It was indeed written on a typewriter.
Ok, I was struggling to reply in a coherent way to your question about whether to read Neuromancer.
Then you wrote this, which was a good reminder for me.
So I feel a bit safer now about what I am about to say.
I really appreciate what Gibson puts on the table for our consideration.
He’s been my reliable curator of what is to come in the 5- to 10-year time window.
Freakishly prescient. Great eye for detail. Memorable choices.
His prose is intentionally lean and his plotting often takes a turn or three that surprises me. His books feel… arty. His characters have an original, well-crafted yet arty feel to 'em.
Neuromancer was really groundbreaking in its time. So many artists of all stripes were influenced by this book. If you are inclined to read it as much for cyberpunk-anthropological-historical reasons as you are for a good plot, consider it time well spent. The book holds up well given that it was published in 1984 and I do not mean that as a slight in any way.
Neal Stephenson is like drinking from a firehose in the best possible sense of that phrase. As a lot of us fans already know, his social criticism is on-point and painfully funny. He is also freakishly prescient and a reliable reporter from the future territory we all will be inhabiting very soon. I don’t have time to dig out the source1 of where I heard this interview, but shortly after Fall… came out, he mentions that he had to keep making changes to the plot as [our] reality was outstripping (as in, reality was converging too often with his plotlines etc.) his book.
Musta driven his publisher crazy.
He is one of my favorite writers as well. I have read nearly all of his output. (I have read as much or more of Gibson’s books.) Stephenson’s critics who complain that he needs a strong editor who is willing to chop away much of what he writes simply don’t get it or him.
The careening wild ride plot mixed with real historical facts of a good Stephenson book is not the same vibe as Gibson’s leaner style. Both tasty. Just depends what you’re up for.
- While digging around for the specific interview, I found this (new to me) and I quite liked all the ground he covers here:
ETA: grammar
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When I finally got around to reading it…
…yeah, it’s a very apt description.
I admit I don’t really like reading Neil Stephenson. Granted, the other two books I read were REAMDE and Seveneves, and the last one was so full of crappily written characters that I abandoned it long before others tell me it gets interesting.
It doesn’t help that his nonfiction essays make him seem like a privileged, arrogant nerd. And I say this as a person who is painfully aware of what a privileged, arrogant, assohle of a nerd I myself am.
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YES. This bothers me so much.
It totally changes the meaning to show the bright blue screen as opposed to the intended staticky grey.
that was the point, i’m sure. rob’s humour is particular
( eta: like a fine wine the color of … err… wine. )
I fully agree with you there. The heart and meat of Neuromancer isn’t cyberspace, or the Sprawl, or the Tessier habitat. In a good adaptation, they would feel real enough that we don’t bother wondering at them, at least not the first time around.
It’s not even really Case. He’s more the vessel we ride through this world.
It’s Armitage, Molly, the Finn, Peter Riviera, and even Lady 3Jane. And yes, Wintermute.
My personal feel is that the sort of director who could pull off Neuromancer is someone like Michael Mann, or maybe Denis Villeneuve; it needs a creative team that can be stylish without forgetting the people.
My absolute worst fear is that it lands in the hands of Zach Snyder.
There. Enough ruminating for one day.
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TBH, I’d rather they did the Blue Ant books. I liked what Apple did with Slow Horses, so mayyyyybe it’ll be good? Hubertus Bigend et al would be better tho .
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And, AND, the Bridge trilogy contains this, always and forever, fabulous paragraph:
“[Slitscan’s audience] is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It’s covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.”
What I love about Gibson is that, like Chandler, he loves those little Chef’s kiss perfect gems and all his books have them peppered throughout.
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Literally came into the comments to see how far down I would have to go to find someone else old enough to have experienced a ‘dead channel’ on an analogue UHF television.
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That would be so absolutely wrong that I would have to watch it.
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Seriously? They are what $6/month? Wait until after it comes on and does a season, if people you think have similar tastes say it is good pay $6 watch the whole season and cancel. While you are at it give Slow Horses a shot. Maybe For All Mankind.
Ugh, I can’t say that describes all Apple TV shows, but definitely For All Mankind, I really liked the several sessions I watched, but I can’t seem to actually work up the desire to watch another season (or maybe the end of the one I was on). In retrospect that is exactly why, some sort of weird 1970s style pacing where something ponderously starts to happen, then it continues to happen, then some more happening happens, and then maybe more happening.
Oh, and severance too, yeah, people love it, and it was really interesting, but…but…I didn’t even get through the first session I watched several episodes of what felt like the pilot should have covered to get the hooks in.
I mean, that packing must have been deliberate. Someone must have liked that slow roll. Someone who didn’t (ironically given the name!) get to set the pacing for Slow Horses. It may take a season to tell one story, but every episode feels like something actually happened.
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… you know, I don’t think it does
The point wasn’t what color the sky was, it was that no matter what was going on around him, Case was so messed up that all he could see was his own failure and his own pain
It might even work better as a blue sky
I’ve heard of New Rose Hotel but I’ve never managed to find and watch it…
Think I saw it on a… borrowed Amazon account.
But films aren’t on anything any more.
Buy physical media.
Or hoist the Jolly Roger.
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That imagination is only available when stoned.
I am of the opinion both adaptions supports my verdict.
This is the reason all of his writing resonate with me. I feel like he knows more about me and the people I interact with than I do. And I also feel he does not know it in the sense of intellectual knowledge, but in the visceral sense. I felt literally mind-fucked when I first read Mona Lisa Overdrive, which oddly was the first Gibson I read.
Doesn’t need balls. Needs a woman to do the job. I wager.
Is it, though? I would think it used to be, and can become so again for authors who are, after a critically acclaimed bestseller, truly independent.
Oh, and re: @Shane_A_Leslie:
The game of black ants vs. white ants. The black always won. Always.
Oh, by the way, just ignore me, I’m drunk.
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That would explain why you’re arguing with William Gibson about whether a novel is a solitary creation.
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Gibson is one of those I would file under “the untouchables”.
They write. We read. There might have been editors, but if there were, we would not want to know.
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I need to re-read this book - and Walter Jon Williams’ Hardwired - it’s far too long since I first devoured them in the 1980s.
i think it’s budget. the longer they can play scenes out, especially with just one or two actors, the cheaper the whole thing is going to be.
netflix used to do that especially poorly in the early days. just shots of the main character walking some place. you’d never see that sort of thing in a normal movie or show. well, except now it seems to be apple’s jam too.
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So much this. Although I have to admit that I struggled with Fall. I understand why he needs to describe every detail of how consciousness emerges out of nothing because that’s his main point, but also, it’s a lot.
Now, the Baroque cycle, on the other hand? I wouldn’t have minded more detours about obscure historical figures
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