well. this is the future forum. what future do we have? we have the extracts. i've just gone through the archives. as far as i can see, to date, these are all the extracts that are available. read, re-read, discuss.

• IN PROGRESS
  
• THE MACGUFFIN
  
• COMMUNICATIONS BAY
  
• MOOR
  
• SUNSET PARK
  
• GRAY'S PAPAYA
  
• THE BOSS
  
• RIZE 5MG
  
• P.T.
  
• 2006: DON"T EVEN HAVE TO MAKE IT UP
  
• TECH ADJUST (the remix!)
  
• COUNTERPANE
  
• WARRIORS
  

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

So far we have three narrators and three apparently independent plots, although we know little about the musical side of the story. As the narrative mesh of Count Zero was extremely attractive to me, this makes me quite excited about the new novel.

And the surfeit of blogs would mean that the big collision of plots event and the aftermath is already mapped out. However I do not feel comfortable discussing a work in progress in the possible hearing of the author, as part of me wants to influence the final touches but the bigger part prefers to keep a reactive, typical reader stance.

So, rather, do you think Cayce will return in the following novel (P.T. seems the only narrator in the current one with a chance to actually tie in with her)?

José

yeah its difficult to speculate about stuff we haven't read yet, and as you say perhaps unwise. but as the blog says, he is on the home stretch, so i can't see him giving into the pressure to have his female characters trying to break their boyfriend's noses as an act of foreplay, regardless of how hard trogdor pressures him.

i'm frustratingly blanking on the name i'm looking for, keep nearly getting it - but i guess the music storyline could tie into the guy that was in pattern recognition - the one with botox face that cayce kept bumping into. that could be an interesting side. if that then paralleled with scenes from pattern recognition then it would be extra sweet. but still, any speculation in that direction also counts as possibly being influential.

of course to take it back further, someone speculated in the "he blogs" thread about whether this was this "start" of the sprawl world. of course the real defining point of the sprawl was neuromancer itself. but i guess there is still the rise of the sprawl culture and how things got to the point of tessier ashpool and wintermute. but i think that is the least likely road to be travelled.

I'm pretty sure wg gave a fairly clear overview as to what the new book is about in one of the interviews linked to recently. Without Search I've got Buckley's of finding it, although doing so might make me a killjoy anyway.

i would tend to say if he talked about it then its relevant to this thread, i would tend to think of this thread as being for talking about the actual work in progress more than any speculation.

but as you say, with the current lack of search function its a pain.

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Originally posted by remotepush:

i would tend to say if he talked about it then its relevant to this thread, i would tend to think of this thread as being for talking about the actual work in progress more than any speculation.

---

OK - it's in the TimesTalk podcast "Cyber Author" (scroll down - unfortunately it's a 34MB mp3), where wg is interviewed by Brent Staples, at about 60:13. It's possibly not as much of an overview as I thought but I stealthed my minitranscript anyway for those of you who want to go hog wild speculation-wise.

Brent Staples: I know often times writers don't want to talk about their works in progress, but what can you tell us about the novel you're working on now?

WG: Well, it's got some... the NSA's Echelon-USA base in Sugar Grove, West Virginia will probably be mentioned at least once, but... one of the... I wonder... what can I say about this thing? It's got a fair bit about something called "illicit facilitating", which is a kind of law-enforcement-and-anti-terrorism speak for the people that the bad guys hire to do the stuff that's a little too complicated for them to do. And there are a lot of these IFs, so-called... there are a lot of them in the world today and they're a real problem, because they'll... y'know, if you're a bad guy with a lot of money they're the ones who'll do what you need done. And I thought that these... reading about the illicit facilitators, I thought about the cowboys in Neuromancer...

Staples: The samurai...

WG: Yeah, and that, in fact, was what those guys... that was sort of what I'd imagined there, so I wanted to try to put some in the world today. So I started trying to build America's smallest ethnic crime family as part of this narrative and I came up with these people who live in... a family, really, not a very big family, they live in Manhattan, they're literally Cuban-Chinese by inter-marriage and they were, before they came here, a sort of very secretive part of Cuba's equivalent of the KGB, and the father, the godfather and founder of this outfit, just didn't, yknow, want to have to live in Cuba anymore, so using the skills that he and his family had they just sort of translated themselves here about ten years ago.

And that's the relevant bit.

of course if we are going to hide the transcript it makes it difficult (and amusing?) to talk about.

thanks for that anyway. i'm at work, with no speakers, so wouldn't be downloading that. probably same happened last time if that link was posted before.

it does sound interesting. i guess it comes down to the key concept "follow the money".

I guess they would be considered criminal, a crime family; but it sounds like they are an IF family. They seem like more of a family of technical IF acrobats to me. They have a gypsy vibe; I guess they more or less are a new type of gypsy with skills and services to sell to larger more integrated crime families.

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

i guess they are flexible, avoiding the traps that too many organisations fall into. staying cutting edge, adapting to new paradigms.

as for gypsy-tech. there is a catalanese band called ojos de brujo - i'm sure i read that they live in caravans with satellite link-ups, performing traditional catalanese music mixed with contemporary hip-hop/electronic culture.

then there were the mongolian nomads in nick middleton's exploration of the silk routes. goat skin huts with satellite tv.

so the idea of techno-gypsy/nomads is certainly a reality.

oh and of course, i admire the way that you quoted the piece to undo rob's efforts.

Well, as my efforts were directed entirely towards dodging responsibility for killing people's buzz, Eric didn't really undo them at all.

Now that search is back: Spiff - FP - Bad luck, Archie!

You mean "gypsy" in the nomadic sense too, Eric? I have the impression the moves referred to in the extracts are situational, although I guess they could find themselves on the lam a lot.

Oops sorry robW

I did mean gypsy in the nomadic sense and the Vietnamese that taught systema brought the acrobatic image to mind. I may be confusing pieces and parts though. Splicing the wrong images together.

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

thinking about the idea of a nomadic family, i don't really get that impression from the interview. it describes a family that have moved from cuba to america, doesn't really suggest anything more than someone who got bored of the emargo and decided the move would suit their lifestyle.

i think you are thinking back to the scene where the pair are cleaning the flat - which harks back to the idea of data cleaners, and the criminal infrastructure, the "illicit facilitating".

though the idea of nomadism is something that i do find interesting, and think makes a lot of sense in the changing world culture.

quote:

ojos de brujo

Cool name. Cool Site too.

How about? Ojos del Lazer.

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

Brent Staples: I know often times writers don't want to talk about their works in progress, but what can you tell us about the novel you're working on now?


Did anyone else think that Brent Staples was an extraordinarily inept interviewer? Talk about stilted... Some entertainment from his embarrassing attempts to ingratiate himself or his failure to recognise/respond to many of WGs allusions didn't really make up for the deadness.

In all fairness, not many people can go toe to toe with Bill and completely "get it".

After rereading the transcript, I think you guys are right about the family being settled or at least home based in Manhattan and nonnomadic but situational travelers. You are right about the data cleaning scene remote. But the nomadic gypsy thing put me on a little Wiki apophenia adventure. From Gypsy I went to Gitanos where I found

quote:

Vocally, The Gitano characterize the flamenco by giving precendence of emotion over text, with emotional outbursts and extended vowels.

The flamenco goes along with remote’s Ojos de Brujo. From Gitanos, I went to Caló. And googling Caló ended up with

quote:

In his book, Inmigración y lengua nacional (Editorial Academia, La Habana: 1994), the renowned Cuban linguist, Sergio Valdés Bernal compiled a list of words from the Caló language that are used in popular Cuban speech. Caló is the language of the Spanish Roma (the group known as “gitanos” in Spain, “Gypsies” in English, and “ciganos” in Portuguese). -- Source: Jacob Dyer-Spiegel

That got me back to Cuba and the criminal subculture, the orisha, and a nice list of words.

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

eric - aha! aha, eric! that looks like interesting stuff. have to take some time and read through that. isn't apophenia a wonderful thing!!

quote:

Originally posted by Eric:

quote:

ojos de brujo

Cool name. Cool Site too.

How about? Ojos del Lazer.

yeah their site is smart.
they make a lot of effort with their CDs as well. the two albums i have are filled with diverse and inspiring art.
musically its not what i would guess i would like, but i heard it on the radio and loved it.

I would not call it apophenia, rather a hidden connections effect.

Caló, the Roma/Spanish dialect, was probably the biggest influence in underworld cant in Spain for four centuries. That means that all former Spanish colonies, even if never there was a strong migration of Spanish gypsies to the New World, received a linguistic influence from the gypsies. And not forgetting that gypsies from the former slav countries did migrate in unknown numbers.

So finding Roma words in underworld cants anywhere in South America is to be expected.

José

i guess it isn't apophenia, especially since we started the process by looking for connections.

though it isn't an area i particularly know a lot about.