Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/10/03/dieselpunk-jackpot.html
William Gibson’s 2014 novel The Peripheral was the first futuristic book he published in the 21st century, and it showed us a distant future in which some event, “The Jackpot,” had killed nearly everyone on Earth, leaving behind a class of ruthless oligarchs and their bootlickers; in the 2018 sequel, Agency, we’re promised a closer look at the events of The Jackpot. Between then and now is Archangel, a time-traveling, alt-history, dieselpunk story of power-mad leaders and nuclear armageddon.
Is the comic book required before Agency? I hope not.
Getting a 404 on that interview link, FYI.
Whoops! Thank you!
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It’s worth noting that Gibson had to re-write “Agency” so that the book’s original “real/our world” of a 2017 where Hillary Clinton had won (as he had assumed would be the case) became a mere alternate reality. I don’t think Gibson places us currently in his Jackpot world, but it seems like we’re in something close to it.
first, he wrote 2312, imagining a world 300 years away; then Aurora imagined a world about halfway between there and here; then this year’s New York 2140
While is wasn’t written in the same Xeno’s-arrow order you describe, KSR’s “Science in the Capital” trilogy seems intended as a prequel to the events of “New York 2140.”
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“Jackpot Apocalypse”
Sounds like a Stephen King TV show, where all of a sudden all slot machines in the world start giving out jackpots every time, immediately bankrupting casinos.
Then, hands of cards always start turning up straights, flushes, 4 of a kinds.
Finally, all computer random number generators start slowly turning up numbers in a certain range. The range starts narrowing, almost like a countdown. Then, finally, when all random number generators start generating the same number over and over again.
And that number turns out to have some significance in the Bible.
And then there’s some aliens or some shit.
It would be called, “Probability Zone” or something similar.
It would definitely be awful.
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Get thee to Writing Prompts, good sir - you got gold there!
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The hero would be named Potiphar Breen, and be an actuary.
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The final battle would be done with math, Potipher finding a rounding error which causes the alien ships to malfunction.
The aliens will be sinister looking, but their true motivations not ever explained to anyone’s satisfaction.
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