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That album is possibly one of my greatest guilty pleasures ever. And based on my hazy recollection of an interview with Idol from when it was released, that album was produced directly as a result of him reading the novel. He thought it was signaling a change in everything.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:10
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The album is amazing. I wrote up a review of it a little while ago, and every now and then I go back to re-immerse myself in it. That cover of Heroin is the best worst thing. Gibson-wise, I recently got round to finishing Mona Lisa Overdrive, and I absolutely loved it. Count Zero was fun, but I never got into the military-kidnap plot thread, even though I loved the other stuff going on. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for the techno-thriller side of things when I was loving the Count so much. But MLO was great from start to finish. Wonderful cast of characters, Molly/Sally is great, the set pieces conjured some great mental images (but Gibson's generally really good at that kind of descriptive writing) and that tantalising hint at the end that there's a message from Alpha loving Centauri...awesome. I'll be starting Burning Chrome soon. Then I'll have all of the Sprawl under my belt, and can start fresh with Pattern Recognition.
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Jul 16, 2014 22:51
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My single favorite passage from any Gibson book that I can think of offhand: Case found himself staring through a shop window. The place sold small bright objects to the sailors. Watches, flicknives, lighters, pocket VTRs, Sims Tim decks, weighted man- riki chains, and shuriken. The shuriken had always fascinated him, steel stars with knife-sharp points. Some were chromed, others black, others treated with a rainbow surface like oil on water. But the chrome stars held his gaze. They were mounted against scarlet ultra suede with nearly invisible loops of nylon fish line, their centers stamped with dragons or yin yang symbols. They caught the street's neon and twisted it, and it came to Case that these were the stars under which he voyaged, his destiny spelled out in a constellation of cheap chrome. "Julie," he said to his stars. "Time to see old Julie. He'll know." -- Thanks for bringing that Billy Idol album to my attention. I'll check that out some rainy day.
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Jul 29, 2014 14:11
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I read Neuromancer in 6th grade after my older sister bought it after seeing The Matrix and man, I did not have any clue what the gently caress was happening then. Re-read it three times since then and it's definitely one of my favorite books. I read Count Zero a few years ago and have had Mona Lisa Overdrive sitting on my shelf for...years...and still haven't read it. I tend to take a lot of time between Gibson books. Something that I felt was never resolved at the end of Neuromancer that I don't remember Count Zero doing anything for - The merged ur-AI says that it has contacted another AI like itself in the Alpha Centauri system, implying either alien intelligence or human technology beyond anything in the book. What's the deal here? Amphetamine-induced "HEY ALIENS WOULD BE COOL" moment of writing? Or is there something deeper I missed? Does MLO shed any light on this? Similarly I've also read the first two of the Blue Ant series and not the third, shame on me. The Johnny Mnemonic movie is hilarious and I remember it distinctly for the line Keanu Reeves gives about being able to hold 80 gigs on data in his head. I guess in 1995 when consumer HD capacity was barely approaching 1 GB this must have seemed revolutionary!
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Jul 30, 2014 06:41
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my bony fealty posted:I read Neuromancer in 6th grade after my older sister bought it after seeing The Matrix and man, I did not have any clue what the gently caress was happening then. Re-read it three times since then and it's definitely one of my favorite books. I read Count Zero a few years ago and have had Mona Lisa Overdrive sitting on my shelf for...years...and still haven't read it. I tend to take a lot of time between Gibson books. It's talked about a bit more in Mona Lisa Overdrive, but pretty much kept vague. Don't expect a big reveal.
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Jul 30, 2014 08:12
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doctorfrog posted:It's talked about a bit more in Mona Lisa Overdrive, but pretty much kept vague. Don't expect a big reveal.
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Jul 30, 2014 12:50
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Mona Lisa Overdrive also has literal voodoo gods, and done in a way that is much more interesting than, say, Neil Gaiman. And I like Neil Gaiman.
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Aug 4, 2014 20:09
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I'm getting excited to read The Peripheral. I've been watching him tweet about it for a long time and now I get to finally preorder it. I'm looking forward most to seeing where he goes next. All his trilogies are complete, so where do we get to go this time?
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Aug 5, 2014 15:14
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I'm excited too. I was sort of hoping he'd somehow spiral even closer to "the real world" since his three trilogies have gotten progressively closer to being set in the present day, and everything from the stakes to the characters has gotten more "real" and small scale, but I guess the Blue Ant books took that about as far as it could go.
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Aug 5, 2014 23:54
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Just a quick question for anyone well versed with Gibsons trilogies. Do they all follow from each other ?! Like should I read them in the order they were written? I have previously read Neuromancer , Burning Chrome, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. I have a copy of Pattern recognition but am holding off on it until I have the bridge trilogy. Is this the right move?
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Aug 29, 2014 23:22
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All three of the trilogies are self contained, and don't interact with each other so nothing to worry about there.
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Aug 30, 2014 00:11
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Yeah, that is the wrong move. Pattern Recognition has aged much better than the Bridge books so just start it right away.
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Aug 30, 2014 00:21
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General Battuta posted:Yeah, that is the wrong move. Pattern Recognition has aged much better than the Bridge books so just start it right away. Thanks for the advice, one chapter in!
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Aug 30, 2014 00:25
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Pattern Recognition / Bigend trilogy is much closer to the present, and imo less vulnerable to time passing since its writing. Virtual Light / Birdge Trilogy is very much 90s, and will remain so. If you're younger than say 25, it won't make a difference how long you wait. (btw not trying to be a dick, just that each decade or so has its monsters. even if you dont subscribe to gen x / millenials bullshit, Carthag Tuek fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Aug 30, 2014 |
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Aug 30, 2014 02:17
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General Battuta posted:Yeah, that is the wrong move. Pattern Recognition has aged much better than the Bridge books so just start it right away. I still think All Tomorrow's Parties has aged significantly better than Virtual Light and Idoru. Pattern Recognition is the only book of his I haven't read twice yet, I feel like I should fix that. My second read of Spook Country was greatly improved by not being invested in finding out what the MacGuffin was.
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Aug 30, 2014 04:23
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So. I've been tasked by a senior elective college class to add or change scenes in a few of the short stories from Burning Chrome. I would like your input. For my first addition, I've chosen Johnny Mnemonic. My first idea? 1) Johnny Mnemonic. - The Junkie Dolphin wants drugs. Johnny, accompanied by a Low Tek, take a tram to the outskirts of Night City. Here on the edge of the wasteland they must buy liquid endorphins from an outpost of waste drug dealers shopping their wares. In this, I plan to explain a bit about the wastes. Namely, they are full of the few people the U.S. Government still supports and controls. People who were left behind by technology completely. The government subsidized rural reservations are segregated by mental disorder, due to the idea that in the near future mental illness lost its stigma and became a universal thing. These wasters in the government reservations were all turned over for pharmacological and cybernetic testing to corps. Of course the psychopaths in that type of environment would be the most successful, so, they are the ones the selling archaic \liquid endorphins to denizens of Night City. I would like the Low Tek to explain that as a corporate courier Johnny is in a position where he no longer acknowledges the lowest tier of the caste system. I want the Low Tek to explain that there is a tower that nobody understands raising up in the sky. At it's top is a mouth that will never be satiated, gobbling up all life in the universe. He'll say that there are 3 types of people in the world. People in the tower who understand the tower, and are allowed inside. People in the sprawl who see the tower, and will never see beyond it's reflective interior. And then there is the wasters. These people don't really know what a tower is. Since the wastes are mentioned by Gibson, but glossed over, I feel this would be productive. Any critique? Keep in mind, this is an assignment. I wouldn't want to change anything about Gibson's early work. Though I have made a living professionally as a writer, I am not delusional enough to think that I will truly be bettering his work, nor should I try. I also have to choose to change, or add to, one of the stories from Hinterlands to New Rose Hotel, as well as the last three classics.
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Sep 9, 2014 11:26
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SnakePlissken posted:-- Thanks for bringing that Billy Idol album to my attention. I'll check that out some rainy day. They are joking. When I was a kid who loved cyberpunk there used to be a place called alt.cyberpunk. Here, whenever a newbie would ask a question they would jokingly refer them back to the terrible Billy Idol record. Man. I've gotten nostalgic for lovely newsgroups. Who is down for a boring argument on whether or not Nine Inch Nails is "real" industrial?
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Sep 9, 2014 11:33
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God Of Paradise posted:So. I've been tasked by a senior elective college class to add or change scenes in a few of the short stories from Burning Chrome. I would like your input. For my first addition, I've chosen Johnny Mnemonic. Critiques? Not offhand. But you're reminding me of one of the great early cyberpunk animes, 'Battle Angel.' And don't forget a Steely Dan namedrop. My semi-random suggestion: 'any major dude.'
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Sep 9, 2014 12:18
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God Of Paradise posted:Man. I've gotten nostalgic for lovely newsgroups. Who is down for a boring argument on whether or not Nine Inch Nails is "real" industrial? Oh god, rec.music.industrial circa 1994.
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Sep 9, 2014 20:00
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SnakePlissken posted:Critiques? Not offhand. But you're reminding me of one of the great early cyberpunk animes, 'Battle Angel.' I was thinking of using "The hill on Shotgun Row," or "Are you for sale? Does gently caress you sound simple enough?" as a reference, since we are revisiting a retrofuture and adding scenes to them in 2014, why not use works inspired by Gibson? Like a namedrop from Sonic Youth's The Sprawl?
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Sep 10, 2014 04:43
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SnakePlissken posted:Critiques? Not offhand. But you're reminding me of one of the great early cyberpunk animes, 'Battle Angel.' Yeah. I loved the hulking beast in that manga who was addicted to eating the endorphins straight from people's brain-stems. The tower metaphor... I wasn't thinking about Tiphares, but vaguely remember it. I was inspired from Thomas Ligotti's work The Red Tower and a few paragraphs from My Work Is Not Yet Done. Here, I found the exact quote I wanted to riff off of. "The company that employed me strove only to serve up the cheapest fare that its customers would tolerate, churn it out as fast as possible, and charge as much as they could get away with. If it were possible to do so, the company would sell what all businesses of its kind dream about selling, creating that which all our efforts were tacitly supposed to achieve: the ultimate product – Nothing. And for this product they would command the ultimate price – Everything. This market strategy would then go on until one day, among the world-wide ruins of derelict factories and warehouses and office buildings, there stood only a single, shining, windowless structure with no entrance and no exit. Inside would be – will be – only a dense network of computers calculating profits. Outside will be tribes of savage vagrants with no comprehension of the nature or purpose of the shining, windowless structure. Perhaps they will worship it as a god. Perhaps they will try to destroy it, their primitive armory proving wholly ineffectual against the smooth and impervious walls of the structure, upon which not even a scratch can be inflicted." Thomas Ligotti - My Work Is Not Yet Done. Not to toot the horn of Ligotti too hard. But he, in my opinion, is the best living horror writer. We lost Matheson last year... But I'm not sure even Matheson had the ability of Ligotti. Check him out.
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Sep 10, 2014 04:51
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I guess your pet horror is a tower. Mine is a self-aware cancer, perpetually trying to metastasize all things. And the best depiction I've found of it so far is in Vinge's Fire on the Deep. I don't know what the hell that guy is doing with his 'sequels' to that novel, I think maybe he's just gone off the deep end or else he's tired and just hired a lovely ghostwriter. But I'm still hoping he'll redeem the 'series.'
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Sep 10, 2014 12:22
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I haven't read it in a while but I'm reasonably certain "the Wastes" mentioned in Johnny Mnemonic are just the kind of places that Mona grew up in, or Dog Solitude type places?
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Sep 10, 2014 19:59
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precision posted:I haven't read it in a while but I'm reasonably certain "the Wastes" mentioned in Johnny Mnemonic are just the kind of places that Mona grew up in, or Dog Solitude type places? Yeah, I thought about the prostitute from Mona Lisa Overdrive. She grew up in what is essentially the shittier parts of Nebraska or whatever. Endless strips of boarded up minimalls, nothing special really. But they asked me to change things that didn't need any chaging. And I've got to do the same tonight with another story.
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Sep 10, 2014 22:11
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Only two weeks until "The Peripheral" comes out. I went to his site to check the release date (October 28th) and there's now an excerpt available to read too! I mean, it could have been up there for a while 'cause I've not checked for ages, but regardless I'm pretty stoked for a new book.
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Oct 14, 2014 16:35
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Blitter posted:Only two weeks until "The Peripheral" comes out. I went to his site to check the release date (October 28th) and there's now an excerpt available to read too! I mean, it could have been up there for a while 'cause I've not checked for ages, but regardless I'm pretty stoked for a new book. That excerpt reads like Gibson is cribbing some inspiration from Neal Stephenson, funnily enough. Or to put it in emoticon terms: 
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Oct 14, 2014 19:34
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precision posted:That excerpt reads like Gibson is cribbing some inspiration from Neal Stephenson, funnily enough. Ooh I hope he's inciting him to battle again quote:Neal:
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Oct 15, 2014 01:03
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That is literally the best Q&A I have ever read. Thank you.
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Oct 15, 2014 04:00
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I always remember liking Count Zero the most of the trilogy, with Neuromancer a close second, and MLO a somewhat distant third. I can't quite recall why that is, though, and I was rather young when I first read them, so maybe a re-read will help me appreciate it more. I know the odds of it happening are basically zero, but I'd probably kill for more stories in the Sprawl, or even a proper fourth book. It's just that the series really is, to me, the platonic ideal of cyberpunk.
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Oct 15, 2014 13:12
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Blitter posted:Ooh I hope he's inciting him to battle again That is embarrasing.
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Oct 15, 2014 16:09
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:I always remember liking Count Zero the most of the trilogy, with Neuromancer a close second, and MLO a somewhat distant third. I can't quite recall why that is, though, and I was rather young when I first read them, so maybe a re-read will help me appreciate it more. Not sure what young you disliked about MLO but I would re-read it because for me it is easily the most beautiful and interesting of the Sprawl trilogy. The characters in it are as fresh to me now as the last time I read the book, which was at least a decade ago. Meanwhile I can barely remember what happens in Neuromancer aside from the biggest story beats.
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Oct 15, 2014 19:06
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I actually enjoyed Billy Idol's Cyberpunk  I like Gibson and I have his new book (signed!) on preorder and am currently going through Count Zero. One thing I don't like about his writing that was more apparent in Neuromancer I guess is that he kind of over-describes things to the point where I find it hard to pay attention to the actual story and goings on when I'm reading about the intricacies of how the table the characters are sitting at is put together.
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Oct 23, 2014 04:00
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Overbite posted:I actually enjoyed Billy Idol's Cyberpunk Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons I like Count Zero better. It still has plenty of his visceral descriptions, but I think it strikes a much better balance with the story.
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Oct 23, 2014 04:17
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It might have to do with what you've read before also. I read Neuromancer for the first time back in '95 in high school (yep), and it thrilled me to read about a kilometer of micromolecular filament comprising the barrel of a shotgun behind the counter of a seedy bar, but that's in part because my world wasn't already filled with technobabble beyond Star Trek: TNG. My mind opened up and swallowed it whole, I loved all those pointless details. Today, you can fire up any game and get entirely too much information about the items you pick up, so I can understand the fatigue and "get the gently caress on with the story, I'm not impressed," attitude. That stuff was rare to come across back then, at least with my limited reading experience. Although, I'm a bit older now and would probably have the same impatient reaction as you fellows, coming at it raw. I might read Snow Crash one day, but just reading the synopsis kind of irritates me.
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Oct 23, 2014 06:28
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Re-reading Snow Crash was some serious literary whiplash. I first read it in the mid-90s after reading all the Gibson I could find, it loved it. When I re-read it 10 years later, there were a lot of parts that were just awful. But even the awful stuff is entertaining in its way; as a writer myself it's pretty amazing that he got it published in that state though. If he even had an editor, it really doesn't show. Thankfully his writing got much better very quickly.
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Oct 23, 2014 08:24
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Three Cronuts Orbiting An Author, A Study In Vaporwave (from an article/interview in Mother Jones yesterday)
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Oct 25, 2014 13:10
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precision posted:Re-reading Snow Crash was some serious literary whiplash. I first read it in the mid-90s after reading all the Gibson I could find, it loved it. When I re-read it 10 years later, there were a lot of parts that were just awful. But even the awful stuff is entertaining in its way; as a writer myself it's pretty amazing that he got it published in that state though. If he even had an editor, it really doesn't show. I read Snow Crash for the first time fairly recently (like two years ago) so maybe that's the reason why I thought it was awful. I seriously don't get why it's so loved. Still, I read the whole thing because while it's awful, its awfulness is kind of fascinating. I personally wouldn't describe it as entertaining though.
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Oct 25, 2014 13:59
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precision posted:Re-reading Snow Crash was some serious literary whiplash. I first read it in the mid-90s after reading all the Gibson I could find, it loved it. When I re-read it 10 years later, there were a lot of parts that were just awful. But even the awful stuff is entertaining in its way; as a writer myself it's pretty amazing that he got it published in that state though. If he even had an editor, it really doesn't show. Is it weird that I want to read it cos of this post?
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Oct 25, 2014 14:41
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Wafflehound will be glad to know I finally took his advice and started Count Zero. Is good book.
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Oct 25, 2014 18:55
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Eruonen posted:I read Snow Crash for the first time fairly recently (like two years ago) so maybe that's the reason why I thought it was awful. I seriously don't get why it's so loved. I read it for the first time like two months ago. It's awful. Like, it's entertaining and there are some neat ideas in it, but it's the gooniest loving thing. Literally about a dude who thinks katanas are better than guns and is the best virtual reality swordfighter AND hacker in the world who delivers pizzas for the mafia. Every character is written exactly the same. Apparently a minigun being named "Reason" is a hilarious pun that everyone loves, but like most of the "clever" or "funny" parts it's just horrible groan-worthy. "I told you they would listed to reason"  Don't get me wrong, I really like Neil Stephenson, but not for his characters, humor, or "action sequences", and it really shows that Snow Crash is one of his earlier books. I hate the action scenes in all of his books.
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Oct 25, 2014 20:33
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