crumbz writes "It looks like the grand master of cyberpunk has a new novel coming out entitled Pattern Recognition. Apparently, reviewer copies have been making the rounds on ebay and the word on the street is that it is his best work in years."
Chill out, dude...
by
Akardam
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· Score: 3, Informative
You're a troll, but I'll bite.
I'm a fan of William Gibson (and other authors like him), but I don't have the time or the inclination to crawl the web for every bit of news about new books. That's what/. is for. A central place to collate news about stuff "we" like.
Akky
P.S. The story body ever so kindly provided you with a link to William Gibson's own website, where there is information about the new novel. I suggest you start there. You might even like some of his books.
Slack bastard authors
by
geoffybiggins
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· Score: 5, Funny
Hang on: "word on the street is that it is his best work in years." It's his only work in years, since '99 I believe. If people are going to write books, especially totally awesome rad books like Gibsons are, they could at least have the decency to write MORE, instead of making us wait so long, the bastards.
Re:Slack bastard authors
by
caino59
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· Score: 4, Funny
I've read it. I got it through a used book store on amazon. (I know your not supposed to do this because the write gets no money from it, but I'm going to buy a copy in hard cover when it gets out)
I will say it is one of his best books. It takes place in modern day time. Which is unusual for him, but it talks about the usual information and the net. But this time there is a little spin in the motives driving the characters.
I would say that anyone that likes Gibson's stuff, should get this book.
Re:I've read it
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The writer gets no money from it because he already got his money from the initial sell...there's nothing morally ethically or legally wrong with buying a used book, no one is getting cheated out of money...this is the same argument the riaa is trying to use to close down smaller used tape/cd stores and its sickening...please try to be educated about these things before making comments like that
True, but then what changes it from piracy, really?
I just thought about that not too long ago when I was in a store and saw Arcanum for sale. I tried the game out for a little bit before, but I never got anywhere with it. But I really did like it. So I was considering to buy it to support the makers, and because it's nicer to actually own it. Now I could get it used for less then half the price new. (Since it's rather old it's in the bargin bin.) But then I knew that the producers wouldn't get anything from it.
So really, if I had copied the game and sent money (say half of the buying price for the used copy) to the makers wouldn't that have been a better way to show my appriciation?
Now I don't try to claim that it's unetical to sell used games, or that it's the same to buy used games as to pirate games. I guess it's just dependent on what you want to do 1) own the product or 2) benefit the producers.
reading Gibson
by
technoid_
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Reading Gibson is something that drew me into computers when I was younger. I find myself picking up Neuromancer or CZ (sometimes MLO) to just read a certain scene he has painted in my head. I once found myself reading Neuromancer page by page backwards just reading his descriptions of the scenery of our future.
After the article about the FCC letting the telcos merge back, maybe Gibson predicted the future more accurately than most think.
So will SBC be the next Tessier-Ashpool?
-- Two wrongs don't make a right, but 3 lefts do - Lew of GO magazine
Regular Expressions?
by
wideBlueSkies
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· Score: 5, Funny
Ask Slashdot? Other great sci-fi/cyberpunk author
by
aSiTiC
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Has there been a discussion of recent good sci-fi/cyberpunk authors on Slashdot recently? I'm constantly on the search for good books but the genre of scifi is definitely cloudy as far as quality. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Diamond Age is by Neil Stephenson. Gibson wrote Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, The Difference Engine with Bruce Sterling, Virtual Light, Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties, FYI.
Tessier-Ashpool
by
No+Such+Agency
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I have to admit that while Gibson's vision of a bizarre corporate clan, so detached from normal morality and laws as to be rendered barely human, is certainly great writing, it seems less and less likely as time goes on. Corporations grow more and more transnational, less and less attached to physical reality, and in doing so they become ever more like acerebral beasts run by a hippocampal mass of shareholders with short-term profits as the overwhelming driving force. CEO's and VP's are disposable plug-in modules, and hereditary family ownership of significant blocks of shares grows rare.
Hmm, I grow weary. Time to climb back in the cryo-pod and activate 2No Such Agency in my place...
-- Freedom: "I won't!"
Re:Tessier-Ashpool
by
st.+augustine
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· Score: 5, Informative
CEO's and VP's are disposable plug-in modules, and hereditary family ownership of significant blocks of shares grows rare.
Even in Neuromancer | Count Zero | Mona Lisa Overdrive they're rare. Tessier-Ashpool is presented as a bizarre aberration, held together only by their weird cryogenic setup and the family AIs. Traditional corporations like Hosaka, Maas, and Sense|Net are the norm.
I don't think "transnational, less and less attached to physical reality, and... ever more like acerebral beasts" is anything but an accurate description of most of Gibson's corporations.
--
--
Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible
to rational proof.
Good points. I must have been asleep at the button writing that... And I'd better re-read Neuromancer:-)
-- Freedom: "I won't!"
Re:Tessier-Ashpool
by
Yokaze
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· Score: 3, Informative
> Traditional corporations [...] are the norm.
I thought that his description was, that there are essentially two kinds of companies left. Those transnational entities similar to T-A and little shark companies. Small, fast, flexible, biting. Traditional companies ceased to exist.
Tessier-Ashpool was only an exception, because they were still ruled and owned by a family, but not in other aspects. Actually, in being family-run, it was a remnant of the last century.
-- "Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Neuromancer, the movie.
by
I'm+a+racist.
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· Score: 5, Informative
Cunningham is one of the best visual directors out there, and his style meshes really well with Gibson's prose. Cunningham worked with Kubrick while still in his teens. He did some of the initial design work for "A.I.", which is still visible even though Spielberg's usual crap surrounds it.
Of course, film is a collective artform, and a good director + good source material != good movie, in many cases. I don't know much about Cunningham's writing abilities, or how involved he is with the adaptation. Gibson's work has not been successfully adapted, yet (that's debatable, but most will agree with me).
It would be a real shame to see someone fuck up this project. I'm more forgiving of something like "Johnny Mnemonic" and "New Rose Hotel", because they were adapted from short stories, and therefore required a lot of reworking. I think "Neuromancer", with the right visual touch, could play really well without too much adaptation. One of the best things about Gibson's work, and "Neuromancer" in particular, is the viscerality of it all, the vividness... if they can capture that on film properly, there's a good chance it could be successful. The biggest danger in adapting this book is that there's great potential for the story to get really muddled.
--
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
Re:Ask Slashdot? Other great sci-fi/cyberpunk auth
by
nomadic
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· Score: 5, Informative
A lot of sf fans are actively hostile to cyberpunk nowadays; all they want is multibook stories about the space navy (I swear, it seems that all they talk about on rec.arts.sf.written are Bujold and Weber). Bruce Sterling's still writing; I like his stuff, but tastes differ.
Stephenson is the darling of Slashdot, so you'll probably get a half-dozen people recommending him.
Gibson, Stephenson, and Sterling probably make up the Big Three of cyberpunk, with somewhat less famous authors like Pat Cadigan also contributing to the field.
I think the short story market is MUCH friendlier to cyberpunk--any given issue of F&SF or Asimov's will likely have a cyberpunk or cyberpunkish story.
I don't know what you mean by "recent"; last few years, or 1990 on, or what? If you haven't read C.S. Friedman's This Alien Shore, I highly recommend it. A cross between cyberpunk and space opera, and very, very good. But it's not from 1991, so not sure if you'd count it "recent".
Finally there are the novelizations of games such as Shadowrun or Cyberpunk. Never read them myself, but if that's your thing, who am I to judge?
Is He Even Relevant?
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Tremblay99
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Neuromancer blew me away -- it was awesome. And clacked out on a manual typewriter. Count Zero was a little less so. Mona Lisa Overdrive was a decent read (awesome, awesome cover on the original hardcover, mind you). The Difference Engine was a slog. Idoru and Virtual Light blur together.
In lit-crit circles, it is often said that a poet's best work is his earliest (think Coleridge or Bob Dylan)... while novelists take time to mature (Dickens, P.K. Dick, or Kim Stanley Robinson). I think Gibson's a poet -- people read him (at least I do) for the descriptions, the images, the language, not the story.
Of course, if he's become a novelist and has learned how to tell a story... with fleshed-out characters, with substance over flash and some hook in the story to hold on to, he might yet become a worthwhile read again.
Re:Is He Even Relevant?
by
HardCase
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· Score: 3, Insightful
In lit-crit circles, it is often said that a poet's best work is his earliest (think Coleridge or Bob Dylan)... while novelists take time to mature (Dickens, P.K. Dick, or Kim Stanley Robinson). I think Gibson's a poet -- people read him (at least I do) for the descriptions, the images, the language, not the story.
I'd dispute lumping Dickens in with the rest. In fact, his novels were tremendously popular, to the point of being serialized as he finished the chapters. Although we regard his work as classic nowadays, he was the 19th century equivalent of one of today's blockbuster authors.
I suspect that 100 years from now Tom Clancy, et al, will not be held in quite the high esteem.
Something to read while awaiting the next Neal Stephenson book. Except that the next Neal book is going to be about some crappy period hundreds of years ago when everything sucked.
John Varley: Cyberpunk Emeritus
by
handy_vandal
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· Score: 5, Informative
I like Gibson's work as much as the next reader, but for my money the grandfather of all cyberpunk writers is John Varley.
Varley's first novel, The Ophiuchi Hotline, has everything you could possibly want from a cyberpunk novel -- high tech, low tech, smartass computers, do-it-yourself cloning, alien invaders, polymorphous sex, plentiful drugs, multiple viewpoints, stylistic panache up the yingyang -- and was published way back in the dark ages of 1977, before anyone had heard the word cyberpunk.
-- -kgj
william went to singapore
by
hfastedge
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Singapore is a high tech nation.
In 1994, the fledling (but well backed) wired magazine sent william to the tiny island nation. I was browsing wired archives a few weeks ago and found this.
Met the guy 12 years ago...
by
teutonic_leech
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I met William Gibson 12 years ago in Austria at the Ars Electronica conference. Everyone was all dressed up and stuff and the guy shows up to hold a speech in sneakers and a beat-up pair of jeans that I bet he still wears today. Really shy - not the extravert type - I liked him right away:-)
Anyway, can't wait to read his latest work - if it's anything like Neuromancer, it's a must read.
Is He Even Relevant? sure
by
layingMantis
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· Score: 3, Interesting
All Tommorrow's Parties was recent and pretty cool, it had organic buildings and the Golden Gate bridge was a big ramshackle city unto itself. It's been awhile since i read it, but every one of his books has good (technological) ideas in it (many of which have now become rather prophetic) I think that's plenty good enough to make him relevant. Plus, his descriptions of food are original and always make me really hungry, heh.
I agree his prose is poetic; it is also complicated, terse, and often infuriatingly ambiguous. This is why these AC's are trashing Gibson: they aren't advanced enough to read him.
I've read a couple of his books (Neuromancer, The Difference Engine) and I think he's overrated. Granted, the Difference Engine seems to be generally regarded as not good, but even Neuromancer I thought was fairly boring. So he coined a word, yee haw. He might have a vision but his expression of that vision is lacking.
Re:Gibson overrated
by
Jonathan
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I don't see how you can appreciate _Snowcrash_ without reading _Neuromancer_ -- It would be like watching _Blazing Saddles_ without ever seeing a real Western.
The first 'cyberpunk' novel was clearly Shockwave Rider by John Brunner, published in 1975. His use of biological metaphor to describe a variety of invasive computer programs was a first; the term 'worm' was adapted from Shockwave Rider's term 'tapeworm' by researchers at Xerox PARC to describe the first self-replicating self-propagating computer program.
Shockwave Rider is why Robert Morris' hack is called the "Morris worm".
Re:Ask Slashdot? Other great sci-fi/cyberpunk auth
by
st.+augustine
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· Score: 5, Interesting
After hearing about Bruce Sterling I found a copy of Islands in the Net in a used bookstore... I've never been able to bring myself to read another one by him. Anyone with thoughts about his other books?
His short stories are excellent -- check out the collections Globalhead and A Good Old-Fashioned Future.
As for the novels, personally I think Heavy Weather and Zeitgeist are brilliant, but I've had trouble convincing other people of this. Schismatrix, which is rather older, is also quite good -- something like what might have happened if Heinlein's juveniles had been written by William S. Burroughs.
(Oh, and if you like Sterling, or even Stephenson, you should also probably check out Charles Stross. You might call his stuff post-Slashdot cyberpunk.)
--
--
Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible
to rational proof.
Re:the street
by
st.+augustine
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Seriously though, it's not like Gibson has weak books
Um, can you say "The Difference Engine"?
The fact you didn't get it doesn't make it weak.
--
--
Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible
to rational proof.
John Brunner: Cyberpunk Emeritus
by
Xtifr
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· Score: 4, Informative
While I like Varley, I think that Brunner has a better claim to the title of "Cyberpunk Emeritus." He wrote a lot of dreck, but four titles (at least) redeem him and stake his claim to greatness: Stand on Zanzibar (1968), Jagged Orbit (1970), The Sheep Look Up (1972), and Shockwave Rider (1975). SOZ is my personal favorite (and the only one to win the Hugo), but SR is the most cyber- of them, and the one most often referenced on cyberpunk-related sites. My main problem with SR is that it was too short and didn't really cover enough (any?) new ground, in the context of having read the others already. But it's a fan favorite, and often quoted as the "first cyberpunk novel", so who am I to carp?
And, of course, the influence of Vernor Vinge's classic (and excellent) story True Names (1981) cannot be overlooked.
On the gripping hand, Gibson is a fine writer, and it's his works that really put the term "cyberpunk" on the map.
Re:Ask Slashdot? Other great sci-fi/cyberpunk auth
by
Bicoid
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· Score: 5, Informative
Mmph....I think it really depends on taste. Stephenson is more technical than other cyberpunk authors. But frankly, I like Gibson a LOT more...I even like Rucker more than him. Also, thogh not many people have read his work, Tom Maddox's stuff is quite good. He's a LOT like Gibson, but his future is more constructive than Gibson's.
Also, my favorite cyberpunk author besides Gibson is John Shirley. He has the same thick noir imagery which makes Gibson's work so beautiful. His more recent stuff has sort of slipped into horror (or what some pundits call splatterpunk, whatever that is).
I also like Sterling a lot, and though his work tends not to be technical, he IS highly politically-conscious and has also done some journalism as well. His stuff tends to focus on politics surrounding technology rather than the tech itself (consider Schismatrix....it's ALL about technology politics). His short stories are, indeed, his forte and I got a real kick out of his recent Deep Eddy stories.
There's also Rucker (whose cyberpunk is more transcendentalist than anything else). Software and Wetware are good, though the series sort of fizzles out. Cadigan is good, but I find her a little bland. Shiner is weird...really weird. And that's basically the movement right there.
There's also other people who've written assorted cyberpunk novels, such as Greg Bear's Blood Music or Greg Egan's Permutation City. You could even *potentially* call some Phil K. Dick books cyberpunk....A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Ubik, and Valis are all more or less cyberpunk.
As for today, the only real "new" cyberpunk author is Charles Stross, who I personally find to be a fascinating author. Everyone else has been writing in the subgenre for 10-20 years.
--
If not all sentients are human, couldn't it be possible that not all humans are sentient either?
Its a crime to call him father of cyberpunk
by
rufusdufus
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I like William Gibson's books, but it is totally ignorant to call him the father of cyberpunk. Please go read (for example) Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar". Compare and contrast with Gibson's story. Then look at the copyright dates...
Re:heard that before
by
analog_line
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· Score: 5, Interesting
The Difference Engine was actually a collaboration between Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Did you actually read it? It was pretty obvious, at least to me, which parts Sterling wrote, and which parts Gibson wrote. Sterling just can't write sci-fi. I've forced myself through more books of his than I wish to remember. The only ones I could stand reading more than once were The Artificial Kid and Islands in the Net, and that was barely. In other words, don't blame Gibson for the Difference Engine. He had "help."
Gibson had the guts to try for something different after the Neuromancer/Count Zero/Mona Lisa trilogy. For that I give him a hell of alot of credit. I admit that I really didn't like Virtual Light and Idoru on the first read through, but I reread them and I got most of it, and i've got a much better opinion of them now. All Tomorrow's Parties was one of the best books i've ever read. I practically flew through it. The less fantastic the setting, the more thoughtful it is.
But different tastes for different people, so there you go, eh? Personally, I say give the guy more computers. I'm eager to see what the new stuff is. If you aren't up for it, such is life.
Gibson's Novels and Japanese Pop
by
skSlashDot
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Neuromancer et al. were great. I read Virtual Light a couple times, but still can't remember a damn thing about it. Something about sunglasses, right?
Idoru is okay, but it's a much better book if you're already a fan of Japanese Pop, or a fan of HEY! HEY! HEY! MUSIC CHAMP. It's kind of like the American Bandstand equivalent for Japanese pop music. (For a quick English description, try here). I watch HHHMC on International Channel on cable, and even if you don't speak Japanese (which I don't, really) it's alternately fascinating and hilarious. Want to watch Japanese pop stars give the show's hosts haircuts on the island of Guam? You need to watch it!
I also really liked The Difference Engine, but it's an entirely different kind of book. I'd recommend it to any programmer, though. They just don't teach the young people enough about Ada Lovelace these days! (Okay, so Gibson's work is fiction; does that really matter these days?)
Re:Cyberpunk is dead
by
Yokaze
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· Score: 3, Informative
> punk died over a decade ago.
Did it ever live in the US? I think most people who could have been punks are now in NGOs like ATTAC. (FYI: I neither disrespect punks, nor ATTAC)
> Now that everyone has Internet access
I think, that it is hardly the net access, that is the most important theme of the book. It is the social enviroment. The characters are (or will be) drop-outs from the society, working against the establishement, the transnational companies. Hence, punk.
> We badly need a new vision of the future.
Neal Stephensons "Diamond Age" is post-cyberpunk and its vision differs greatly from cyberpunk-vision. But, considering the current fast pace, with that the world is changing, I think no vision would be satisfying.
-- "Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Re:Ask Slashdot? Other great sci-fi/cyberpunk auth
by
Emil+Brink
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· Score: 3, Informative
Well, maybe there's something for you on this rather giant list of SF book reviews, then. It's not mine, but belongs to some other (attractively obsessive) reader of the good stuff. My collection is modest compared to that one, but they do overlap here and there, and I tend to agree with the reviews, which is why I recommend the list to you. Good luck.
Great Novel
by
PollyJean
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· Score: 3, Informative
I've read Pattern Recognition. I was lucky enough to get a review copy from a local independent bookstore. It is one of Gibson's best. The interesting thing about it is that it takes place in the present. My feeling while reading the book was that the reason it worked so well in the present is because so much of the present has become the future of Gibson's previous novels (Neuromancer was published in '84. Hard to believe, sometimes).
(a brief plot summary follows. It doesn't contain anything too spoilish, but if you don't like that kind of thing, skip it):
The protagonist's name is Cayce Pollard (her first name is pronounced "Case," which Gibson fans will recognize as a name he seems to like). As the novel opens, Cayce is on a job in London (she lives in New York). Cayce works in advertising, and has an ability to sense what will work on not work almost immediately in things like corporate logos. She's also a "cool hunter," not in the sense of middle-aged wannabe hipsters hanging out with teenagers to see what's "in," but in the sense that she can recognize what trends will be picked up by the general public and which ones won't. Her abilities are very valuable to ad agencies, and she makes a living hiring out her services. The down side to her ability is that she's very sensitive to the point of illness to the sight of some logos. She calls it an allergy. When she sees certain logos, she'll have a panic attack.
In her spare time, Cayce participates in an online discussion group revolving around clips of a film that have mysteriously and anonymously been turning up online. No one knows who made the film or in what order if any the the clips are supposed to be viewed, but underground interest in the clips has sprung up worldwide.
The plot revolves around Cayce's work in advertising and her footage interest coming together, which leads her around the world. There's also a subplot involving her father's disappearance (he was last seen taking a cab in the direction of the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11th, 2001), as well as several other subplots that all come together very nicely.
(end of summary bit)
If you've liked Gibson's other work, I strongly recommend picking this one up. It's interesting to read Gibson's writing style in a book that doesn't take place in the future (or, in the case of the Difference Engine in the past). As usual, it's the details and ideas that really make the novel. The characters are fascinating, too, particularly Cayce.
-- Think like a person of action, act like a person of thought. --H. Bergson
Re:Ask Slashdot? Other great sci-fi/cyberpunk auth
by
mvdwege
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· Score: 3, Informative
Try Peter F. Hamilton. A good writer who burst onto the scene in the middle of the nineties. His first novels are set in England after Global Warming, with a nice mix of cyberpunk, classic whodunit, and old-fashioned psi-talent scifi:
Mindstar Rising
A Quantum Murder
The Nano Flower
All feature psi-enhanced private detective (and more, but I'm not telling) Greg Mandel. They're not part of a trilogy, but still best read in order.
About the only weakness in the series is the plotting. While Hamilton tells a good story with engaging characters, a detailed setting and a fine command of the English language, especially the first two books suffer from having the ending being obvious at about three-quarters through. The other qualities of his writing more than compensate, but it is still obvious that these were his first full-length novels.
His other work, especially the Night's Dawn trilogy, is classic space opera, although the noir and cyberpunk elements do persist in his short stories. A nice bundling of some of his stories is 'A Second Chance at Eden' which might serve as a nice introduction to his style.
Mart
-- "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Yeah, but he is the father of "cyberspace"
by
MisterSquid
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· Score: 3, Interesting
True, people had envisioned many of the post-noir themes in literature before Gibson. Even high-literary types like Thomas Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow plays around with the idea of uploading consciousness into a machine.
But it took someone who could recognize exactly where in the network our culture was positioned to be able to coin a term that captured and shaped our collective sense of what was happening. That term is "cyberspace" and it was invented by William Gibson in Neuromancer. For all Brunner's prescience, he did not come up with the word that defines an entire era of human history. Gibson did.
First line of the novel:
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
That is just fucking brilliant writing. You won't find the same in Brunner.
Where it all started (beginning at the novel's 16th paragraph, page 4 of the Ace Books 1984 impression, i.e. the first):
The Japanese had already forgotten more neurosurgery than the Chinese had ever known. The black clinics of Chiba were the cutting edge, whole bodies of technique supplanted monthly, and still they couldn't repair the damage he'd suffered in that Memphis hotel.
A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly.
Cultural history was made and, as a result, Gibson's name will be transmitted for hundreds of generations to come. Brunner's will be the work of literary historians.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I'm waiting for a 'Neuromancer' movie to be made, but it would have very high expectations to live up to.
;)
But a new book is still pretty good
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
You're a troll, but I'll bite.
/. is for. A central place to collate news about stuff "we" like.
I'm a fan of William Gibson (and other authors like him), but I don't have the time or the inclination to crawl the web for every bit of news about new books. That's what
Akky
P.S. The story body ever so kindly provided you with a link to William Gibson's own website, where there is information about the new novel. I suggest you start there. You might even like some of his books.
Hang on: "word on the street is that it is his best work in years." It's his only work in years, since '99 I believe. If people are going to write books, especially totally awesome rad books like Gibsons are, they could at least have the decency to write MORE, instead of making us wait so long, the bastards.
I've read it. I got it through a used book store on amazon. (I know your not supposed to do this because the write gets no money from it, but I'm going to buy a copy in hard cover when it gets out)
I will say it is one of his best books. It takes place in modern day time. Which is unusual for him, but it talks about the usual information and the net. But this time there is a little spin in the motives driving the characters.
I would say that anyone that likes Gibson's stuff, should get this book.
Reading Gibson is something that drew me into computers when I was younger. I find myself picking up Neuromancer or CZ (sometimes MLO) to just read a certain scene he has painted in my head. I once found myself reading Neuromancer page by page backwards just reading his descriptions of the scenery of our future.
After the article about the FCC letting the telcos merge back, maybe Gibson predicted the future more accurately than most think.
So will SBC be the next Tessier-Ashpool?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but 3 lefts do - Lew of GO magazine
We really don't need another regex book.
This one does just fine.
Huh?
Has there been a discussion of recent good sci-fi/cyberpunk authors on Slashdot recently? I'm constantly on the search for good books but the genre of scifi is definitely cloudy as far as quality. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Already noted William Gibson, will check out.
Where the Music Matters
Diamond Age is by Neil Stephenson. Gibson wrote Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, The Difference Engine with Bruce Sterling, Virtual Light, Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties, FYI.
I have to admit that while Gibson's vision of a bizarre corporate clan, so detached from normal morality and laws as to be rendered barely human, is certainly great writing, it seems less and less likely as time goes on. Corporations grow more and more transnational, less and less attached to physical reality, and in doing so they become ever more like acerebral beasts run by a hippocampal mass of shareholders with short-term profits as the overwhelming driving force. CEO's and VP's are disposable plug-in modules, and hereditary family ownership of significant blocks of shares grows rare.
Hmm, I grow weary. Time to climb back in the cryo-pod and activate 2No Such Agency in my place...
Freedom: "I won't!"
The best info on the movie, that I know of, comes from Coming Attractions. It appears that Chris Cunningham is still involved with the project (as of May '02), which is a good sign.
Cunningham is one of the best visual directors out there, and his style meshes really well with Gibson's prose. Cunningham worked with Kubrick while still in his teens. He did some of the initial design work for "A.I.", which is still visible even though Spielberg's usual crap surrounds it.
Of course, film is a collective artform, and a good director + good source material != good movie, in many cases. I don't know much about Cunningham's writing abilities, or how involved he is with the adaptation. Gibson's work has not been successfully adapted, yet (that's debatable, but most will agree with me).
It would be a real shame to see someone fuck up this project. I'm more forgiving of something like "Johnny Mnemonic" and "New Rose Hotel", because they were adapted from short stories, and therefore required a lot of reworking. I think "Neuromancer", with the right visual touch, could play really well without too much adaptation. One of the best things about Gibson's work, and "Neuromancer" in particular, is the viscerality of it all, the vividness... if they can capture that on film properly, there's a good chance it could be successful. The biggest danger in adapting this book is that there's great potential for the story to get really muddled.
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
A lot of sf fans are actively hostile to cyberpunk nowadays; all they want is multibook stories about the space navy (I swear, it seems that all they talk about on rec.arts.sf.written are Bujold and Weber). Bruce Sterling's still writing; I like his stuff, but tastes differ. Stephenson is the darling of Slashdot, so you'll probably get a half-dozen people recommending him. Gibson, Stephenson, and Sterling probably make up the Big Three of cyberpunk, with somewhat less famous authors like Pat Cadigan also contributing to the field.
I think the short story market is MUCH friendlier to cyberpunk--any given issue of F&SF or Asimov's will likely have a cyberpunk or cyberpunkish story.
I don't know what you mean by "recent"; last few years, or 1990 on, or what? If you haven't read C.S. Friedman's This Alien Shore, I highly recommend it. A cross between cyberpunk and space opera, and very, very good. But it's not from 1991, so not sure if you'd count it "recent".
Finally there are the novelizations of games such as Shadowrun or Cyberpunk. Never read them myself, but if that's your thing, who am I to judge?
In lit-crit circles, it is often said that a poet's best work is his earliest (think Coleridge or Bob Dylan) ... while novelists take time to mature (Dickens, P.K. Dick, or Kim Stanley Robinson). I think Gibson's a poet -- people read him (at least I do) for the descriptions, the images, the language, not the story.
Of course, if he's become a novelist and has learned how to tell a story ... with fleshed-out characters, with substance over flash and some hook in the story to hold on to, he might yet become a worthwhile read again.
Something to read while awaiting the next Neal Stephenson book. Except that the next Neal book is going to be about some crappy period hundreds of years ago when everything sucked.
I like Gibson's work as much as the next reader, but for my money the grandfather of all cyberpunk writers is John Varley.
Varley's first novel, The Ophiuchi Hotline, has everything you could possibly want from a cyberpunk novel -- high tech, low tech, smartass computers, do-it-yourself cloning, alien invaders, polymorphous sex, plentiful drugs, multiple viewpoints, stylistic panache up the yingyang -- and was published way back in the dark ages of 1977, before anyone had heard the word cyberpunk.
-kgj
Singapore is a high tech nation.
m l?person=laurie_anderson&topic_set=wiredpeople
In 1994, the fledling (but well backed) wired magazine sent william to the tiny island nation. I was browsing wired archives a few weeks ago and found this.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/gibson.ht
-- -- --
Help my mini cause: My journal
I met William Gibson 12 years ago in Austria at the Ars Electronica conference. Everyone was all dressed up and stuff and the guy shows up to hold a speech in sneakers and a beat-up pair of jeans that I bet he still wears today. Really shy - not the extravert type - I liked him right away :-)
Anyway, can't wait to read his latest work - if it's anything like Neuromancer, it's a must read.
I agree his prose is poetic; it is also complicated, terse, and often infuriatingly ambiguous. This is why these AC's are trashing Gibson: they aren't advanced enough to read him.
I've read a couple of his books (Neuromancer, The Difference Engine) and I think he's overrated. Granted, the Difference Engine seems to be generally regarded as not good, but even Neuromancer I thought was fairly boring. So he coined a word, yee haw. He might have a vision but his expression of that vision is lacking.
Have you coined a word? Want credit for it?
I don't see how you can appreciate _Snowcrash_ without reading _Neuromancer_ -- It would be like watching _Blazing Saddles_ without ever seeing a real Western.
The first 'cyberpunk' novel was clearly Shockwave Rider by John Brunner, published in 1975. His use of biological metaphor to describe a variety of invasive computer programs was a first; the term 'worm' was adapted from Shockwave Rider's term 'tapeworm' by researchers at Xerox PARC to describe the first self-replicating self-propagating computer program.
Shockwave Rider is why Robert Morris' hack is called the "Morris worm".
As for the novels, personally I think Heavy Weather and Zeitgeist are brilliant, but I've had trouble convincing other people of this. Schismatrix, which is rather older, is also quite good -- something like what might have happened if Heinlein's juveniles had been written by William S. Burroughs.
If your wondering whether you'd like Sterling, probably the easiest thing to do is check out some of his nonfiction online.
(Oh, and if you like Sterling, or even Stephenson, you should also probably check out Charles Stross. You might call his stuff post-Slashdot cyberpunk.)
-- Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible to rational proof.
The fact you didn't get it doesn't make it weak.
-- Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible to rational proof.
While I like Varley, I think that Brunner has a better claim to the title of "Cyberpunk Emeritus." He wrote a lot of dreck, but four titles (at least) redeem him and stake his claim to greatness: Stand on Zanzibar (1968), Jagged Orbit (1970), The Sheep Look Up (1972), and Shockwave Rider (1975). SOZ is my personal favorite (and the only one to win the Hugo), but SR is the most cyber- of them, and the one most often referenced on cyberpunk-related sites. My main problem with SR is that it was too short and didn't really cover enough (any?) new ground, in the context of having read the others already. But it's a fan favorite, and often quoted as the "first cyberpunk novel", so who am I to carp?
And, of course, the influence of Vernor Vinge's classic (and excellent) story True Names (1981) cannot be overlooked.
On the gripping hand, Gibson is a fine writer, and it's his works that really put the term "cyberpunk" on the map.
Mmph....I think it really depends on taste. Stephenson is more technical than other cyberpunk authors. But frankly, I like Gibson a LOT more...I even like Rucker more than him. Also, thogh not many people have read his work, Tom Maddox's stuff is quite good. He's a LOT like Gibson, but his future is more constructive than Gibson's.
Also, my favorite cyberpunk author besides Gibson is John Shirley. He has the same thick noir imagery which makes Gibson's work so beautiful. His more recent stuff has sort of slipped into horror (or what some pundits call splatterpunk, whatever that is).
I also like Sterling a lot, and though his work tends not to be technical, he IS highly politically-conscious and has also done some journalism as well. His stuff tends to focus on politics surrounding technology rather than the tech itself (consider Schismatrix....it's ALL about technology politics). His short stories are, indeed, his forte and I got a real kick out of his recent Deep Eddy stories.
There's also Rucker (whose cyberpunk is more transcendentalist than anything else). Software and Wetware are good, though the series sort of fizzles out. Cadigan is good, but I find her a little bland. Shiner is weird...really weird. And that's basically the movement right there.
There's also other people who've written assorted cyberpunk novels, such as Greg Bear's Blood Music or Greg Egan's Permutation City. You could even *potentially* call some Phil K. Dick books cyberpunk....A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Ubik, and Valis are all more or less cyberpunk.
As for today, the only real "new" cyberpunk author is Charles Stross, who I personally find to be a fascinating author. Everyone else has been writing in the subgenre for 10-20 years.
If not all sentients are human, couldn't it be possible that not all humans are sentient either?
I like William Gibson's books, but it is totally ignorant to call him the father of cyberpunk. Please go read (for example) Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar". Compare and contrast with Gibson's story. Then look at the copyright dates...
The Difference Engine was actually a collaboration between Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Did you actually read it? It was pretty obvious, at least to me, which parts Sterling wrote, and which parts Gibson wrote. Sterling just can't write sci-fi. I've forced myself through more books of his than I wish to remember. The only ones I could stand reading more than once were The Artificial Kid and Islands in the Net, and that was barely. In other words, don't blame Gibson for the Difference Engine. He had "help."
Gibson had the guts to try for something different after the Neuromancer/Count Zero/Mona Lisa trilogy. For that I give him a hell of alot of credit. I admit that I really didn't like Virtual Light and Idoru on the first read through, but I reread them and I got most of it, and i've got a much better opinion of them now. All Tomorrow's Parties was one of the best books i've ever read. I practically flew through it. The less fantastic the setting, the more thoughtful it is.
But different tastes for different people, so there you go, eh? Personally, I say give the guy more computers. I'm eager to see what the new stuff is. If you aren't up for it, such is life.
Idoru is okay, but it's a much better book if you're already a fan of Japanese Pop, or a fan of HEY! HEY! HEY! MUSIC CHAMP. It's kind of like the American Bandstand equivalent for Japanese pop music. (For a quick English description, try here). I watch HHHMC on International Channel on cable, and even if you don't speak Japanese (which I don't, really) it's alternately fascinating and hilarious. Want to watch Japanese pop stars give the show's hosts haircuts on the island of Guam? You need to watch it!
I also really liked The Difference Engine, but it's an entirely different kind of book. I'd recommend it to any programmer, though. They just don't teach the young people enough about Ada Lovelace these days! (Okay, so Gibson's work is fiction; does that really matter these days?)
oh, and Shockwave Rider is still worth reading.
Tech Public Policy stuff
> punk died over a decade ago.
Did it ever live in the US? I think most people who could have been punks are now in NGOs like ATTAC. (FYI: I neither disrespect punks, nor ATTAC)
> Now that everyone has Internet access
I think, that it is hardly the net access, that is the most important theme of the book. It is the social enviroment. The characters are (or will be) drop-outs from the society, working against the establishement, the transnational companies.
Hence, punk.
> We badly need a new vision of the future.
Neal Stephensons "Diamond Age" is post-cyberpunk and its vision differs greatly from cyberpunk-vision.
But, considering the current fast pace, with that the world is changing, I think no vision would be satisfying.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Well, maybe there's something for you on this rather giant list of SF book reviews, then. It's not mine, but belongs to some other (attractively obsessive) reader of the good stuff. My collection is modest compared to that one, but they do overlap here and there, and I tend to agree with the reviews, which is why I recommend the list to you. Good luck.
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Mind if I borrow your time machine? New Years eve was pretty fun. I'd like to do that again.
Hank! White!
I've read Pattern Recognition. I was lucky enough to get a review copy from a local independent bookstore. It is one of Gibson's best. The interesting thing about it is that it takes place in the present. My feeling while reading the book was that the reason it worked so well in the present is because so much of the present has become the future of Gibson's previous novels (Neuromancer was published in '84. Hard to believe, sometimes).
(a brief plot summary follows. It doesn't contain anything too spoilish, but if you don't like that kind of thing, skip it):
The protagonist's name is Cayce Pollard (her first name is pronounced "Case," which Gibson fans will recognize as a name he seems to like). As the novel opens, Cayce is on a job in London (she lives in New York). Cayce works in advertising, and has an ability to sense what will work on not work almost immediately in things like corporate logos. She's also a "cool hunter," not in the sense of middle-aged wannabe hipsters hanging out with teenagers to see what's "in," but in the sense that she can recognize what trends will be picked up by the general public and which ones won't. Her abilities are very valuable to ad agencies, and she makes a living hiring out her services. The down side to her ability is that she's very sensitive to the point of illness to the sight of some logos. She calls it an allergy. When she sees certain logos, she'll have a panic attack.
In her spare time, Cayce participates in an online discussion group revolving around clips of a film that have mysteriously and anonymously been turning up online. No one knows who made the film or in what order if any the the clips are supposed to be viewed, but underground interest in the clips has sprung up worldwide.
The plot revolves around Cayce's work in advertising and her footage interest coming together, which leads her around the world. There's also a subplot involving her father's disappearance (he was last seen taking a cab in the direction of the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11th, 2001), as well as several other subplots that all come together very nicely.
(end of summary bit)
If you've liked Gibson's other work, I strongly recommend picking this one up. It's interesting to read Gibson's writing style in a book that doesn't take place in the future (or, in the case of the Difference Engine in the past). As usual, it's the details and ideas that really make the novel. The characters are fascinating, too, particularly Cayce.
Think like a person of action, act like a person of thought. --H. Bergson
Try Peter F. Hamilton. A good writer who burst onto the scene in the middle of the nineties. His first novels are set in England after Global Warming, with a nice mix of cyberpunk, classic whodunit, and old-fashioned psi-talent scifi:
All feature psi-enhanced private detective (and more, but I'm not telling) Greg Mandel. They're not part of a trilogy, but still best read in order.
About the only weakness in the series is the plotting. While Hamilton tells a good story with engaging characters, a detailed setting and a fine command of the English language, especially the first two books suffer from having the ending being obvious at about three-quarters through. The other qualities of his writing more than compensate, but it is still obvious that these were his first full-length novels.
His other work, especially the Night's Dawn trilogy, is classic space opera, although the noir and cyberpunk elements do persist in his short stories. A nice bundling of some of his stories is 'A Second Chance at Eden' which might serve as a nice introduction to his style.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
True, people had envisioned many of the post-noir themes in literature before Gibson. Even high-literary types like Thomas Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow plays around with the idea of uploading consciousness into a machine.
But it took someone who could recognize exactly where in the network our culture was positioned to be able to coin a term that captured and shaped our collective sense of what was happening. That term is "cyberspace" and it was invented by William Gibson in Neuromancer. For all Brunner's prescience, he did not come up with the word that defines an entire era of human history. Gibson did.
First line of the novel:
That is just fucking brilliant writing. You won't find the same in Brunner.Where it all started (beginning at the novel's 16th paragraph, page 4 of the Ace Books 1984 impression, i.e. the first):
Cultural history was made and, as a result, Gibson's name will be transmitted for hundreds of generations to come. Brunner's will be the work of literary historians.
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