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."
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.
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.
Regular Expressions?
by
wideBlueSkies
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· Score: 5, Funny
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?
by
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.
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
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.
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.
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: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.
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?
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.
Slashdot Mirror
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.
We really don't need another regex book.
This one does just fine.
Huh?
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.
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
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 don't see how you can appreciate _Snowcrash_ without reading _Neuromancer_ -- It would be like watching _Blazing Saddles_ without ever seeing a real Western.
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.
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.
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?
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.