Ask Slashdot: What Is Your Favorite William Gibson Novel?

dryriver writes: When I first read William Gibson's Neuromancer and then his other novels as a young man back in the 1990s, I was blown away by Gibson's work. Everything was so fresh and out of the ordinary in his books. The writing style. The technologies. The characters and character names. The plotlines. The locations. The future world he imagined. The Matrix. It was unlike anything I had read before. A window into the far future of humanity. I had great hopes over the years that some visionary film director would take a crack at creating film versions of Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive . But that never happened. All sorts of big budget science fiction was produced for TV and the big screen since Neuromancer that never got anywhere near the brilliance of Gibson's future world. Gibson's world largely stayed on the printed page, and today very few people talk about Neuromancer, even though the world we live in, at times, appears headed in the exact direction Gibson described in his Sprawl trilogy. Why does hardly anybody talk about William Gibson anymore? His books describe a future that is much more technologically advanced than where we are in 2017, so it isn't like his future vision has become "badly dated." To get the conversation going, we rephrased dryriver's question... What is your favorite William Gibson novel?

Comments

The one he has not written

[inking]

As much as I like the genre, I think they are all bad.

Re:The one he has not written

[Applehu Akbar]

Can you give an example of writing where there is concrete stuff and substance?

Neal Stephenson. Gibson was a master of creating atmosphere, and then in many cases not taking the story much farther than that.

Re:The one he has not written

[Bright Apollo]

I find the opposite to be true. Wm Gibson is extremely literary, and it requires closer reading than someone like Neal Stephenson, who is very happy to explain his created worlds in as much detail as you can handle. I find Gibson's work to be more of a challenge, but worth the effort, much in the same way I find classic literature and even poetry to be worthy challenges.

You don't have to like it, of course, but you also can't knock it as lacking literary value. That kind of comment is more of a reflection of you than the target.

--#

Re:The one he has not written

[rickb928]

Ok, so debunk the physical events in Seveneves. I've had only two conversations about it, with competent astrophysicists, and they weren't willing to call BS on any of it. One, though, worked up an experiment to possibly prove some of the plot, involving Chinese satellites and a weapon now alluded to as 'Rod of God', even though it was a pipe dream then. Yeah, we need more space junk in LEO.

Re:The one he has not written

[F34nor]

Neal Stephenson is a master of creating substance without any thought to how to end his books. His books are mostly a vehicle to support the propagation of an idea. He seems to have no love affair with character or place. I love his stuff but DoDo seems like an excuse for him to read more primary documents then anything else (which he admitte3d to loving at a Portland talk he gave about System of a World. The Diamond Age ends like a serial cliffhanger. Reamde was a like a boilerplate movie script. What the fuck was the end of Seveneves but "here is the new now, goodbye." I love him but as an example of anything other than what you're accusing Gibson of his the worst example I can think of. I can't think of him ever enticing me with atmosphere other than Snow Crash and Diamond Age. To be literature you need it all, place, setting, characters, ideas, action, and conclusion. Even Iain M. Banks falls short on characters, I rarely give a fuck about anyone in his stories except the Algabraist and Against a Dark Background.

If you are looking for concrete how about Dune? It has basically everything. "The Three Body Problem" is the best concrete content in SciFi I have ever read and it is Fucking merciless!

Neuromancer

[jonwil]

I wish someone would turn Neuromancer into a film, it would be far better than a lot of the garbage we get at the cinema these days.

Re:Neuromancer

[Opportunist]

Impossible. You can try, but I am certain you'll fail just like all others did. Try it yourself. Take the novel and turn it into a script. Then gauge just how long it really is and what run time you'd end up with. Not with the whole trilogy, just the first, just NM. You end up with a movie that runs 5 hours and you already left out half of what's important. Cut it more and what you end up with is a movie that makes no sense, explains no character, you will of course get a story out of it but in the end, nobody who knows the novel will recognize it anymore.

A lot of the novel is internal monologue and information about the characters' mood, ideas, ideals, hopes and expectations. How'd you want to do that, if at all? In a voiceover while they stare meaningful into the evening sky that looks like a TV tuned to a dead channel?

Re:Neuromancer

[MichaelSmith]

After watching Blade Runner 2049 this weekend I believe that Denis Villeneuve should give it a go.

Re:Neuromancer

[PopeRatzo]

You end up with a movie that runs 5 hours and you already left out half of what's important.

So make it a Netflix series, like Sense8.

A lot of the novel is internal monologue and information about the characters' mood, ideas, ideals, hopes and expectations.

There are directors and screenwriters who have been very skilled at conveying internal monologue, mood, ideas etc. I think of Kubrick's Clockwork Orange and Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation. Also Scorsese's Taxi Driver and Sam Mendes American Beauty. Lot's more come to mind but they are some well-known ones.

I could see David Cronenberg directing Neuromancer.

Re:Neuromancer

[orgelspieler]

I didn't find the book all that mysterious. The "twist" at the end was telegraphed from a long ways away. Now the sequels had some real mindfucks, but the original Ender's Game was just so-so. Also, ansibles just cannot be made to work without violating causality, so a fair amount of suspending disbelief is required (although he paid some lip service to this in the sequels). Same problem with Star Trek subspace communications, but they have FTL travel, too, so it's already a problem.

I like all WIlliam Gibson novels.

[Qbertino]

I know the neuromancer and the bridge triology and like both. Perhaps the Bridge triology is a bit better because the scenarios described are more plausible, as is the character of Chevette in "Virtual Light".
Then again, in the neuromancer triology all three books where quite memorable, whereas Idoru was sort of meh IMHO.

None

[Bruce Perens]

I am really enjoying not reading a William Gibson novel right now. Thus, my favorite is None. I hope to continue to enjoy not reading William Gibson for a while. He is indeed one of my favorite authors for not reading.

Re:Hands down Neuromancer

[Cederic]

Yeah. There isn't a single wasted word, it's poetry in prose form, it still feel visionary three decades later and although his later work is excellent it can't quite match this.

Although if you include short stories, Johnny Mnemonic is at least as good.

Re:Never heard of him before.

[Cederic]

He's a science fiction author that wrote one of the most influential books of the last century.

His material is available from all good bookstores and several bad ones, check him out.

Re:Mona Lisa Overdrive.

[dwywit]

IIRC the story goes that Gibson walked out of Blade Runner (original 1982 version) after 20 minutes, because "it was too much like the inside of my head".

So Syd Mead had some concept of that world.

Re:Never heard of him before.

[jwhyche]

Almost every book is overrated. Ever read Moby Dick? Overrated garbage. How about The Great Gasby? Samething, over rated trash.

Point being, I have yet to read any book that lives up to the fan devotion or the hype.

Re:Never heard of him before.

[jwhyche]

Yeah they are. Both are highly overrated. Mostly they are over rated by ether high school or college literature professors. Who themselves are often over rated. Which of course leads to these professors trying to force this dreck down entire generations of students who couldn't give a shit. No wonder reading sucks among the young.

Let the children read what they want to read. Who gives a shit if a bunch of teenage girls are reading about sparkly vampires? At least they are reading.

Re:Never heard of him before.

[jwhyche]

Doubtful. I simply pointed out that every book rarely meets the hype that is given to it. But just because a book is over rated, doesn't mean its a bad book.

The Harry Potter books as an example. Once you get around the fact that the main character is a complete idiot then the rest of the books are not that bad. Do they rate the lavish worship fans seem to give them? Well to the fans maybe but over all, no the don't.

My favorite books are the Harry Dresden books. But even I can see that the books follow the same basic formula from book to book. I'm waiting for Peace Talks to come out and I can probably build a check list on how it will go. I'm still going to read it.

Here. If you like a book read it but don't read it because of the hype. If you do, you will probably be disappointed.

Re:Never heard of him before.

[jwhyche]

How did this discussion become about "the children"? At some point in an education, it's worth reading something that you wouldn't have picked off the shelf yourself. If I hadn't been forced to read books, I'd still only be reading Mad Magazine and comic books.

It became about "the children" when I hijacked the discussion to suit my own agenda. Come on, this is slashdot, that is how these things happen.

I want to address one fallacy you have there. You are talking like reading comic books or Mad Magazine is a bad thing. I thought myself to read at age 6, yes I had help with the big words, so I could read Richie Rich comics. From there I picked up Xmen at issue 86, or abouts. It if wasn't for comics I would never have read the Original Phoenix Saga.

I still read comics but now I tend to read more manga than DC or Marvel. I like the facts that the stories in manga tend to have beginning and end. I'm reading Barakamon now. But have you checked out some of the comics they are making now? Sorry, they like to refer to them as "graphic novels" now.

My point is comics are a good stepping stone to reading. If it wasn't for Richie Rich I might never have become the avid reader I am. The first science fiction book I picked off a shelf and read was Voyage from Yesteryear by Jame Hogan. I still have a copy of it n my android tablet. I picked it up because it was on the book shelf next to the comic rack.

You are correct to a point about having someone pick something to read for you at some point in your education. I would expect in a college literature course because you usually have to sign up for such a course so you know what you are getting into. But not at the middle school or high school levels.

They have a classic crammed down their throat that they have little personal reference too. Imagine having Tolstoy shoved down throat at age 14. That would be enough to turn most readers off for good. Let the young read what appeals to them. Be it sparkly vampires, Enders Game, or Mad magazine. We need more readers in this world and less TV watchers.

You are also wrong about people reading classic literature on there own. I have read Tolstoy, Mark Twain, Louisa Alcott, and others because I wanted too. An I've read Moby Dick. An I'm far from a SJW.

Re:Never heard of him before.

[jwhyche]

You never had to deal with my highschool literature teacher. Anything after 1850 was trash to her. I actually got my views on books in school from a lecture by Orson Scott Card.

I believe that your experience with Shakespeare might be exactly what I'm talking about. Did you love it after you read it or years later? After you had developed enough background in reading to understand it.

I have read Tolstoy.

I should have worded that differently to say "I am reading Tolstoy." I have been for the last 20 years, but making it through War and Peace is on my bucket list.