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Thanks, guys, I haven't opened a Gibson book in about ten years. Just finished Burning Chrome and Neuromancer, and now onto Count Zero. I forgot how much fun his stuff was.
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Jun 4, 2014 06:28
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 18:03 |
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Just finished the Sprawl trilogy, and I never realized that I hadn't read Mona Lisa Overdrive. I really enjoyed it. It got kind of abstract at the end and maybe not so satisfying because of that, but it was nice to have a wrap on certain players that had been there even before Neuromancer (Molly and the Finn). I read Neuromancer in high school as part of a science fiction class, so it's a real favorite of mine. About a year or two later, armed with the purchasing power that comes with after-school jobs, I joined a CD club, this thing they had in the 90's that let you buy a bunch of CD's for cheap up front, if you promised to buy 4 at full price over a year. In the 90's, it was among the better ways to get your hands on music if you lived in the suburbs far from cool record stores, and generally couldn't stomach the $17 price tag that albums came with back then. At any rate, I bought Billy Idol's Cyberpunk album for cheapie cheaps, and it was a revolutionary buy. It introduced me (as someone who listened almost exclusively to top 40 modern rock/grunge) to a more electronically produced and manipulated sound, to non-music skits in between tracks, stuff like that. Plus, the theme was very obviously cribbed from Gibson's works, and the feeling of movies and music from that era and genre. It was just this great, weird, melty thing that seemed to contain a world inside of it. It also marks a point in my media consumption career where I realized that I could really enjoy something that can probably objectively be reviewed as a completely unlistenable disaster. I never read a review of the album, but I have a very strong feeling to this day that it could not possibly have performed very well. Cyberpunk is simultaneously a work of genius, and a piece of garbage, and I love it.  I mean, just take a look at that cover. I think the word "Cyberpunk" written in the default Greek font that comes with every word processor, that every middle schooler who finds it and uses it because it looks cryptic, says it all.
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Jul 1, 2014 20:56
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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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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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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 |
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Jul 14, 2015 21:16
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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.
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Jul 20, 2015 05:31
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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.
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Jul 20, 2015 19:06
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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.
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Dec 26, 2015 02:31
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 18:03 |
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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.
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Dec 31, 2015 02:53
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