camrogers | (no subject)

I'm halfway through Spook Country, William Gibson's latest (it came out a year or so ago.) I've been rereading his stuff for the last few months, when I've had time. He gave up writing specfic once he realised we were now living in the future, and then his stories switched to tales extrapolating on current iPod-chic cyberpunk2.1 cloak-and-dagger trends that turn the gears in places we don't - or can't - look. The usual Gibson things are in there: low-profile corporations so rich they're omnipotent, everyman protagonist (usually female) hired by said company for their one unique culturally-specific skill and given an unlimited expense account, parallel stories running thousands of kilometres apart that eventually intertwine in the last chapter. His voice and style were the single biggest influence on me as a writer, and is largely responsible for me being able to work out what my voice was. He's probably the only writer I've really stuck with, and it's been almost 20 years since I first picked up something of his.

I do wish he'd turn out at least one more 1980s-style cyberpunk novel though. He says it can't be done, but I think it can. You just write the thing like it's still 1983 and you're speculating on life in the 21st century.

Which is precisely how they should shoot a film of Neuromancer, in my opinion: CDs don't exist, music and data is stored on tape, and Coke still comes in bottles with caps or cans with ring pulls. The net is scary VR, computers are greenscreens and people are still deeply social in meatspace: bars, clubs, bands, poker games, road trips, kitbashed communities, artists, streetcorner prophets. No 'social networking applications.' No blogs. No mobile phones. No email. People who know how to put one foot in front of the other without Googling it first. The lateral repurposing of cast off high tech by the cast out low life.

Putting Hayden Christiansen in it is not a good first move.

The articles I've found date from January. I'm hoping it doesn't fly. The guy who did Torque was directing, last I heard.

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To be fair, I remember Case being a bit of a dick, lacking many social skills.

How are you liking Spook Country? I enjoyed it, but I think Pattern Recognition was stronger.

You make a fair point about Case, but I still think Christiansen is a bad, bad move. He's too gormless, he can't act and he's way, way too 21st-century self-absorbed. It transmits.

Spook Country's a solid book, but it lacks when stacked against his previous stuff. Pattern Recogntion felt like a 3.5 or 4 out of 5. This is a solid 3, IMO.

I despise him, and it was when I read about how he begged Lucas (probably by holding onto his leg and whining while Lucas tried to walk to his golf cart) to be in the Vader suit, and they built a suit where Woodenson was actually peering out of the neck because of the height difference, that I realised I would probably throw some money toward a joint assassination fund, adding extra money for a particularly long and painful death.

I still think Gibsons greatest work is Johnny Mnemonic. It's fifteen pages stamped indelibly on my brain like a white-hot literary brand.

Johnny Mnemonic is concentrated Gibson. Actually, pretty much all the stories in Burning Chrome are, in one way or another. It's actually one of my favourite pieces of his work. I need to go dig that up.

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