|
I agree that The Peripheral has some of his weakest character-building yet. The characters are good, but even the best ones are somewhat shorthanded so you can think of them as "The guy with the missing limbs" or whatever. That said, I still think it's the best thing he's done in quite a while. It was vaguely annoying to me that the book makes this big deal out of Wilf not drinking. It should have just been a personal choice, but instead, at least a couple times, people tell him that he HAS to stop drinking or he will die or something. Considering he's living in a world where a woman gets her entire epidermis removed and replaced dozens of times, I found it a bit weird that they couldn't send nanobots in to repair his liver or something. It's a minor quibble, but it stuck with me. e: hell, even a line about how Wilf didn't trust nanobots to fix him would have been mostly in-character, except for the bit where he wishes he could use the "instant hangover cure" robot anytime he wanted, but that also brings up, you know, aside from Steampunk Woman Whose Name I Can't Remember intentionally being a jerk, why COULDN'T Wilf use it all the time, or buy his own? The more I think of it, the more the "upstream" world doesn't really make sense. Then again I do get that it's supposed to be barely recognizable to us. precision fucked around with this message at 15:21 on May 30, 2015 |
#
?
May 30, 2015 15:17
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 08:03 |
|
|
precision posted:I agree that The Peripheral has some of his weakest character-building yet. The characters are good, but even the best ones are somewhat shorthanded so you can think of them as "The guy with the missing limbs" or whatever. I don't think Wilf's drinking was specifically about direct health consequences. He clearly had very escapist and self destructive tendencies, and responded to his drinking being restricted by drinking as much as he could whenever he got the chance. The point wasn't that the alcohol poisoning itself was damaging to his body, it's that him getting shitfaced all the time was causing him to gently caress up his life and everything else. He was always trying to drink to get in the mood to do things, which obviously his employers would be less than thrilled about. I found the whole thing reminiscent of Case being surgically prevented from using narcotics in Neuromancer.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2015 20:00
|
|
|
No, I get that, but he is also told that if he keeps drinking it will make him very ill or kill him, in a non-metaphorical sense. Which struck me as odd.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2015 22:21
|
|
|
Finished All Tomorrow's Parties for the second time in about a decade last night. It's about as unsatisfying as I remember. Less incoherent though. Biggest mystery is: what's the deal with Rei Toei's ending? Best we can tell is Boomzilla's observations, which are mostly self-concerned. The only hint we have of what happens to her and the world is a few pages of Silencio's watch or jewelry store, and that it's near enough to Treasure Island, so it's probably on the Bridge, the Bridge is still standing. He may have inherited the from Fontaine. Anyway, the only hint about what has happened with Rei Toei is in the nanotech bed he sets the watch in, it basically eats the watch and spits out a flawless copy. (Which explains Fontaine's absence, he's obsolete.) So all we can tell is that this is a nanotech world now, where something this magical is mundane enough to be in a jewelry store. And that Rei Toei isn't SHODAN or else everything would be gray goo. I figure at the very least she and her thousands of clones would enjoy a pop celebrity status in Japan or Korea as the apotheosis of all girl groups. Looking back at the Sprawl trilogy, things happen because characters actively make them happen, and it either is clear that they're doing it, that they want it, and why they want it, either right away or eventually. (There are even rewards for readers who recognize Molly Millions from Johnny Nemonic.) In Neuromancer, the Tessier-Ashpools lose their grip on purpose and drift until they eventually meet their fate. Even in the weirder Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, the voodoo god AIs at least seem to have some kind of motivation, but I felt like I was starting to see things being left unexplained with the explanation being that they're AI, and we can't understand their motivations anyway. In All Tomorrow's Parties, no one has a clear goal, and characters are just kind of sucked toward a nodal point, and that's the explanation. They're all drifting. It's just a historical force at work, or a technological/historical tide. Welp, at least the bad guy dies at the killer's hands, Fontaine gets some relief sex from his second wife, and Rydell and Chevette get back together. I think. I dunno. Anyone have a different take? doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Jul 14, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2015 21:16
|
|
|
All I can say is that what you count as a negative (everyone converging on a historical event/place/time) for me was a positive. It remains my favorite novel of is, though The Peripheral might have usurped it. As for Rei Toei's fate: I'm glad he left it ambiguous, because it would be very hard to write a good explanation for what happens when thousands of naked Japanese pop stars suddenly appear. Are they human? Do they have rights? Would someone just round them up and destroy them? Or would they just get accepted as a new kind of life form? The questions raised by Rei's trick are just too big to satisfactorily cover without writing a whole novel about it, I think.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2015 18:22
|
|
|
precision posted:All I can say is that what you count as a negative (everyone converging on a historical event/place/time) for me was a positive. It remains my favorite novel of is, though The Peripheral might have usurped it. Yeah, I agree, and that forms a large part of my dissatisfaction. A huge whirlwind of buildup, and an ending shrouded in fog. I wouldn't say it's bad, but I would have wanted more to grasp onto. A bit worse than "wanting more" at the end of the novel, I felt like I worked for more than this. But I take your point, Rei's climax is the end of one era, the start of another. It's kind of wrong to wrap it up with a bow. And there isn't enough to pen a whole novel over... maybe.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2015 05:31
|
|
doctorfrog posted:Yeah, I agree, and that forms a large part of my dissatisfaction. A huge whirlwind of buildup, and an ending shrouded in fog. I wouldn't say it's bad, but I would have wanted more to grasp onto. A bit worse than "wanting more" at the end of the novel, I felt like I worked for more than this. Gibson sort of addressed the vagueness of the ending in an interview on Ain't It Cool News, of all places: William Gibson posted:For me, I'm pretty sure the way I use nanotechnology in these novels actually BUGS the real nanotechnologist to no end. They'd probably be inclined to dismiss me as sort of willfully lightweight about the whole thing. But when you've got somebody promising you a technology that will make everyone immortal and abolish the very concept of wealth, I just kind of throw up my hands and say, "You win -- I can't imagine that." You know -- "There's no work for me here."
|
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2015 18:56
|
|
|
Yeah, it would be hard (maybe less satisfying?) to imagine what comes next and then solidify it into something that fit in with the previous couple hundred pages. So you have a close-focus ending in the curiosity shop to thrive on. I understand it, but still griping. There's this ending to The Difference Engine, which (I'm reaching a good 15 years into the past here) has London basically replaced with giant mechanical calculating machines in a choking atmosphere and the smaller machines that serve them, and a self-aware intelligence is growing there. I'm seeing a couple parallels there with the growing/living buildings of the Bridge Trilogy and the emergence of the media construct, her attempt at 'marriage' on the island, that sort of thing. Both feel kind of invasive, vaguely threatening.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2015 19:06
|
|
|
I've never read Gibson. Is Neuromancer fast-paced? I really want something exciting.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2015 01:09
|
|
|
blue squares posted:I've never read Gibson. Is Neuromancer fast-paced? I really want something exciting. Read the short story "Burning Chrome" to get a taste.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2015 02:31
|
|
|
Or even the anthology titled "Burning Chrome". Gibson is capable of a fast pace, and I would say that Neuromancer is fast-paced, but when in doubt, short stories are inherently fast-paced.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2015 08:43
|
|
|
All his books move at a fast clip, but his earlier work is more verbose ("purple" if you want to be cruel) so it depends if that's your bag or not. The Bridge Trilogy is very fast paced and the prose is trimmed down to almost the bare essentials, so if Neuromancer doesn't click for you, try Virtual Light (or Pattern Recognition, but the Bigend trilogy severely de-emphasizes any kind of "action" elements).
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2015 20:55
|
|
|
Hinterlands from Burning Chrome is probably my favorite sci fi short ever. It's not connected to any of the trilogies, thouhg. It's just evocative as hell.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2015 22:33
|
|
|
Snapchat A Titty posted:Hinterlands from Burning Chrome is probably my favorite sci fi short ever. It's not connected to any of the trilogies, thouhg. It's just evocative as hell. Burning Chrome is a great loving collection. "The Belonging Kind" is PKD as hell and I really like it. So is "The Gernsback Continuum" actually.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2015 22:52
|
|
|
Yeah it's a fantastic set of short stories. Belonging Kind creeps me out in an entertaining way. I never really got into the Gernsback Continuum, I guess I hadn't read enough old sci-fi when I first read it, and now it's too late so I can't put myself into that frame of mind again. The dogfight and hologram rose fragment ones are great too, they're like the titular story plausibly set in the Sprawl universe.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2015 23:21
|
|
|
Dogfight was good, but it's too sad and uncomfortable for me to read again.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2015 23:24
|
|
|
Sad is good sometimes!
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2015 23:28
|
|
|
Snapchat A Titty posted:Sad is good sometimes! Yeah, I can't agree more, but he kinda rapes that girl who's brain has been wired to perceive human touch as pain. That's pretty hosed up.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2015 23:31
|
|
|
Snak posted:Yeah, I can't agree more, but he kinda rapes that girl who's brain has been wired to perceive human touch as pain. That's pretty hosed up. Ah gently caress I somehow only remembered the sad old dude playing virtual dogfights. Yeah that is awful. I should read the whole collection again sometime soon.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2015 23:37
|
|
|
I mean, it's kind of part of the same exploration of sad, dark ways that human nature twists itself, it's not out of place in the story, but I don't want to read about it again any time soon.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2015 00:01
|
|
|
It's disturbing on a bunch of levels. Aside from the whole thing as a cowardly assault, the character is making the value choice of a lowlife scumbag. He's throwing away a human relationship (however brief it might be), and inflicting trauma on a vulnerable person, so he can beat a guy at a video game who has nothing else going for him in his life. It's as pathetic as it is repugnant. It's the opposite of that episode of the Simpsons where Homer goes after this big fish to impress the guys at the bait shop instead of work on his marriage, then throws the trophy away when confronted by Marge.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2015 02:53
|
|
|
New Rose Hotel is loving incredible and I genuinely think the film version is a masterpiece.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2015 03:44
|
|
|
Burning Chrome is so loving good. There's not a bad story in it. And the cover art is neat.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2015 11:16
|
|
|
precision posted:New Rose Hotel is loving incredible and I genuinely think the film version is a masterpiece. The film version would have been a lot better if you didn't have to hear every line of dialogue twice.
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2016 05:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 08:03 |
|
|
I just reread the Blue Ant trilogy, and one of the things that struck me this time was how it can be read as a trilogy about design in general and art specifically. Pattern Recognition is about film and branding, Spook Country is about locative art and performance art, and Zero History is about fashion. I picked up on the design elements on my first read, because he kind of hits you over the head with them, but I didn't think about how they play out in different ways across the trilogy.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2016 18:17
|
|
