William Gibson & Neuromancer

[stdPikachu]

Dicks was an amphetamine abuser right?

I think something of that manic suspicion shows in his work

A Scanner Darkly is basically a thinly veiled account of his own descent into drug abuse hell, what with feeling like shit, suspecting yourself, all your friends, and generally stopping being human.

 

[Blagsta]

Once you've finished the Neuromancer trilogy, read the Virtual Light trilogy - Virtual Light, Idoru & All Tomorrow's Parties. Then read some Pat Cadigan, I recommend Synners and Tea From an Empty Cup.

 

[jæd]

He wrote it on a typewriter, before he'd ever owned a computer. Apparently when he got one in the end he found it very disappointing.

It shows in places, especially when Case is trying to shift a whopping 1Mb of hot RAM... He hadn't been to Japan either, so the geography of that part is a bit off...

Personally I prefer his later stuff as its much more realistic... (And researched)

 

[newbie]

Does nobody but me rate Idoru? Neuromancer was great (and the market in body parts/ shift of focus eastwards is proving to be even more prophetic than jacking in to the web) but I thought Idoru was better.

 

[rich!]

If i remember rightly, all that Neuromancer stuff was written before the internet, which is (kind of) interesting. Relatively little of the real world has actually moved in that (being physically jacked into the net) direction.

Before Gibson knew about the Internet, at least - which is one reason why it's such such good SF.

Oh, and have you seen internet junkies? The only reason they're not physically connected is it's not commercially available...

 

[kyser_soze]

A great moment in Neuromancer, showing up Gibson's technical ignorance, is when, along with the Ono-Sendai, Case asks for a modem...in Gibson's words:

'I had no idea what a modem was. I just liked the sound of the word.'

If i remember rightly, all that Neuromancer stuff was written before the internet, which is (kind of) interesting.

Gibson uses what some futurologist dude called 'invisible literature' (stuff like think tank essays, obscure military research projects) to create his worlds, and while there wasn't a WWW there was an internet when Neuromancer was written...lots of other stuff, such as the stealth planes, his whole insight in cyber-warfare...all of it taken from this invisible literature...

It might be cos i've read the Sprawl books to death, but I actually prefer the Virtual Light stuff - Laney's pattern recognition thing, Slitscan (which is one of Gibson's greatest creations IMO), Rei Torei herself...not to mention the Bridge...shame Pattern Recognition, basically a re-run through his previous 6 books, was such a drop off in quality.

Difference Engine rules too...'line streaming' on the Zephyr, the most amazing vision of a British Empire in alliance with the French...

 

[Crispy]

Although I think he over-sells tha actual calculating power of mechanical computers.

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

isn't it's neromancer all tomorrows parties virtual light idoru there's 4 books in the series though to be fair there's alot of the prototype in fragments of hologram rose and the other stories in buringing chrome (which inc's jonny mnemonic)

 

[kyser_soze]

Sprawl sequence:

Burning Chrome (short stories, some set before Neuromancer, some not even remotely attached (The Gernsback Consortium & Red Star, Winter Orbit for example))
Neuromancer
Count Zero
Mona Lisa Overdrive

Idoru Sequence:
Virtual Light
Idoru
All Tomorrow's Parties

 

[Structaural]

Get hold of a copy of Mirrorshades as well, for one the earliest cyberpunk short story anthologies. It's got a short by Gibson:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gernsback_Continuum

 

[kyser_soze]

That's in Burning Chrome - it's about some designer bloke who starts hallucinating 30s deco skyscrapers and white-jumpsuit clad superhumans.

 

[G. Fieendish]

Re:The Gernsback Continium
As I recall, the protagonist was a photographer comissioned to do photos for a coffee table book about U.S Art Deco...
After exposure over a period of time to tatty/kitsch Art Deco architecture he starts hallucinating...
( Note: A film student did a low budget version of this, starring Toyah Wilcox & the late Don Henderson, under the title of Tomorrow Never Comes (?).
It formed part of a double bill with Johnny Memonic, when the latter film was cinematically released un the U.K. Reportedly, said film made a profit, unlike Johnny Memonic....)

 

[nosos]

So good.

I wish I'd brough it with me

 

[Lysistrata]

I like Idoru, I like all of Gibson's books. Someone mentioned Geoff Ryman, I'd definitely recommend "Air" about a remote Asian village discovering cyberspace. I'm a big fan of Geoff Noon although some of his more recent ones have been a bit hit and miss. That's because he takes risks which don't always work - better than churning out the same old, same old stuff.

 

[kyser_soze]

I dunno, I've found Noon's stuff to be predictably wacky and unpredictable - certainly his themes of blending psychedelia/phasic reality (such as falling out of cars) are a consistent thing...his early stuff is the mutts tho, and I like the way his first 4 or 5 books (up to Pixel Juice) all happen vaugely within the same reality.

 

[elevendayempire]

I always preferred Virtual Light, tbh. But I did read Neuromancer when I was pretty young, so it's probably due for a reappraisal.

SG

 

[Stigmata]

I read Burning Chrome and I really couldn't get on with it. It just seemed so soulless and the characters seemed like ciphers. Maybe that's the idea.

 

[rich!]

Although I think he over-sells tha actual calculating power of mechanical computers.

I dunno - I'm constantly amazed at the complexity of things mechanical engineers build, and the sheer number of computroons necessary to simulate them. Whilst they were pushing it a bit, it's not too hard to envisage some kind of layering of machines like some of the low-power IBM 360's producing surprisingly complex high levels...

 

[slainte]

Hmm great book Dan Simmons Hyperion and the sequel Fall of Hyperion..stop at that cause the third and forth were shite and clearly he was struggling to fufill some publishing deal

But the those two books are brillant.

 

[Hi-ASL]

This one sticks in the mind:

Jeff Noon: Vurt
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vurt-Jeff-N...3425540?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191167746&sr=8-1

Amazon.co.uk Review
If you like literary science fiction, then Jeff Noon is the author for you. Vurt, winner of the 1994 Arthur C. Clarke award, is a cyberpunk novel with a difference, a rollicking, dark, yet humorous examination of a future in which the boundaries between reality and virtual reality are as tenuous as the brush of a feather.

Synopsis
Take a trip in a stranger's head. Along rainshot streets with the stash riders, a posse of hip malcontents, hooked on the most powerful drug you can imagine ...Vurt feathers ...But as the Game Cat says, Be careful, be very careful. This ride is not for the weak ...Scribble isn't listening. He has to find his lost love. A journey towards the ultimate, perhaps even mythical, Vurt Feather ...Curious Yellow. 'Passionate, distinctive, demanding and enthralling'. - "The Times". 'Too beautiful for bikers, too harsh for hippies'. - "New Stateman and Society". 'Bold and accomplished ...It screams out to be read'. - "City Life". 'Refreshing, disturbing and original'. - "Independent".

 

[yield]

nosos, I reckon you'd probably enjoy Babylon Babies by Maurice G. Dantec. It's a great book, some of it went well over my head but dead gripping read.

"Dantec’s prose is a hybrid of noir thriller, science fiction, metaphysics, cyberpunk post-humanism, psychedelia and mysticism. Inspired by Philip K. Dick, William S. Burroughs, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze and other extrapolationists of the future..."

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

ReMix and RedRobe by John Courtney Grimwood. I'll lend them to you next time you pop round

 

[kyser_soze]

JC-G generally...the NVenice, Alex Gibson, Razz etc storylines are really good, but the Arabesk books are far, far better sci-fi...not too sure about the latest stuff tho.

IF you're after some good ole fashioned shoot em up sci fi, I recommend Neal Asher's Polity books or, if you really love mad creatures, the Spatterjay novels...

 

[mango5]

I've just been enjoying William Gibson again with audiobooks I'd echo Blagsta - read Pat Cadigan. Great stuff.

 

[johnnymarrsbars]

Recursion by Tony Ballantyne.

 

[ChrisC]

Hmm great book Dan Simmons Hyperion and the sequel Fall of Hyperion..stop at that cause the third and forth were shite and clearly he was struggling to fufill some publishing deal

But the those two books are brillant.

I really enjoyed Endymion books. Can't see what was shite about them. Oh well YMMV.