that Snow Crash starts out with is irritating? SACRILEGE. You have to at least respect the fact that when YT is looking for a vehicle to latch onto she picks a minivan in some expensive suburb, and the narrative goes on from there to presuppose that:
1. the minivan's erratic driving is due to some idiot chode of a 14 year old who secretly stole it from his mom for the night
2. he probably takes horse steroids
Have some respect for the her and the Deliverator, man. It's a 20 or so page passage that masterfully describes the privatized, libertarian/anarchical world of Snow Crash almost incidentally to what's actually happening in those pages.
― Slim Pickens (Slim Pickens), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 17:35 (nineteen years ago) link
I spent the first chapter rolling my eyes and thinking "Why should I care? Who are these people? Is the whole thing written this way? For fuck's sake!" then did an abrupt about-face on the entire book once Hiro and YT were actually given personalities.
― VengaDan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 18:13 (nineteen years ago) link
― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 18:18 (nineteen years ago) link
― g--ff (gcannon), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 18:19 (nineteen years ago) link
xpost:
"then did an abrupt about-face on the entire book once Hiro and YT were actually given personalities."
I see what you mean. But like you said, to Stephenson's credit the characters are developed more fully throughout the book. Personally, I suppose I was a little more used to (or less jaded with) that sort of trick, having grown up on some relatively substance-free Robert Heinlein and Harry Harrison books and being a great fan of cheesy action sci fi movies and shows. I've still got to say that that's one of my favorite passages though, especially in light of how the mostly excellent book drags down towards the end (for me, the doldrums come right around the time they get on the giant floating ship/island).
― Slim Pickens (Slim Pickens), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 18:23 (nineteen years ago) link
― g--ff (gcannon), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 18:28 (nineteen years ago) link
― Slim Pickens (Slim Pickens), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 18:35 (nineteen years ago) link
Hahahahaha wow I guess I haven't babbled as much about my personal faves on ILE as much as I thought! (fave book: _Starship Troopers_; read oodles and oodles of Heinlein, Harrison, Key, McCaffery, Anthony, Brooks, Saberhagen, Cherryh, Weis/Hickman, etc when growing up; am #1 ILE Doctor Who zombie; usw)
_Snow Crash_ is IMO a book that starts awfully, then kicks into high gear and doesn't let go through the ending; I LOVED the entire sequence on the ship. Pash picked out my favorite part of the first chapter (and I agree that hax0r would have made it even better).
― VengaDan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 19:05 (nineteen years ago) link
― Slim Pickens (Slim Pickens), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 19:11 (nineteen years ago) link
I think the sex scene between YT and Raven is one of the best ones I've read in a scifi novel. I also just love the way Hiro becomes this absolute badass by the end of the book. The entire sequence between when he buys the motorbike to the end is just perfect.
― Andrew (enneff), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 02:08 (nineteen years ago) link
― James Mitchell (James Mitchell), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 02:24 (nineteen years ago) link
― VengaDan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 03:14 (nineteen years ago) link
― Andrew (enneff), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 03:23 (nineteen years ago) link
The manuscript of The Baroque Cycle was written by hand on 100% cotton paper using three different fountain pens: a Waterman Gentleman, a Rotring, and a Jorg Hysek. It was then transcribed, edited, formatted and printed using emacs and TeX. When it was totally finished, the TeX version of of the ms. was converted to Quark XPress format using an emacs LISP program written by the author. Some share of credit thus goes to the people who made the GNU/Linux operating system and to the originators of LISP. Maps were produced by Nick Springer with useful input from Lisa Gold, who also organized the family trees and assisted in the preparation of the Dramatis Personae. The geometrical illustrations (Apollonius of Perga's conic sections and the woodcuts from Newton's Principia Mathematica) were prepared by Alvy Ray Smith, working from scans or photographs of old books.
WTF!!!
― Andrew (enneff), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 03:37 (nineteen years ago) link
― Slim Pickens (Slim Pickens), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 03:41 (nineteen years ago) link
― Andrew (enneff), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 03:42 (nineteen years ago) link
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 04:18 (nineteen years ago) link
Gibson, I've only read Neuromancer, which I liked. Stephenson, only Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon; Snow Crash is fun, but the writing is rough. He hadn't figured out how to integrate his digressions and history lessons into the flow of his stories (he doesn't even try, he just keeps sending Hiro to the library for a lesson whenever there's some cool thing he wants to explain). The integration is a lot smoother in Cryptonomicon, and the characters are more well thought-out. I don't know how "accurate" his stuff is, but as a techno-idiot, I found a lot of Cryptonomicon fascinating -- it made me think about computers differently.
― spittle (spittle), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 05:01 (nineteen years ago) link
― Slim Pickens (Slim Pickens), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 06:43 (nineteen years ago) link
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Tuesday, 31 August 2004 23:09 (nineteen years ago) link
anybody else read the new one? was very similar to PR but with vancouver standing in for london.
― koogs, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 09:16 (sixteen years ago) link
I'm just starting it. The first few pages read like a Gibson piss-take. I read it under the light of a Philips quad 18-watt bayonet-fit bulb, while drinking a Kia-Ora orange drink. I'm just checking the time on my vintage japanese digital watch, which has been painstakingly restored by an Inuit-Filipino collective etc etc
― stet, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 10:24 (sixteen years ago) link
i wish i'd known about this thread when i was writing an essay comparing gibson's short story 'the gernsback continuum' with pynchon's 'the crying of lot 49' :(
i have 'burning chrome' but i've only read a few of the stories. he definitely has a better writing style than stephenson, but i enjoyed 'snow crash'.
[for some reason, i kept reading the title 'neuromancer' as 'necromancer' for a really long tiime]
― Rubyredd, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 10:50 (sixteen years ago) link
Gibson's technique is definitely above almost all the other sci-fi writers out there, but that's probably because Gibson was an English Lit major in college, and in the interviews I've read, he keeps up with theory, journals and all that shit (I still hold Lit gives you better background to write with than an MFA or workshop).
There's probably a whole other level to appreciate his writing on, but people don't often get into that kinda detail with sci-fi type things.
― uhrrrrrrr10, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 11:34 (sixteen years ago) link
i enjoyed it, but it did feel, slightly, like a remix of PR.
terrible piece on the guardian web site (one of their jokey (?) 'digested read' things, which seem to exist just to drop spoilers and take the piss) and a better interview here: http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/sciencefiction/story/0,,2146989,00.html
although he must really be pissed off about being asked the same question for 20 years.
― koogs, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 12:05 (sixteen years ago) link
and he still, as i mentioned way above, drops in something every page or so that makes you stop and think 'did he just make that up? or does it really exist?'.
― koogs, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 12:08 (sixteen years ago) link
i loved his idea of 'semiotic ghosts' as being a representation of cultural artefacts - the results of the mass consciousness (from 'the gernsback continuum'). it was a really cool theory for explaining ufo sightings and the like.
― Rubyredd, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 12:13 (sixteen years ago) link
great interview at slate
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 15:52 (sixteen years ago) link
Listening to Idoru today.
― kingfish, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 16:05 (sixteen years ago) link
> I think there's some passage in Virtual Light about Skinner being around > for the first transistor radios or some such nonsense. What it boils > down is basically either the characters being used for flashbacks to > the past are incredibly old, or the near future being described by the > writer is incredibly close to ours and completely improbable.
-- Slim Pickens (Slim Pickens), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 18:35 (2 years ago) Bookmark Link
salon interview: "My fourth, fifth and sixth novels were written in the early '90s but take place around 2007."
― koogs, Wednesday, 15 August 2007 16:16 (sixteen years ago) link
This was posted on the BBC News website two days after the publication of 'Spook Country':
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6938244.stm
― James Mitchell, Monday, 20 August 2007 12:29 (sixteen years ago) link
there are book signings in london next week, apparently.
http://www.uksfbooknews.net/2007/08/08/william-gibson-signing-london-august-28th/ and the day after at forbidden planet: http://www.forbiddenplanet.com/Signings.html
― koogs, Monday, 20 August 2007 13:34 (sixteen years ago) link
i never got past chap 2 of idoru
― mark s, Monday, 20 August 2007 13:36 (sixteen years ago) link
the last two, Pattern Recognition and Spook Country, have been a lot friendlier for people without a technological bent. PR is especially good for people who live in london as it features quite a lot and he seems to know it quite well.
― koogs, Monday, 20 August 2007 14:13 (sixteen years ago) link
like the A-Z w.plug sockets in yr skull
― mark s, Monday, 20 August 2007 14:18 (sixteen years ago) link
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1075/1261169526_d61e8c9f06.jpg
Went to the William Gibson signing last night. Was expecting there to be about 200 people there - was more like over 1,000. Gibson's an interesting guy, though the audience members who were asking questions were idiots, as they always are at these things. He was great when I got the book signed. I apologised because I was the only person who I saw with a book that looked a bit dog-eared because it had actually been read - everyone else had brand new copies with the dust jackets on - and mine had coffee spilt on it. And when I said that he replied "No, it's nice to see that it's been loved - that's what it's there for."
― James Mitchell, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 08:22 (sixteen years ago) link
I read it under the light of a Philips quad 18-watt bayonet-fit bulb, while drinking a Kia-Ora orange drink.
hahahaha
― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 10:18 (sixteen years ago) link
i love this guy's short stories but his novels just feel like old-fashioned thrillers with techno trappings. Spook Country feels particularly unfocused; how much freakin time was spent on "locative art" when it actually had nothing to do with the plot, etc?
― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 10:21 (sixteen years ago) link
Read Spook Country and then immediately re-read Pattern Recognition and I'm suspecting that the next book will somehow tie it and SC together into some sort of future history of recent past.
I didn't find Spook Country as unfocused as Tracer, but there's nothing really bringing it all together except for the triple entendre of the title. It would have been a terrific novella.
― Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, 18 September 2007 03:39 (sixteen years ago) link
just started "pattern recognition". it gets better, i hope.
― moonship journey to baja, Friday, 28 December 2007 09:37 (sixteen years ago) link
first three are the best, obvs
― pc user, Friday, 28 December 2007 09:54 (sixteen years ago) link
opening line of chapter 10 of pattern recognition must (unintentionally) be gibson's funniest line, ever
"She's down for a jack move."
― moonship journey to baja, Friday, 28 December 2007 19:05 (sixteen years ago) link
reading this is reminding me that he's super good at dialogue, not as good at interior monologue.
― moonship journey to baja, Friday, 28 December 2007 19:06 (sixteen years ago) link
how much freakin time was spent on "locative art" when it actually had nothing to do with the plot, etc?
very otm
― dmr, Friday, 28 December 2007 19:09 (sixteen years ago) link
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.
― moonship journey to baja, Friday, 28 December 2007 19:11 (sixteen years ago) link
AINT NO TELLIN WHEN IM DOWN FOR A JACK MOVE
― and what, Friday, 28 December 2007 19:16 (sixteen years ago) link
exactly
― moonship journey to baja, Friday, 28 December 2007 19:17 (sixteen years ago) link