William Gibson C/D

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..."

I liked Pattern Recognition, though, so maybe we'll see some improvement soon. A friend of mine once remarked that Gibson writes female characters the way others write about sports cars, but he's gotten better at it and it shows in this book.

molly was certainly some kind of sportcar fantasy tho, yeah.

xpost - You might like Cryptonomicon better, it's a little more grounded in reality (if a bit too long). And yeah, Snow Crash can be a little out there, and sort of burns out at points, but the momentum it built up in the first half was enough to keep me going through its slightly less than stellar conclusion.

in re: Stephenson being "more well-researched"

I once asked a twenty-something computer geek if he'd ever read any Stephenson and he replied that he specifically avoided him because of the technological inaccuracies in some of his books. As a big science fiction fan myself I don't really regard "accuracy" more important than, say, plot theme or characters, so I wouldn't really give a shit how accurate Stephenson's books are. But is this an issue with others?

For ex., Dan Simmons' Hyperion universe (did someone refer to it as the cantos upthread?) seems rather wildly improbable but outstanding nevertheless.

But I agree with you - technical accuracy does not the good scifi novel make. Witness: Michael Crichton.

_Snow Craash_ starts out with one of the most irritatingly-written scenes ever committed to paper but becomes deeply engrossing once you hit chapter 2.

"The Diamond Age" is better, though, I think

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.

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.

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.

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