Spook Country #1 on Locus's best selling science fiction and fantasy list.

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1) Spook Country, William Gibson
2) The Sunrise Lands, S. M. Stirling
3)Sandworms of Dune, Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson
4) The Elves of Cintra, Terry Brooks
5) Making Money, Terry Pratchett
6) Little (Grrl) Lost, Charles de Lint
7) Axis, Robert Charles Wilson
*) The Children of Húrin, J. R. R. Tolkien
9) Natural Ordermage, L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
10) Many Bloody Returns, Charlaine Harris & Toni L. P. Kelner, eds.

Spook Country on a best selling science fiction list strikes me as a little odd, but I guess once the powers that be classify you as a SF writer it's tough to get your work viewed in any other light. I certainly wouldn't consider SC science fiction.

Is there anything else on that list worth a read?

it does look rather out of place in that list.

"The Children of Hurin" is good, even if it is essentially just a repackaging of some material from "The Silmarillion".

People seem to like Terry Pratchett.

In any case, the list may be useful to Gibson's "people." Thoough I would expect any sort of "blurb" about him would go toward "New York Times Bestselling Author" as a opposed to Locus. It's nicce that they still include him as one of their own, though he's been a literary author, to me, for the whole time.

Although there is a difference between bad SF and LIT and between bad LIT and SF, I see no clear difference between SF and LIT.

I believe that there is SF which becomes LIT, not merely because of the quality of prose but because of the nature and execution of ideas addressed.

Cory Doctorow writes SF about IT type things, William Gibson writes LIT about human type things.

One is writing literature, the other is not.

Cory might be clever and well versed in technology but he isn't writing literature.

There is a certain scale of ideas, to my mind, which science fiction rarely seeks to climb.

Good science fiction fufills and perhaps exceeds all necessary requirements of the genre while literature discloses to us ideas about the nature of being.

Gibson is fairly clever at times, in books other than Spook Country, but he is certainly not writing "Literature" either, by any stretch of the imagination. The "scale of ideas" covered in SC never rises above the sort of reflexive cant expressed on the DU forum and similar venues. There is no authenticity in his representation of the DGI or the US intelligence community, or even the drug culture. Not to mention the knee-slapping hilarity of pseudo-CIA/"Blackwater" operators deciding to shanghai a drug addict to translate intercepted electronic transmissions for them.

I suppose deploying his tired and overused ethno/cultural smorgasborgs to describe nearly every person, place or thing that makes an appearance in the novel could be considered a sort of authorial trademark, like John Woo's white doves, but even John Woo doesn't have doves leaping to flight in every frame of his movies.

I agree that SC should not be considered scifi, and it is obvious, from the didacticism, pedantry and the large amount of unecessary and turgid explanations, that Gibson is trying for a wider audience. Nothing wrong with that, and certainly there's more money to be made in churning out Dan Brown/John Grisham-style soporific gruel for the masses, and besides, elucidating every allusion to a historical figure or technological process pumps that word count, as Neal Stephenson can attest.

I'd rather see more Neuromancers and Burning Chromes; the world's full enough already with DaVinci Codes and Clients. But I understand a man wanting to make money, and it is, after all, a free country, so I've no real grounds for protest. Just don't pretend it is "Literature".

On the other hand, don't you think a Neuromancer or Burning Chrome today would also seem, to borrow a phrase, tired and overused?

On the otherer hand, perhaps a bit of Charlie Stross or John Burdett would do the trick?

I believe I could confidently re-read Chrome and Neuromancer without laughing at ridiculous technical errors and the author's obvious unfamiliarity with his subject, or noting the cut-and-paste inserts drawn straight from wikipedia. And the earlier books are, if anything, libertarian in outlook, not imparting some stumbling, puerile, half-baked ideological conspiracy theory with all the artistic nuance and skill of a "Very Special episode of Dif'rent Strokes".

If Mr. Gibson wishes to castigate the US, he should certainly do so, but I object to him packing his childish resentments of religion and the military into book form and giving no warning to people who expect to read a decent novel, based on past experience with the author, and instead find themselves paying $25.95 to read something freely available on the Huffington Post. But Caveat Emptor. It was my fault for picking it up without glancing through it in the store, or even coming to this website first.

I don't read enough wikipedia to pretend to recognize when/if text is cut-and-pasted therefrom (although I would be quite surprised to find that WG had done so without attribution) but I must protest the comparison to Dan Brown. Really.

If you don't like his style, you don't like his style, fair enough. But he's no hack.

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I believe I could confidently re-read Chrome and Neuromancer without laughing at ridiculous technical errors and the author's obvious unfamiliarity with his subject

There are a couple of old threads around here where someone (was it Ping?) castigated WG for exactly that, obvious unfamiliarity with his subject, but in that case the subject was computers. It's probably a matter of how familiar one is themselves with the subject matter.

Similarly with the politics. Personally, I think being overtly political in a book is not generally a good idea, and it probably made me enjoy Spook Country less than I could have, but then again, Neuromancer was, basically, a reaction to Reganism. It may just be that your political viewpoint and the author's have drifted apart in the twenty-odd intervening years.

The reaction would indicate you have missed his intervening books. This is not an abrupt change, but a progressive life change. Some of us have changed with him, some differently, and some are stuck in their twenties. Or the author's twenties.

And I would like to add that I'm glad he's not trying to be Tom Clancy.

I mean... Tom Clancy sure tries hard to be accurate.
But -as far as I am concerned- he loses style and coolness in the process.

Neo-cons don't like Gibson and with good reason. You should read something more comfortable to you, perhaps Bill O'Reilley's new book or The Pet Goat.

As to your problems with how he portrays "Blackwater" types, I don't see anything in their Shenanigans that would call for a different assessment of people led by a Christy God King. But then I'm not a member of a PMI and I'm willing to be you aren't either.

My guess is you read Jane's and Soldier of Fortune and think yourself well versed. If you have other credentials for your criticism of the facts, please tell us. Playing miniatures games doesn’t qualify you to assess the veracity of rogue inter-agency intrigue.

Otherwise you strike me as a reader who was insulted by the underlying politics of the text and have formed your opinion entirely based on that, cobbling together your "literary" arguments after that decision.

You are certainly entitled to your opinion but it is difficult to take seriously when it comes from so reflexive a position.

Wait, is this Split?

How many different coils are there here?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: UberDog,

I wrote my first post when I was 3/4 of the way through the book and was becoming bored, so I took a break to see if there was a Gibson website. After I posted, I figured I should finish the entire book, and it turned out to be even more ridiculous than I had anticipated, which is why I was a bit more strident in tone the second time.

Interesting to see Tom Clancy mentioned; after reading the entire book he is exactly the appropriate counterpart for Gibson's work in SC. Clancy writes mindless pro-military techno thrillers and SC is a mindless anti-military thriller, minus the thrill. Clancy even had two early novels that weren't entirely a waste of time, although he is clearly inferior in talent to Gibson, which makes Gibson's apparently deliberate decision to dumb down his prose and go commercial with reassuring comfort food/Chicken Soup for the Liberal Soul-type novels a bit more annoying. I really don't expect anything better from Clancy and, as with Stephen King, I quit bothering to read his newer books a long, long time ago.

It's true I missed some of Gibson's intervening books, at least Pattern Recognition, which seems to be about 9/11. Even Don Delillo didn't manage too well with that topic, and Gibson, of a certainty, is no Delillo.

As far as the wiki, I didn't mean that entirely literally; Gibson isn't exactly a plagarist to my knowledge. What I meant is that he clearly is unfamiliar with many of the details he mentions in passing in the novel, and it is quite obvious he is inserting little factoids hither and yon. The SERE comment was one glaring example, though there are others.

I agree with the comment that familiarity with a subject reflects one's appreciation of the authenticity in a novel or other artistic work. But I'm no expert on computers or geocaching, yet the descriptions of "locative art" were not only unconvincing, but entirely superfluous to the story. They seemed to have been provided entirely as a sop for Gibson's core audience. I don't doubt there is such a thing as "locative art"; but there was nothing intriguing about it in the novel. I would go further on the lack of narrative necessity concerning Bobby and this topic were this not a "no spoilers" forum.

I wouldn't consider myself a "neo-con"; I've posted on DU before without being banned, and you know how quickly the liberals there ban anyone who disagrees with them. I don't like or dislike Gibson; I like some of his novels very much and I hold SC in utter contempt. I read Neuromancer knowing full well he was a draft-dodger, but that did not detract from my appreciation of it. "Catch-22" is one of the most resolutely anti-military novels ever written, yet also one of my favorites of all time. Which doesn't change the fact that "God Knows" is still a travesty.

"Blackwater types" are generally former military personnel, usually SF qualified. If you could explain why one of them would wish to kidnap a drug addict and cart him about as a sort of Boswellian interpreter of data that could easily be transmitted anywhere on the globe, I would be interested to see you do so.

I'm not certain how to address your concern with "rogue interagency intrigue". I agree that I lack the bonafides to describe the "shadow war" taking place on America's streets between agencies of the US Government such as ICE, FEMA, CIA, FBI, and the SS, employing as intermediaries rogue Chinese/Cuban/Russian voodoo doctors who look like Johnny Depp, the occasional BASE leaper, and, most likely, ninjas.

I'm not in the least religious, and I don't even know of anyone who worships a Christy God King. From the context, I assume this is somehow a reference to Bush?

Claiming SC is not "Literature" is not a matter of political preference; claiming that it is, presumably due to a certain "scale of ideas" despite it being one of the most myopic and unreflective novels of the year, as well as of Gibson's career, shows a certain lack of je ne sais quoi.

I haven't criticized any "facts", so I'm uncertain how to respond to that complaint.

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"Blackwater types" are generally former military personnel, usually SF qualified. If you could explain why one of them would wish to kidnap a drug addict and cart him about as a sort of Boswellian interpreter of data that could easily be transmitted anywhere on the globe, I would be interested to see you do so.

He's working without any actual authority and does not want to alert the actual governement. Brown and company were not working for the US they were working for themselves. One might opine that the kidnapping of someone completely off the radar would be the way to go since they could not use their resources in the legitamate government.

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I'm not in the least religious, and I don't even know of anyone who worships a Christy God King. From the context, I assume this is somehow a reference to Bush?

Erik Prince seems to be a Christian zealot to me. I think he fancies himself somehting of a divine warrior.

My position is that you are not criticizing the book but the politics within the book. These do not comprise the book as a whole. It's rather a comment on the beginning of the disintergration of a reality and paradigm we've come to take for granted.

The whole idea that one man might pull such a crazed scheme off has become plausible. The idea that the government would be oblivious to it is plausible. The notion that inside the governemnt are people profiting from the war is certain.

The prose is reigned in, I'll give you that. But it's still very good. he doesn't ever write "turgid prose."

The rest of your argument seems to be based on your ideological position and your desire for him to go back to writing what he rather considered "adolescent" work, at least as far as he talked about Neuromancer.

Besides Delillo who are you allowing as literature here?

And you didn't answer about your name being achingly familiar to another's on this board.

Sounds like someone's jonesing for a vat-grown ninja in mirrorshades.

Ruhmkorff, I don't see Spook Country as anti-military at all. It's obviously written by someone who is against the unwise use of the military. But then again, most military types I've known have also been against the unwise use of their lives. Understandably so. If you could kindly point out what makes it anti-military, I'd happily take another look to see whether I agree.

Things the book (and Gibson in general these days) obviously rail against are: 1) the results of privatizing traditional military roles, 2) what he perceives as an unwise use of the military in Iraq (which you're free to agree or disagree with), and 3) the hijacking of parts of the American security apparatus by people who think with their balls rather than their brains, and who are genuinely unqualified for their jobs.

Many military and security types agree with him on 1 and 3, even if they are more divided on 2.

Are there inaccuracies? Tough call. Brown hauling Milgrim around sure seemed silly to me at first, too. If I were Brown, I'd have Milgrim sitting in a room somewhere under a babysitter, waiting to translate messages. Only way it makes sense for him to be hauling him around is if Brown's employer is trying to get away with working cheap and dirty. And you know what? Brown is exactly the kind of guy you'd hire if you didn't know any better and you were trying to get away with working cheap and dirty. Brown isn't meant to be representative of the US military or intelligence community. He's meant (imho) to be representative of the profit-seeking bozos who are horning in on the realm of the US military and intelligence community. And in that respect, Brown is portrayed dead-on accurate (again, imho).

You said that ""Blackwater types" are generally former military personnel, usually SF qualified." In my experience this is false. I don't know how the numbers break down, but not one of the guys I've known who either took jobs with Blackwater or who applied and ended up turning down jobs with Blackwater were former SF. The last BW guy I met was a kid in his early 20s, trained as a medic in the Army National Guard, who had gone two weeks into a police academy in a small town in the US. Hardly SF. Last one before that was a former Army CID guy. Last before that was a USCG bosun's mate. I could go on and on. I've never known a BW guy who was SF before. I have heard of friends of friends who were SF and had gone to Blackwater, so I know it happens. But I daresay most of them are NOT former SF.

As for much of the rest of your criticism (such as going on about the locative art bit, etc.), you simply appear not to get it. It's okay not to get it. It doesn't make you a lesser person. But it's obviously not the kind of thing you find interesting to reflect upon.

I'm not saying it's a perfect book. There are things I don't like about it. But they're outweighed by the brilliant pieces, imho. If you feel cheated, then ebay the fucker, or wrap it up as a birthday present for someone you don't like.

I agree with Splitcoil.

Strange days indeed.

Brown is supposedly acting without authority, but apparently with an unlimited budget. Remember the shag-capreted private aircraft and the Georgetown townhouse? Besides, electronic intercepts can be sent anywhere to be translated. Even civilians would not burden themselves with a potential witness, not to mention add multiple kidnapping/assault/drug charges to any other possible felonies they might face. And that is just one example that happens not to be a spoiler.

Prince might be a Christian, possibly a zealot. He was a SEAL, which is fairly zealous of him. I don't think he worships any Christy God King.

I know your position is that I am criticizing the politics of the book, but what it appears I must actually point out to you is that the political view point of the novel is extremely shallow, the characters are cardboard cliche' cutouts lacking any dimension, and the entire plot is a shadowbox passion play where the good guys wear white hats and live happily ever after. It is not "Literature" by any stretch of imagination. It's a feel-good story, a Tom Clancy tale for progressives.

I will agree that compared to most modern writers, his prose is not extremely "turgid"; but I used the term earlier in reference to his pedantic explanations, not his overall writing ability. Compared to his earlier novels it seems he is almost spoonfeeding readers with his hip pocket classes on various topics, even ones he has no knowledge of himself. Remington, for example, does not make Silvertips. His reference to "Remington Silvertips" in the book is as jarring as having his character jump in a Ford Corvette and drive away.

Neuromancer could be considered "adolescent". I don't view it as great literature, but it was entertaining and didn't read as if it were written for slow leftist children.

I don't think even SC implies one man pulled off the scheme. It actually suggests a large group of men, including an apparently foreign billionaire, very nearly a George Soros character in some aspects, was involved in the plot. Most of the problems experienced by all involved made little sense from a real world perspective.

I'd add McCarthy to Delillo if you want another example of a great author.

I didn't see the question about my name being familiar; if it is, it is not deliberate. I've never been to this website before my first post and have no knowledge of anyone else who posts here.

The "anti-military" aspect of the book is expressed in Brown's caricature, but also through the obvious political slant of the book. Certainly the other people here have had no problem picking up on which side of the bread Mr. Gibson likes his butter.

As I said, I don't mind him criticizing the US Government or the Military Industrial Complex or Homeland Security, but it would be a better novel if these greedy corporate warmonger types were presented in at least a remotely realistic fashion, rather than being prone to random rages that inspire kamikaze attacks on Johnny Depp.

I don't think "security" types would have much opinion on your point 1; military types in my experience can see the benefits of it. Point 2 can be debated as you say. Point 3, the unqualified people in authority, is a problem that has long been with us. So has the overreach of the federal gov't.

I don't see evidence of Brown's employer working particularly cheap. We disagree on your other views regarding him, but obviously we interpret things differently.

I've not seen the files on every Blackwater employee, but of the four killed in Fallujah, one was a SEAL, the other three Rangers. As with the US military, not all contractors are SF qualified, or even from Combat Arms MOS. They have secretaries, gate guards, cooks and other occupations. That said, I have no relationship with Blackwater and do not speak for them in any way.

What exactly are the "brilliant pieces" in this novel? The locative art(at least the primary example in the book) is a slightly more modern take on the old Hollywood death tours that have been going on for twenty years there at least, perhaps longer. The idea has possibilities; even the wretched Tom Clancy could have made better use of it in the narrative. But instead it's just window dressing, other than one allusion to a dual-use formula or equation and the opportunity to throw in what seems to be an obligatory VR reference.