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Originally posted by Ping:
If I wanted to have an intelligent conversation then I would cease to be Ping.

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Bones?

Shadoth (et al) as there have been irreconcilable differences between us from the get go, I suggest that you don't read my posts and I will do likewise. I'm actually taking from your suggestion I believe that if I didn't like WG that I not read him. I understand that you would like me to play by your rules but I have no desire in that direction. If the whole board decides to ignore me then perhaps I will get bored and leave, but as you and a few other outspoken ones have been the only ones to aggressively post to me, I see no reason to comply with your inferred rules. I suspect you will ignore this proposal as I would ignore it if it was yours. But as I am extremely axiomatic I will no doubt stick to it. ta

Right, exactly! Now you're beginning to see. We *disagree*. If we didn't disagree, it wouldn't be much of a discussion, would it? Now...you have your opinions, and we can discuss them. Just lobbing thoughts around without trying to back them up is kinda pointless, don't you think? Seriously, you believe these things, now defend them. I'll begin.

You posit that science fiction should be a hard extrapolation of the future. Today's technology, advanced, and that let's us see what tomorrow might be like. You disparage gibson, because you feel that his grasp of technology is sparse, and therefore his futurism is inherently flawed. I disagree (remember, up at the top of the post, how that works?) with your basic premise. I believe that well written scifi is about the present, working in tools of the future. Now, I've said this before, so that's not new. Now. Your turn!

A little quotation, for the nation:

WG: Yes, but the interfaces will be infinitely more transparent. There's that odd thing that, even though Case can plug the jack right into his head, he's always typing. It's because I was typing as I was writing it. None of these things that I've written were ever intended as blueprints for anything, particularly technology. People who take them that way are incredibly naive. They're really only about what we're doing now. Science fiction can't predict the future. Anyone who thinks science fiction is a hot ticket to the future deserves what they get.

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Originally posted by Shadoth:
A little quotation, for the nation:

WG: Yes, but the interfaces will be infinitely more transparent. There's that odd thing that, even though Case can plug the jack right into his head, he's always typing. It's because I was typing as I was writing it. None of these things that I've written were ever intended as blueprints for anything, particularly technology. People who take them that way are incredibly naive. They're really only about what we're doing now. Science fiction can't predict the future. Anyone who thinks science fiction is a hot ticket to the future deserves what they get.

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Oddly enough, I think Gibson is just as wrong as Ping here. ONE of the jobs science fiction writers can do is to try to predict the future. They'll always get it wrong, to some extent, but they can be eerily prescient in some ways (Jules Verne, for instance), and even more importantly they might inspire people to make those dreams come true. Our communication satellites today work almost exactly the way Arthur C. Clarke described them a decade before Sputnik was launched. Did he predict them, or did he inspire engineers to create them? Does it matter?

I have no problem with the branch of science fiction that is involved in this kind of real futurism. I think Gibson is wrong to denigrate it, frankly. But it is only one branch of the genre, a branch that has been dwindling for decades and hasn't been in the forefront since at least the mid-'60s. It's also a branch that has rarely had the best writers within its ranks, frankly, although it's often had great thinkers. The stylists, like Bradbury and Sturgeon and Delany and of course Gibson, tend to be in the branch that uses the future as metaphor for the now.

If Gibson isn't really a science fiction writer, if he's a phony, or a hack, then you'd have to say the same about Bradbury and Sturgeon and Delany, not to mention Harlan Ellison, Roger Zelazny, Michael Swanwick, Ursula LeGuin -- I could go on and on.

Now, if you don't like his writing style, or you think his characters are shallow or the themes in his stories weak, that's another story. I think you're nuts, but it's at least a legitimate argument to try and maintain. But to denigrate for not doing well something that he and most other writers whose stuff is called "science fiction" never tried to do just because YOU think that's what science fiction should be, well, I guess you have to be ping to think that way.

In another thread? there is a link to a recent audio interview with WG. WG stated that he had been writing a very different book until 911 happened. After that he felt predicting into the future was impossible ala Vernor Vinge. He rewrote and continued to rewrite only trying to predict into the very near future. Which he admitted was much more difficult then predicting 30 years into the future. My point is what my point has always been. Gibson is futurist hack and PR is just the first time he has admitted it. The whole VV cop out singularity is bull. Either you have the guts and the foresight or you don't.

I'm reading 'Live without a net', read David Brin's 'Reality Check' last night. Page 210, end of the first paragraph, "Later generations will attribute this [cyberpunk] fecundity to genius, not the sheer luck of being first." Got that WG.

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Either you have the guts and the foresight or you don't.

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You said, somewhere, that you can't think of anybody who passes your hack test, so I think it's more like: You don't have the guts and the foresight. You just don't. Anyone who thinks they do is a fool.

I don't think that PR is the first time WG has recognized this.

Sheer luck of being first. There's sure some of that there. Did somebody say there wasn't? Is that all there is? I think my opinion has already been made clear.

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My point is what my point has always been.

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I've been noticing that.

Ne? Ne!

If Gibson just wanted to capitalize on knowing about computers before the general audience did, he would, umm... learn more about computers to begin with. And since he didn't, it's pretty obvious that placing computers into his writing wasn't the primary goal.