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WAFFLEHOUND
Apr 26, 2007


William Gibson is a Canadian author best known for his works of cyberpunk and his help in essentially creating that genre. If you've ever been tempted to delve into the world of criminal hackers and the near-ish future but were scared away by how cheesy it all sounds, then we're here to help convince you to buy some books! If you're a closeted sci-fi fan, then feel safe in knowing that Gibson's first book, Neuromancer, is considered a seminal work of 20th century science fiction and its influence is unbelievable, directly influencing everything from The Matrix to the English language. In some ways he's a divisive author, his attempts at mimicking how people speak with regards to branding and his prose tends to handle adjectives in a slightly weird way considering how consistent he is with it. If nouns-as-adjectives drive you nuts then you might want to toughen up your resolve because that's the way English as a whole is headed anyways! Gibson is primarily a futurist, and his work tends to deal with themes of technology and the ramifications of things like AI, technologically advanced criminal underclasses, and pants.



The Sprawl Trillogy is certainly Gibson's best known work, and most influential. Set vaguely in the 22nd century, the trilogy follows a loose thread which follows several characters at different paces. Between the first and the second book, it's hard to tell that you're reading a series other than the setting (the Sprawl, for which the series is named). Despite being written in the early-mid 1980s, the series has aged incredibly well. Gibson has been renowned for his foresight as a futurist and the themes in some of the books (such as the ubiquity of the internet and computers in general) translate very very well into a modern setting. Some things that would have been harder to predict are obviously a bit dated, tape is still the primary storage device for large amounts of data in some settings, for example. The trilogy spans roughly 8 or so years in two chunks, where the second book jumps far forward and the third picks up right after the second.

1. Neuromancer is the first book of the Sprawl trilogy, following an ex-hacker with burned out neural implants limiting his ability to use a computer as he stumbles from chop shop to chop shop around Chiba high on speed while basically self destructing hardcore. Molly Millions, a girl with implants that basically make her the archetypical cyberpunk badass, ends up picking him up on the orders of a mysterious third party and they start a journey into the heart of a multi-national hereditary empire with a colourful and beievable cast of hosed up rogues. Were you a fan of Zion in the Matrix? Then you're going to love where it came from, because space rastas is pretty much the greatest invention ever. That said, I'm trying to be really vague so as to not spoil the book for those who haven't read it, since it's such a seminal work.

2. Count Zero jumps forward in time, and follows a decidedly less competent script kiddy going by the name "Count Zero" who gets himself in way over his head as he attempts to navigate a heavy-hitting criminal underground and a decidedly less familiar cyberspace than existed in the years before Neuromancer. Tie this in with possibly one of the most interesting written corporate defections in history (which has far more in common with a Cold War era defection, involving tactical nukes, high-speed jets, and a team of mercenaries) and a decidedly different thread about a French gallery owner tracking down a talented artist for an unbelievably wealthy benefactor. It's a good book that doesn't move at a breakneck pace and instead builds and spends tension well, but it pales in comparison to what comes before and after in large part due to the fact that it's sort of a grand setup for the events tying the three books together.

3. Mona Lisa Overdrive
Is another jump forward, though a much smaller one. Focusing again on a different character (who was present in Count Zero) and re-introducing Molly from Neuromancer. There's a lot of tension saved up by this book which gets rapidly spent in the best way possible. AIso, near-Lovecraftian unknowns, massive technological advances and transhumanism in a short timeframe, and a Yakuza boss's daughter all tie up for what is a very very satisfying sendoff to the trilogy. By the time this book ends you'll certainly realize that what you've been reading is decidedly different from how it started, though many of the themes remain the same from Neuromancer, the scale has grown and become more local at the same time. The backwaters of the future United States are painted in vivid detail in contrast to the populous Sprawl, and it leaves you wishing for more, which unfortunately there really isn't.




The Blue Ant Trillogy
Like Gibson's first trilogy, the Blue Ant trilogy operates on kind of a two threads principle where the first book stands somewhat alone from the second two. This is perhaps one of the most underrated bodies of fiction I can name, and I'd seriously recommend anyone able to pick up the first book and give it a read. It follows much more contemporary themes, all of the books taking place in the 2000s (Roughly 2001-2011) and focuses heavily on branding, organized crime, advertising, the military-industrial complex, and ultra-wealth. In many ways it's the spiritual successor to the Boxmaker thread from Count Zero.

1. Pattern Recognition
A bit of a strange book at first, though it warms up relatively quickly. A branding consultant with essentially a phobia of logos and branding is hired by a somewhat aloof multi-billionaire to track down the creator of some "footage" that is sweeping the internet and is being tracked by "footageheads" in what is actually a very believable rendition of what would become fairly common of fandoms only a few years after this book was written. The book follows a theme of examining ultra-wealth, the merger of old and new technologies and memetic culture.

2. Spook Country
I'm a bit biased here, because this is probably one of my favourite books ever written, and I think it's hands-down Gibson's best work. An ex-rocker gets hired by a possibly-nonexistent magazine to track down an artist who deals with Locative Art, projected in virtual reality into real spaces (this is actually a thing, apparently). Simultaneously, a washed up but highly educated benzo addict wandering around New York is picked up by a possibly rogue US intelligence agent to spy on a Cuban family who communicates exclusively via text with Volapuk encoding. The aloof billionaire from the first book returns (indeed, he runs through the entire trilogy. His firm is "Blue Ant".) Profiteering from the Iraq War, emergent art communities, the humanity of the ultra-wealthy, everything coalesces into a wonderful roller coaster of a book that tries to not to pretend to be anything more than it is. It's superbly written, and you should read it.

3. Zero History
Following the same two central characters as the previous book, this book is about pants. Sort of. It's good. But it's about pants. It's fantastic. I'm not even going to pretend I can do this book better justice than Vice did:

quote:

In these three works, Gibson explores the dark, dark world of marketing, advertising, and trend forecasting. Unsurprisingly, it’s pretty scary stuff.

Marketing has reached such a fever pitch of aggression and insidiousness today that it’s easy to feel like we’re the victims of a full-scale military campaign of propaganda, one in which slimy guys in modern glass cubicles decide that they know exactly how all of our brains work and what we all want, all the time. What it might come down to is that they think they are smarter than us. William Gibson manipulates that feeling perfectly, and shows us an all-too plausible—and often so frighteningly accurate that it’s also genuinely hilarious—idea of what the reality of marketing could be.

In Hubertus Bigend, the sort-of-antagonist of these three novels, Gibson has created the ultimate marketing man. He’s powerful and shadowy, and he seeks out young “creatives” (more on that word toward the end of this interview) the way a wolf seeks sheep. Now, in Zero History, Bigend’s world brushes up against another 21st century growth industry: the private military. And what’s all the fuss about? Pants. And how compelling is it? In the hands of Gibson, it reads and feels like a matter of life and death. It convinces one that we might be heading for a world where the right to market quasi-military pants is as fiercely contested as national borders once were.


I won't really write anything here other than to say "Gibson wrote another cyberpunk trilogy between the Blue Ant trilogy and the Sprawl trilogy and from what exposure I've had to it it seems a wee bit poo poo" but maybe I'm wrong, I'm re-reading some of it soon.



Johnny Mnenomic
A short story taking place in the Sprawl before the events of Neuromancer. It actually is referenced a fair bit in Neuromancer as Molly is one of the main characters, but it is by no way a necessary read. That said, it's pretty decent, very short, and spawned one of the best worst movies ever. Seriously, watch the movie (but be hammered).

Burning Chrome
A collection of Gibson's earlier short stories. It's a totally satisfying read, and while most of them cover sci-fi in various ways there's a wide array of intertests, from late-Soviet space stations to alien life in bars. This is also where you'll find Johnny Mnemonic, if you're so inclined to read that. Most Half Priced Books that I've been in have a couple of copies of this, since it's been in circulation forever, and it's definitely worth picking up if you're someone who has a train or bus commute and wants interesting reading from a competent author in fairly short bursts.
I'll have to come back to this thread and format it better in a bit.

WAFFLEHOUND fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Jan 30, 2014

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5-meo-catte
Apr 23, 2012

caffeine
you're all that I wanted in a girl
you're all that I need in the world
5-meo-catte easily takes the first post.

i am a bee
Apr 17, 2006
bees, bees, bees, just lookin' for a good time

WAFFLEHOUND posted:


The Bridge Trilogy
I won't really write anything here other than to say "Gibson wrote another cyberpunk trilogy between the Blue Ant trilogy and the Sprawl trilogy and from what exposure I've had to it it seems a wee bit poo poo" but maybe I'm wrong, I'm re-reading some of it soon.

I'll have to come back to this thread and format it better in a bit.

Maybe it's because my school library had a copy of Virtual Light that I fell in love with without having even heard of Gibson before back in the day, but I have a lot of time for The Bridge Trilogy. It's a little lighter than Gibson's early stuff, but the lucidity helps sometimes. As great as Neuromancer is, it can be off putting to some readers and The Blue Ant trilogy, while also really good, doesn't quite have the same hook.

windshipper
Jun 19, 2006

Dr. Whet Faartz would like to know if this smells funny to you?
I keep meaning to get around to reading The Blue Ant trilogy, as I've heard it's really damned good. It'll have to wait for a bit though as I'm currently reading a book, and have two others coming in the mail today (The Earth Abides and A Canticle for Leibowitz).

Tony Montana
Aug 6, 2005

by FactsAreUseless
Ooh hello :) Been meaning to get back to Gibson and will when I'm done with my current pile.

Tape still is the main storage medium for much of corporate data, but you'd need to be a console-warrior to know that ;)

corn in the bible
Jun 5, 2004

Oh no oh god it's all true!
Idoru is the best William Gibson novel, by the way.

Count Roland
Oct 6, 2013

crowfeathers posted:

Idoru is the best William Gibson novel, by the way.

The only thing I remember about that one is the bodyguard with the tomahawk.

It was ok.

WAFFLEHOUND
Apr 26, 2007

crowfeathers posted:

Idoru is the best William Gibson novel, by the way.

I thought the Johnny Mnemonic movie was better than Idoru. Seriously, all I remember from Idoru at all was that it read like this weird Japanese fetishization novel. That said, if you want to write something about the Bridge Trilogy I'll drop it in the OP.

Xguard86
Nov 22, 2004

"You don't understand his pain. Everywhere he goes he sees women working, wearing pants, speaking in gatherings, voting. Surely they will burn in the white hot flames of Hell"
One thing I think Gibson is really good at is names. "Case" "Armitage" "Villa Straylight" "The sprawl" hes just got a weird gift with coming up with really satisfying names for people/places.

WAFFLEHOUND
Apr 26, 2007
Case was so good he used it twice. But I actually agree, he does this fantastic thing with both real and unreal places and products where he makes them feel believebly tangible. I mean, even "Gabriel Hounds" is just weird and totally works for a luxury streetwear brand (even if Hounds is totally just Gibson fictionalizing Errolson Hugh in the best possible way), and it meshes with the real product names totally organically.

I think it stems from his style of actually naming things with brand names throughout (Maas-Biotech, Ono-Sendai, Apple, Blackberry, Maybach, etc.) rather than giving the one product/place he wants focused on a name and then just kind of describing the rest in generic terms.

Blitter
Mar 16, 2011

Not sure if Gibson's other movie belongs in the OP, but I feel compelled to mention it - New Rose Hotel (1998), directed by Abel Ferrara with Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, and Asia Argento. I think it's a better movie in pretty much every way than Johnny, but certainly had it's own problems..
:psyboom:
Holy crap, more problems than I realized - watch this interview with Abel Ferrara, and another here.

Abel Ferrara posted:

The whole film was based on her - and us - Willem and I doing the same thing that the character in the movie was doing, you know what mean. We’re both in love with the same girl. And she’s playing us against the middle. In real life. And she’s jerking these guys off in the movie, I mean what is she doing - she’s telling them she’s something she’s not. She’s sleeping with me saying she loves me; she’s with Willem, he doesn’t know she’s with me. I mean, come on. It was outrageous.

Abel Ferrara - about Asia posted:

I didn't mean to hit her. She just broke my nose, and I put my hand up [..] was completely broke and gave her a beautiful apartment in Greenwich Village that she totally trashed. Towards the end there, we were having these big fights. She'd be throwing wads of money at me, yelling, "I hate youuuuu. Take your loving money." I'm down on the floor, saying, "I'm trying to."

William Gibson - New Rose Hotel posted:

Seven rented nights in this coffin, Sandii. New Rose Hotel. How I want you now. Sometimes I hit you. Replay it so slow and sweet and mean, I can almost feel it.


It's worth a watch and despite the flaws I think it's pretty amazing.

Abel Ferrara posted:

And incidentally, Gibson loved the film. I once saw a whole list of films that he was unhappy with, that were produced from his writing. And New Rose Hotel was the only one that he was happy with. In fact, he went up to the Toronto Film Festival and represented it for us. He was so funny, because he was looking at the movie for the first time, and since it somewhat resembled what the gently caress he wrote, he was pretty happy. Because writers at this point, if they even think, "Oh, I didn't walk into the wrong theater," they're thrilled. But then come the questions: "Who made that?" "What's that piece of poo poo?" "Are they going to use the same footage over and over?" "Jesus Christ, couldn't you give them some money to finish the film?"

Blitter fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Feb 4, 2014

ZorajitZorajit
Sep 15, 2013

No static at all...
Burning Chrome contains some of my favorite short fiction, especially The Belonging Kind for it's Twilight Zone weirdness and Hinterlands for its obliterated beauty. And, as a cold-war politics nut, Red Star, Winter Orbit is just hilarious zeerust.

The Bridge Trilogy has its moments, and I think it's Gibson's take on the post-cyberpunk movement started by things like Snow Crash, it's a more believable future than other cyberpunk I think. But it does still feature the 90s belief that the internet willbe a place you walk around. One of the reasosn that Neuromancer holds up for me is that the tech is abstracted and hacking becomes this tricky, brain bending thing rather than fighting Tron with a cybersabre.

New Rose Hotel remains one of the worst movies I have ever seen. And there's still the rumors of a Neuromancer rumor. For as much as I love it, I kind of want the movie to get made and tank, just to finish a trilogy of filmakers unable to adapt Gibson.

Helsing
Aug 23, 2003

DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU :love::love::love: JOE BIDEN
I still remember reading Neuromancer sometime around the year 2000 and being struck by how much of The Matrix was ripped off from that book. The terminology, the character tropes, the overall aesthetic... It was all taken from that book, even if the actual plot went in a different direction.

Liveware
Feb 5, 2014

ZorajitZorajit posted:

The Bridge Trilogy has its moments, and I think it's Gibson's take on the post-cyberpunk movement started by things like Snow Crash, it's a more believable future than other cyberpunk I think.

I've always adored the Bridge trilogy. It felt thoroughly more grounded and near-future speculative than my other genre-related experiences at the time, though perhaps that owes itself to Bridge being written like a warped '90s setting than a true future setting.

When I first picked up the book in my youth I was enraptured by the depictions of the Walled City; a tight, closed, online community which bled over into real life. For the rest of my life I've been frequently reminded of it by certain things I see on and off the internet.

Rei Toei was something of a refreshingly novel character concept at the time; a synthetic sentience as an art form, fashioned from desire, created for entertainment. Years later I would also come to admire how prophetic he was regarding the Japanese creating such a thing.

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames
I agree with most of the OP, and Gibson has been consistently my favorite writer since I read Mona Lisa Overdrive in 1990. I liked Neuromancer and Count Zero, but MLO took everything so far beyond what came before it's ridiculous. Every character is a gem - Kumiko, Little Bird, Slick Henry, Mona... in fact, Molly/Sally is probably the least most interesting in the novel. When I want to point people to something that shows Gibson is more than a science fiction writer, I go to MLO. It's so inconsequentially about technology and so much more about people, and how people act, and how some things never change. Mona's history, from her life as a kid to the lovely life she has when we first meet her, is loving timeless.

But I'm going to have to severely disagree about the Bridge Trilogy. Virtual Light was kind of "eh" for me at first, but Idoru and especially All Tomorrow's Parties are probably his best novels. ATP in particular has such a brilliant economy of words it approaches minimalist poetry. And I love it.

Glad I'm not the only one who liked Zero History, too. Milgrim and Hollis Henry are great, but I may be a bit biased towards benzo addicts and former goth girls (being myself the former and married to the latter). The only thing I thought was a bit off was the character of Fiona, just because she really isn't given much dimension aside from "she's a cool young cute chick with a motorcycle".

I'll admit the first time I finished Spook Country I was like "WHAT?! THAT'S IT?!" but the ride there was well worth it. The ending being so anticlimactic was probably intentional, I guess.

edit: Oh, and Agrippa: A Book of the Dead needs to be in the OP. Not only for how loving weird the project was, but also how amazing of a poem it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrippa_%28a_book_of_the_dead%29

Seriously, just read that and remember it happened in 1992

precision fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Feb 7, 2014

DisDisDis
Dec 22, 2013
I read a bit of Idoru in a local coffee shop before it and a lot of the other books on their bookshelf disappeared. I can't really comment on its quality but if there's one thing the OP should mention it's that Gibson predicted the vocaloid phenomenon and that's really funny.

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames

DisDisDis posted:

I read a bit of Idoru in a local coffee shop before it and a lot of the other books on their bookshelf disappeared. I can't really comment on its quality but if there's one thing the OP should mention it's that Gibson predicted the vocaloid phenomenon and that's really funny.

"The Footage" in Pattern Recognition was also incredibly on the money. It predicted every creepy YouTube series/ARG/everything like that.

Notahippie
Feb 4, 2003

Kids, it's not cool to have Shane MacGowan teeth

precision posted:

"The Footage" in Pattern Recognition was also incredibly on the money. It predicted every creepy YouTube series/ARG/everything like that.

He's pretty prescient in general. I've always thought of the three trilogies as either intentionally or unintentionally dealing with predicting trends from the current zeitgeist. The Sprawl trilogy was all about the things people were trying to figure out in the 80s: runaway corporate control, the rise of Japan, and the idea of networked computers. By the Bridge trilogy, he's going back and dealing with the things nobody predicted in the 80s that were starting to emerge in the mid and late 90s: the whole idea of a social internet and a panopticon society. Then in the Blue Ant trilogy, he basically throws his hands up and stops trying to predict and instead writes a trilogy about claustrophobia and terrorism and the blurry lines between government and private contractors. I saw an interview where he admitted that the pace of change is too fast for him to try to predict the future anymore. I've been waiting to see if he comes out with a trilogy for the 10's, but no signs of that yet.

Stravinsky
May 31, 2011

precision posted:

"The Footage" in Pattern Recognition was also incredibly on the money. It predicted every creepy YouTube series/ARG/everything like that.

I liked the idea of "The Footage". The idea that a bunch of videos edited together to make a small clip to tell a story is a great idea. Its just the rest of the book that really drags it down for me. I really was not feeling the whole main character being allergic to logos and such. I always feel this way about his books though. There are these great vivid realized ideas but then you have about three more really bad ones surrounding them. For example: space rastafarian.

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames

Stravinsky posted:

I really was not feeling the whole main character being allergic to logos and such.

Her "allergy" to logo is actually A Thing! Also, Pattern Recognition was great for telling me about apophenia, because I have it and had no idea it was also A Thing. Apparently Gibson also has it, in an interview he said something about how he "tends his paranoia like a garden".

Notahippie posted:

I've been waiting to see if he comes out with a trilogy for the 10's, but no signs of that yet.

His new book is The Peripheral, he read a chapter of it last year so it should be out soon. It apparently deals with parallel realities, which sounds like something he would do really well.

Stravinsky
May 31, 2011

precision posted:

Her "allergy" to logo is actually A Thing! Also, Pattern Recognition was great for telling me about apophenia, because I have it and had no idea it was also A Thing. Apparently Gibson also has it, in an interview he said something about how he "tends his paranoia like a garden".

What really? I honestly thought it was him making poo poo up.

Liveware
Feb 5, 2014

precision posted:

His new book is The Peripheral, he read a chapter of it last year so it should be out soon. It apparently deals with parallel realities, which sounds like something he would do really well.

I seem to recall it was more multiple timelines/timeframes, and not necessarily in parallel. In any case, I can't wait.

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames

Stravinsky posted:

What really? I honestly thought it was him making poo poo up.

Nope. "Cool hunters" really exist, and they have the uncanny ability to predict whether a logo will be successful or not. The "allergy" to logos is pretty common, I've known quite a few people who are bothered by them.

As for apophenia, it's been a classified mental condition since the 50s.

http://www.skepdic.com/apophenia.html

ZorajitZorajit
Sep 15, 2013

No static at all...
I'm definitely looking forward to The Peripheral. It seems like Gibson is more comfortable with the pulpier aspects of his older work (at least that's the impression I got from the preview chapter.) And that it will be indisputabbly sci-fi. I'd love to see some more of his ideas from The Gernsback Continuum explored if he wants to do parallel realities.

Aside; any other Steely Dan fans also Gibson fans? Gibson is a fan of their's and there have been numerous references to them throughout his work, and some overlap of their work referencing his.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

precision posted:

Nope. "Cool hunters" really exist, and they have the uncanny ability to predict whether a logo will be successful or not. The "allergy" to logos is pretty common, I've known quite a few people who are bothered by them.

As for apophenia, it's been a classified mental condition since the 50s.

http://www.skepdic.com/apophenia.html

Nabokov's short story Signs and Symbols is a great play on a character with a condition similar to apophenia.

taser rates
Mar 30, 2010

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Nabokov's short story Signs and Symbols is a great play on a character with a condition similar to apophenia.

China Mieville also wrote a great short story, Details, that is sort of a riff on the concept.

precision
May 7, 2006

by VideoGames
Gibson's nonfiction is pretty great, too. I don't have Distrust That Particular Flavor but I've already read most of the pieces in it; his write-up on Singapore for Wired back in '93 is particularly interesting:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/gibson.html

:cool: "Do you have any Shonen Knife?"
:v: "Sir, this is a record store."

CaptainCrunch
Mar 19, 2006
droppin Hamiltons!
Having absolutely loved the Blue Ant trilogy (I love his other two, but this is my favorite of his work.) would anyone have any recommendations for other works that fit that "now, but maybe tomorrow, in the real world, but out on the socio-technological fringes" vibe that the Blue Ant books do so well? I keep re-reading those books to get my fix, but fall short when seeking new material.

Ensign_Ricky
Jan 4, 2008

Daddy Warlord
of the
Children of the Corn


or something...
Neuromancer may be one of my favorite books of all time, and Dixie Flatline one of my favorite characters. Also, WinterMute is a bastard.

D.O.G.O.G.B.Y.N.
Dec 31, 2011

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Thank you for this, OP. I was in doubt about reading anything else Gibson did after the Sprawl trilogy, which I read in the span of a month this summer. Neuromancer felt pretty good but it also felt like I've read it too late - having gotten used to heavier reads, most sci-fi just feels somewhat lacking nowadays (though Neuromancer did have some oomph that I hadn't seen before; its style is definitely novel). Might give his Blue Ant and his short stories a try sometime in the future, from the recommendations here.

Both Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive were OK, though by the latter I was kinda forcing myself to finish it. They felt unsatisfying in the immediate aftermath of having read them, but in retrospective they have some cool details to them - one essay I've read pointed out that CZ was somewhat of an exercise of Gibson's in expanding his own literary skills; not trying to do Neuromancer 2 but instead writing a calmer book, with more explorations of setting and of characterization. The hijacking scenes and the conclusion to Marly's plotline were very cool as well. MLO was a stabilization of the aforementioned skill-building; it had definitely some very interesting scenery and thematic directions (esp. on the emulation of life in virtual systems: Finn's "return" brought a smile to my face and it was awesome that the author killed off Angie and Bobby and had their consciousness transferred to the Matrix). I do have a faint feeling that the Yakuza boss daughter's plotline was a bit disposable; can't justify its importance to myself right now, but then again I don't think I do recall very well what happened in it. Anyone agrees, or thinks otherwise?

Xguard86 posted:

One thing I think Gibson is really good at is names. "Case" "Armitage" "Villa Straylight" "The sprawl" hes just got a weird gift with coming up with really satisfying names for people/places.

Yeah, also Hosaka, Maas Neotek - the brands and such. For a minimalist writer like Gibson, that's a pretty good skill. (I don't feel *totally* comfortable with calling him minimalist, given his fondness for pants and scenery, but it feels adequate in light of the fast pace of his novels.)

squashie
Dec 31, 2000
Forum Veteran
Huge Gibson fan, I need to re-read the Blue Ant books as they seem to have all blurred together in my head.

Does he still live in Vancouver?

Ataxerxes
Dec 2, 2011

What is a soldier but a miserable pile of eaten cats and strange language?
Gibson sure has a thing with names and with writing about really messed up people. The whole story of Armitage and Operation Screaming Fist just chilling to read.

Jhet
Jun 3, 2013

squashie posted:

Huge Gibson fan, I need to re-read the Blue Ant books as they seem to have all blurred together in my head.

Does he still live in Vancouver?

He does still live in Vancouver. You can follow him on twitter @GreatDismal too. He posts and retweets all sorts of random stuff. Often enough he tweets something about something he has written, is connected to what he's written, or is writing.

The first time I read most of his catalogue, I read it out of order. Lately, I've been going back and reading it all again in order from the frantic cyberpunk pace of Neuromancer, to the more subtle futures he's morphed into. I can still see the future going in far too many of those directions that it makes me wonder if it really is the right direction or if it's inevitable anyway.

Ensign_Ricky
Jan 4, 2008

Daddy Warlord
of the
Children of the Corn


or something...
Oh, and thank loving Christ the film adaptation of Neuromancer starring Hayden Goddamned Motherfucking Christensen as Case fell right the gently caress through.


Although if Martin Sheen had played Armitage, I might've given it a pass.

builds character
Jan 16, 2008

Keep at it.

Ensign_Ricky posted:

Oh, and thank loving Christ the film adaptation of Neuromancer starring Hayden Goddamned Motherfucking Christensen as Case fell right the gently caress through.


Although if Gary BuseyMartin Sheen had played Armitage, I might've given it a pass.

Truth.

Snak
Oct 10, 2005

I myself will carry you to the Gates of Valhalla...
You will ride eternal,
shiny and chrome.
Grimey Drawer
Please don't murder me, but Keanu Reeves could make a good Armitage, because he has cold, blank expression down pat.

I started Count Zero, but I'm going back to re-read Neuromancer before continuing it. And by reread, I mean inject it into my brain at 650 words-per-minute using spreeder. Not something I would do with a book that I hadn't read before, but it's working surprisingly well and it feel cyberpunk as poo poo.

Ensign_Ricky
Jan 4, 2008

Daddy Warlord
of the
Children of the Corn


or something...

Snak posted:

Please don't murder me, but Keanu Reeves could make a good Armitage, because he has cold, blank expression down pat.

Actually, that could work.

ZorajitZorajit
Sep 15, 2013

No static at all...

Ensign_Ricky posted:

Actually, that could work.

Ignoring that it would require getting Keanu Reeves attached to another William Gibson project. But, personally, I couldn't see him as Armitage, at least in my head, Armitage needs to be an imposing ex-military figure, in addition to being a dead-eyed reconstruction. So... Tommy Wiseau maybe?

Snak
Oct 10, 2005

I myself will carry you to the Gates of Valhalla...
You will ride eternal,
shiny and chrome.
Grimey Drawer
I thought of it after seeing him in Man of Tai Chi. I can't find a great screenshot, but his character in that movie is very mechanically reserved and sinister, with boiling rage just barely contained. Which isn't how I would describe Armitage, but I think if he could play his character in Man of Tai Chi that way on purpose, he could pull off Armitage.

edit: Well part of it is that he's like a foot taller than the titular 'Man of Tai Chi' but he pulls off being an incredibly imposing cold blooded killer in that movie. So I guess it depends who else is cast in the film...

I mean I'm not arguing that there aren't plenty of better actors for the role, of course there are, it was just a thought.

After seeing the Oldboy remake, Josh Brolin could definitely pull it off.

Snak fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Mar 17, 2014

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Ensign_Ricky
Jan 4, 2008

Daddy Warlord
of the
Children of the Corn


or something...

ZorajitZorajit posted:

Ignoring that it would require getting Keanu Reeves attached to another William Gibson project. But, personally, I couldn't see him as Armitage, at least in my head, Armitage needs to be an imposing ex-military figure, in addition to being a dead-eyed reconstruction. So... Tommy Wiseau maybe?

Absolutely not.




Tommy can play Jersey Bastion.

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