I stumbled across the documentary "No Maps For hese Territories" this weekend and i was fascinated by it.
Which gibson novel should i start with? neromancer or pattern recognition?
i'm leaning twords pattern recognition since it's more about current events. Or would it be a better "experience" to start with neromancer?

Since you found Gibson through NO MAPS I would recommend that you start with PATTERN RECOGNITION, because the style and ideas in that book closely match the things he talks about in the documentary. Then if you're still interested, take a side step with NEUROMANCER and follow that with IDORU.

These are his most lucid and enthusiastically written books. You might also be interested in SNOW CRASH by Neal Stephenson.

you will want to read the two triologies - the Bridge and the Sprawl in order -
So Sprawl (if you are being really completists) would be Burning Chrome (short story collection), Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive
the bridge - Virtual Light, Idoru, and All Tomorrows Parties.

they have the internet on computers now?

Starting with PR might be right. Although I haven't seen No Maps what I have heard fits with what 'A Reader' said above.

If you like that then I would suggest Burning Chrome. And if you like that chronologically through the Sprawl, and Bridge trilogies (Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties).

On the other hand, Idoru is quite readable on its own, and it wouldn't cause any real problems to read it out of order. Neuromancer and Virtual Light are fine stand-alone books. However, I would advise reading the Sprawl books in sequence, and All Tomorrow's Parties after Virtual Light and Idoru.

________
You have to give up.

Personally i would read neuromancer first, and read thru the rest of his titles as it gradually takes you from one era withn its main ideas and impact on society to the next thru to the now topical subject matter of PR

I'd say start with PR.

That's what I did. Then I read about half of Burning Chrome, decided I didn't feel like reading any more short stories, and read Neuromancer. To really appreciate Neuromancer, you have to read it twice, or better yet, get your hands on the Gibson reading of Neuromancer and listen to it after your first reading.

I found Neuromancer to be a very dense text, so rich with information, that I decided that continuing the Sprawl trilogy in one go, would be just too much.

So I moved on to the Bridge trilogy, which has a lighter more entertaining aspect. Much easier on the brain. The Bridge trilogy can be read one book right after the other, in a fairly short time span, which is what I did.

Now I've gone back to the Sprawl trilogy and just finished Count Zero in November. I don't know if it was because I had to try out all of the recipes (OK just one), but it took me a while to read Count Zero.

So unless you're a teenager who's totally into cyberpunk, I'd recommend starting with PR, then moving on to the Bridge trilogy, leaving the Sprawl trilogy for last, giving yourself time to slowly digest it.

but have to agree (sort of) with fashionpolice. Maybe you don´t need to start with PR, but certainly, unless, as FP said, you are very hard on cyberpunk, I would recommend to read first the Bridge, then the Sprawl trilogies. I first read Neuromancer when I was 14 or so, and I had to read several parts twice, and when I finished the book, I started over again. I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it, mind you, but it is easier to get into the mood if you start with the Bridge stories, that actually take place earlier in time, and then have a full cyberspace immersion with the Sprawl series.

MvR

This is our world now.... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat and lie to us and try to make us believe that it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.

I totally vote for Burning Chrome. It's closest to his overall style and sets up a couple fo the characters for future novels. I really don't Pattern Recognition is a great indicator of how exciting or intereting Gibson can be. It's a good novel but to me the least ground breaking. Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive are my all-time favorites of his, but I like them all.

I think neuromancer is an important starting point. Not just in terms of story, but in terms of setting up a whole style. You get to experience WG finding his feet as a writer. He is much slicker in later novels, but this first book has a whole lot more guts to it. You can discover yourself as a WG fan as he discovers himself as a writer. It's ideal

I don't believe that it's a matter of which. PR and Neueomancer are very similar, though also wildly different. It's very much a matter of which one you grab. I personally lean towards Neuromancer, PR is still too new to me to have staked out it's own space in my head, I've only reread it once, and it's similarity to Neuromancer kind of makes it forgettable to me.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed PR, but I enjoyed it more the first time round.

In the sanctity of the dark shall we await thee.

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Which gibson novel should i start with? neromancer or pattern recognition?
i'm leaning twords pattern recognition since it's more about current events. Or would it be a better "experience" to start with neromancer?

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Hmm, I would start with: 'Idoru' & 'All Tomorrow Partys' they are easy to read.

Then it is up to you:
Neuromancer can be a mind killer to read. (I read it the first time with 14 and had to read it again ... and then once again in the english version )
PR is more up to date and, compared to Neuromancer, easy to read.

Still, I think Neuromancer is the Masterpiece!

My boyfriend is the audio alchemist who did the theme track from No Maps....is'nt it prophetic...

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Originally posted by axcesize:
I stumbled across the documentary "No Maps For hese Territories" this weekend and i was fascinated by it.
Which gibson novel should i start with? neromancer or pattern recognition?
i'm leaning twords pattern recognition since it's more about current events. Or would it be a better "experience" to start with neromancer?

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Neuromancer, is the one I would start would...ok that is because it was the one that I started with ...actually it is the only WG book I have read
But I say go with Neuromancer.. it kicks serious ass even today. While reading it, I was half toying with the idea of getting into information espionage and moving to Japan. I would spend my days running around the whole day in a trench coat with a 5 o clock shadow selling RAM to little school girls.

hello, im looking for the documentary "No Maps For hese Territories", can you send me a copy in divx? i look for it in amazon.com but the doc is only in region 1 dvd. oops! if you send a vhs is also cool or mini-dv. my mail is helias@sapo.pt.
kind regards
herlander elias
cyberculture research

You might also be interested in SNOW CRASH by Neal Stephenson.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the SNOW CRASH tip. Any others?

Wayne

The first one I read was Neuromancer, but that was along time ago, and I now reading PR, at first I was bored with it, but it is so close to our time it is like a link to the other books, you can sse where it is going from here.

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Originally posted by wayno10:
You might also be interested in SNOW CRASH by Neal Stephenson.

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Thanks for the SNOW CRASH tip. Any others?

Wayne[/QUOTE]
The Difference Engine. I'd start with Neuromancer like I would start with I Robot or Enders Game, just for the sake of the genre. I think Gibson's best could be Pattern Recognition, but I have an age bias (he's getting older and so am I).

I'd say Burning Chrome or Neuromancer. If i'd read one of his later books first i doubt i'd have read any others.

I would probably read "Virtual Light" first. That's the one that hooked me.
I, like many others it seems, was a little surprised after reading "Pattern Recognition".
It didn't seem to really fit with previous Gibson works. So I went back and read his early stuff again and then re-read "Pattern". I enjoyed it much more the second time and realized that Eighties Cyberpunk needed to evolve.
Also, I'm currently reading "trouble and Her Friends" by Melissa Scott and am amazed by her vision of cyberspace.

I've probably read Neuromancer 6 or 10 times.

I've read Burning Chrome a few times.

I've read Mona Lisa Overdrive and Count Zero several times each.

I couldn't tell you what Virtual Light is about, even though I have the hardback on the chair next to me.

But when I read Neuramancer, "cyberspace" was a word used in only one book.

Bob