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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WTF?! God, no. Please, I'd prefer to see this film die before it's released that know it's been trashed by Anakin Skywalker.
And I say that with William Gibson up there with Iain M. Banks as a personal favourite author and the one who woke me up to how damn good speculative fiction can be.

You want relevancy? Hayden Christensen had just turned three when "Neuromancer" was published.

I saw Jumper.

Cam's idea is good, but won't work.
Where are the marketing ops?

Actually, as a movie, I think Cam's idea would be great. Very visual. And it would tie in nicely with the whole 80s revival.

The problem with writing a novel like that is that it would be deliberately retro. The orginal Sprawl trilogy was trying to say something about the future. Another novel in that vein would be steampunk with chrome instead of brass -- it would be about the past.

That's precisely it. As a genre, cyberpunk is something we can never truly go home to. It's now deeply, legitimately retro.

It would be possible, I suppose, to extrapolate on future trends and society from this point forward, but it wouldn't be cyberpunk (nanopunk?). Furthermore I wonder if it'd be as interesting as cyberpunk was, by dint of the rise of a kind of omniscience via Google, surveillance, etc. It's hard to have a good chase movie when mobile phone towers, GPS, credit card transactions and urban security cameras do the work of the antagonist. The Jason Bourne novels do okay within the framework, but No Country For Old Men couldn't have.

Why wouldn't it work? Establish that firmly in the first few minutes, as well as via the advance publicity, and it's a marketing hook. As well as establishing the director as someone whose actually thought about what they're doing. IMO, at least.

Fact is, retro scifi is making a comeback by way of steampunk, and increasingly films are setting stories in a pre-Google era because everyday omniscience sucks the drama from a story.

Why wouldn't it work?

I was being snarky about the Hollywood system and the lack of marketing tie-ins. :)

Ah. My turn to get it wrong. :)

I think our snark sensors are out of alignment. :)

It wouldn't matter when he was born, provided he was right for the role - which he isn't. Fact is, the film needs a less-than-obvious approach and I'm not convinced the director's right either. The Earthside stuff should pretty much have the look and feel of Nil By Mouth, and when it transfers to orbital it should almost be like the characters have wound up in a completely different movie. As it stands I'm expecting the whole thing to be updated and...

Eh. Wait and see I guess.

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.

We're doing Neuromancer as part of my scifi class (this week's theme is Cyberpunk) and it was the first time reading it for me, and here you are posting about him. Weird!

I don't know if Hayden's gonna be in the movie, last I checked imdb quickly took down his name because it was just (?) a rumour. Unfortunately I don't think the novel can be adapted competently to film. D:

I absolutely believe that it can. It's a straight up 'real world' story. The key is nailing tone by accurately presenting it as an artifact of the time in which it was written. I don't know if that would equate to financial success or failure, but as a faithful adaptation I believe it'd be right on the money.

Ah, I phrased that incorrectly. What I was trying to say is that although your ideas for how the film can be made are good (and I agree with them!) I just think the filmmakers are going to focus more on producing something that will be a 'big hit' and ultimately less faithful to the book. I don't know, I guess I'm just overly wary of filmmakers? XD

hello: a strange coincidence - I too have been traversing the Gibson back catalogue exhaustively.

SC is next on my list, I'm currently on Pattern Recognition. And I, too, wish sorely that he'd put one more cyberpunk novel in for the team.

:)

BTW I've still got your book here. I can mail it back if you'd like to email me an addy.

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