I found the constant use of x type of Jacket, x type of coat, the unrealistic use of ipods instead of USB memory, reference to all things Apple and the over obvious use of Product Placement in general, in Spook Country, to be a total disaster. It made the book unreadable after a certain point and makes this Gibson fan feel foolish to have bought the hard cover.

Had excessive product placement been used in Pattern Recog I would have considered it ironic, in this "Big Ant Installment" I find it Moronic and was offended.

Had this book been given away for free and all it's costs and profits come from the advertisers who bought the right to be mentioned in the book then I'd agree with all the hype about Bill.

As it stands, Gibson is now a one hit wonder who started his career with his all time high triple hugo and may now only be mentioned along side Ann Rice and other "popular" "best selling" "publishing house darlings." He is no longer to be mentioned alongside true Sci Fi greats.

William Gibson is a sellout.

you probably won't find support for your position at a Gibson fansite. welcome, though.

If it were unreadable, as you claim, then nobody could have read it. Many people read it.
So, it's not unreadable.
Liar.

After reading the first chapter, and that one only, had a slight discomfort over the brand-dropping. Too much, too soon, I thought. And I fear some newcomers to Gibson could feel the same way.
But... if you work it out, if you see past the brands and the mental associations they might summon in your mind's eye, it's clear that there's plenty of meat to bite, bite deep. Some of those brands are now almost generic, xerox-like, and using, i.e., 'pearly-white MP3 portable player' instead would be unwieldy.

Of course, if Gibson™ edition iPods, competing brand clothing items, luxury cars, prescription drugs and a SC theme suite on a high-end boutique hotel designed by a crazy french guy appear in the coming months, I'll start with the book burning : )

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pearly-white MP3 portable player

Precisely. If there is a more concise way to refer to a certain class of objects or actions, language will co-opt it. Nothing more than that going on here.

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Originally posted by petebertine:

As it stands, Gibson is now a one hit wonder who started his career with his all time high triple hugo and may now only be mentioned along side Ann Rice and other "popular" "best selling" "publishing house darlings." He is no longer to be mentioned alongside true Sci Fi greats.

William Gibson is a sellout.

Wow, what a nice attempt at trolling there bud. If you've ever actually read a WG book you'd know that brandnames are common in his work. Sorry you didn't like Spook Country, but your points are baseless. I'm sure Maybach, Ziplock, and Paul Stuart, just three examples of brands mentioned in the book, could spend their advertising money much better than in books. Offer some evidence of WG or Penguin actually receiving money for these references or go back under your bridge.

Nod. I saw naturalist description rather than opportunist prescription in Spook Country, as in all WG precedents.

Just the Ono-Sendai, Maas, etc. of now. And just as Neuromancer was a (inbuiltly critical) description and not endorsement of laissez faire, so Spook Country is of said phenomenon.

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Originally posted by petebertine:
the unrealistic use of ipods instead of USB memory

wait, so what you are saying is "it would be obvious to use USB memory and not obvious to use ipods"? damn those criminal spooks and their underhanded use of technology!

OK I'll bite... When brands are so much part of the fabric of Western society (well, pretty much the whole world now), I actually find it strange when authors don't mention them. Many people think in terms of brands. It's a bit daft to go into loving detail describing a coat, a car, a computer, etc without saying what make/model it is... I like it in Gibson's work. Always have- as it was there from Neuromancer onwards. It reflects how many of us think these days. No sense in writing a 21st century novel with 19th century sensibilities.

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Originally posted by Clark Nova:
...you'd know that brandnames are common in his work. ...

One could say that brand names are a *trademark* of his work!

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William Gibson is a sellout.

You know, it helps to avoid expressions like that if you want your posts to be taken seriously. You registered 24 hours ago and *voila* three posts with similar complaints about excessive product placement, all garnished with subtle (and not so subtle) digs against the intelligence and taste of anyone who disagrees.

For what it's worth, I've always believed that the overt mentioning of specific products to be a deliberate move on Gibson's part. It fits the whole post-modern media-saturated corporate-space vibe-thing of his books.

If you can show me the cheque he received from vw then I might change my mind.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: titanium wren,

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Originally posted by remotespook:

quote:

Originally posted by petebertine:
the unrealistic use of ipods instead of USB memory

wait, so what you are saying is "it would be obvious to use USB memory and not obvious to use ipods"? damn those criminal spooks and their underhanded use of technology!

I think that an iPod is a more inconspicuous device then an USB stick.

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Originally posted by remotespook:

quote:

Originally posted by petebertine:
the unrealistic use of ipods instead of USB memory

wait, so what you are saying is "it would be obvious to use USB memory and not obvious to use ipods"? damn those criminal spooks and their underhanded use of technology!

Funny, in my lab people have been using ipods as transfer hard drives for years. When you have big datasets to transfer to other computers, even the large USB sticks aren't enough.

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Originally posted by petebertine:
Had excessive product placement been used in Pattern Recog I would have considered it ironic, in this "Big Ant Installment" I find it Moronic and was offended.

Well, it is supposed to be ironic. It is Gibson criticising our society. Fact, most humans these days are brand driven, Gibson is just rubbing our nose in it.

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Originally posted by Newromancer:

quote:

Originally posted by petebertine:
Had excessive product placement been used in Pattern Recog I would have considered it ironic, in this "Big Ant Installment" I find it Moronic and was offended.

Well, it is supposed to be ironic. It is Gibson criticising our society. Fact, most humans these days are brand driven, Gibson is just rubbing our nose in it.

I wouldn't go so far as to say he's rubbing our noses in it. The fact that the book is oversaturated with brand names reflects how saturated our culture is. Repeating certain brands just drives the point home. Sitting at my desk I can count 10 brands logos right in front of me: Dell, Altec Lansing, UPS, DHL, Staples, Swingline, Lexmark, Toledo, Cisco, Sony. That's without even turning my head. We don't live in a sterile generic brandless world, so why should WG write a story based in one?

And there are other factors too. The Apple Ipod is not mentioned in the book for product placement, it is a gibsonian "cool" factor where we have everyday consumer products which are being used in covert ways. And yes, Ipods are used in such a way in real life.

Then you have the mention of the Adidas tactical boots. The point isn't to sell Adidas shoes, but to show that brands permiate further than our own everyday lives and into what we typicly think of as generic like the military. To think that the same company which makes shoes that some skateboarder kid might wear also makes footwear for spec ops soldiers which bear the same three stripe branding logo on the side is kinda weird.

If I recall, it wasn't that Adidas made the boots for Spec Ops, but that the boots were named after a Spec Ops group... or something like that.

They are marketed as a police/military boot though. You won't see them in your highstreet store. Hi-Tec and other trainer manufacturers also make specialist police boots.

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Had excessive product placement been used in Pattern Recog I would have considered it ironic, in this "Big Ant Installment" I find it Moronic and was offended.

Well, perhaps el Gib does get a cut from Macdigital. I hope so. I don't think that's why, though. ipods work as specificity indicators. So does Powerbook. But I agree that the use of specific brand names as used in SC was less effective than before, and even counter-effective at times.

However, I hardly thought it made the book moronic, much less Moronic. Just a sign that Gib's new game is sufficiently afoot that he is perhaps finding that some of his old Fleet Street Regulars are getting too old to keep up, i.e., they are no longer Irregular enough.

Also, Gib's head seems to work that way. I suspect that the Cayce character was closest to Gib's heart than any of his characters (along with old standbys like the Finn and, I suppose, the old guy -- not the old man -- from the bridge trilogy).

Gib also has launched increased product recognition (pattern recognition ) of virtual unknowns like Cayce's flight jacket, et cetera.

And he's ALWAYS going Psst! wanna buy a watch? Man's got a chronometric fetish.

Listen all. I loved Gibson's previous work, but need to make a serious point here. Product Placement in printed text by big publishing houses is a fact and to me it's a nasty fact. I don't think a lot of people know it's there.

When the leader of CyberPunk allows his work to become rife with product placement, well I think it sucks.

With reference to this statement:

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Wow, what a nice attempt at trolling there bud. If you've ever actually read a WG book you'd know that brandnames are common in his work. Sorry you didn't like Spook Country, but your points are baseless. I'm sure Maybach, Ziplock, and Paul Stuart, just three examples of brands mentioned in the book, could spend their advertising money much better than in books. Offer some evidence of WG or Penguin actually receiving money for these references or go back under your bridge.

I'll compile some references for you