*Contains MAJOR spoiler*

Don't get me wrong, I loved the book; the character enrichment was excellent, and the buildup fantastic.

I may have to read it again to get a deeper glimpse into the purpose of it, though finding the container was simply full of... money? And not a 'wondrous thing' as I'm sure many of us hoped... was a very shallow results. Almost as if Gibson had *brushed his hands* and *just finished it* so he could get it out the door.

Seemed like a waste of an ending. I found myself even commenting to friends that given it's a timeline relatively 'new' to Gibsons writing, the container was going to hold some kind of 'lead-in' to neural-processing, aka. a leadup to his other novels!

(the VR / GPS references aside)

But no. Just money =/

You have just made me think: Gibson's books all have a dynamic centred around people who want to know things and people who just want to own them. Usually people chase the information that is going to make them rich. This time it's reversed. Our expectations are what lead us to expect something fantastical in the container, not the story. But by any normal standards (i.e. if you look at what people will do for very much smaller sums of money) it's as fantastical an ending as any.

i think its reflective of the real world. which perhaps isn't what we want to hear. but in real terms the most likely things in today's climate that the container was going to hold were drugs, weapons or money. the fact it was money out of those options and in that quantity i think makes it kind of interesting. the way in which gibson renders the money useless, thats the trick shot, thats your fantastical and big crazy idea.

you might as well say that pattern recognition didn't have a fantastic ending either.

I'm with Sentinel and remote. That, and I think Gibson's *done* the transcendent, paradigm-shifting endings (the Aleph in MLO, the nano-assembler for the masses in ATP), and in some ways those come up short too (esp. in MLO in my opinion).

I prefer narratives in which life goes on in an implied way: apocalypse averted, new paradigms always in process, because that's what humans do, with luck: process.

My "it's like, but not really" mode is toggling.

Like in the ending of IDORU, a memory of a great adventure; but, she'll never wear that jacket again.

Or like in Lynch's Blue Velvet film, We've had our adventure. We can go sit in the lawn chairs and sip cocktails now.

And watch the animatronic robins catch insects.

Nobody ever remembers what happens after a "money shot" anyway.

That's why they always just fade-to-black.

quote:

Originally posted by Sentinel400:
You have just made me think: Gibson's books all have a dynamic centred around people who want to know things and people who just want to own them. Usually people chase the information that is going to make them rich. This time it's reversed. Our expectations are what lead us to expect something fantastical in the container, not the story. But by any normal standards (i.e. if you look at what people will do for very much smaller sums of money) it's as fantastical an ending as any.

I disagree, it isn't expectations from previous familiarity with his work, it's an expectation he builds throughout the book which largely fails to pay off.

We are led down a corridor of conspiracy and danger and end with a practical joke. Thematically and plot-wise, it's off.

But I have never cared all that much about the plots. They are largely MacGuffins and getting there is the fun.

I guess I understand about the "buildup," as you experienced it. But I guess I just found it such a fascinating exercise on so many levels--the blurring of what's "science fiction" and what isn't, the playing with perennial Gibson themes (cyberspace is passe; it's all about "eversion" now), the interest in santaria/voodun spirituality, not to mention his engagement with present-day political developments, I actually didn't find it a let-down at all. Particularly in that last context, it would have seemed a non-sequitur to have spun it all towards something about nascent neuro-cyber technology or something like that. That said, I don't know that the technology and the politics in the novel end up resonating together in a way that sparks some deeper insights about both. Off the top of my head, it kind of feels in retrospect like they occupy different spheres of interest. I'm not sure what the spilling out of cyber reality onto the "external" word ("eversion") has to say about the sickening political corruption that occupies the deep background of the story. Have to think about that some more.

But to me the ending had a kind of convincingly grainy and attenuated quality. One small victory against the vast, sickening lurch we've taken towards the kind of corrupt, authoritarian security-state that is the worst dream of a lot of science fiction. Not a grand paradigm shift, but at least a well-struck blow. Maybe that's all you get, and if it's not enough, it's not too bad either. And I guess if I did have one thought about how that relates to the technological themes, it does seem to go back to one of his most persistent and, to me anyway, engaging ideas: about the use of cyber-tech to liberate the imagination versus the forces that want to use cyber-tech to lock us all down. The stultifying guys who are just after their ill-gotten cash, versus the creative people who realize (in all senses) the expansive possibilities of the cybernetic Eversion. None of it works out perfectly neatly--the creative people are always in danger of falling into or embracing the schemes of Authority (the unnamed figure behind the money-laundering plot) or the super-rich (Bigend). But that's what makes it such a fascinating dance to watch.

DrBB, are you referring to that adventurer across the Eighth Dimension with your handle?

quote:

Originally posted by [-astroboy-]:
But no. Just money =/

In a way... that's the one thing that redeems everything one might find loose or weak in the book. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it clicks right on with the understated feeling about the book's intention; it's money. Just fuckin' money. We all expected the Ark of Covenant, Sumerian sacred stones, alien artifacts, dirty bombs, cold fusion engines or the real Zapruder film, but no, we get the real reason of it all: money. It's what it's all about, now; why these are spooky times.

Excellent summation fuldog

Good insight everyone. I shall sip cocktails on my lawn chair and ponder this further.

quote:

Our expectations are what lead us to expect something fantastical in the container, not the story. But by any normal standards (i.e. if you look at what people will do for very much smaller sums of money) it's as fantastical an ending as any.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
I disagree, it isn't expectations from previous familiarity with his work, it's an expectation he builds throughout the book which largely fails to pay off.

We are led down a corridor of conspiracy and danger and end with a practical joke. Thematically and plot-wise, it's off.

I have said this before, but what the hell, I'll say it again. William Gibson calls it a practical joke in one interview. This does not appear to be the viewpoint of any of the characters in the book. A close reading of the text leaves you with NO indication that it was a practical joke. It's a very serious "fuck you' to war profiteers feeding and feeding off the Military Industrial Complex. Among other things.

I was satisfied with the ending because many millions of untraceable dollars seems to me to be a very credible motivator. But, y'know, that's just in the real world.

quote:

the creative people who realize (in all senses) the expansive possibilities of the cybernetic Eversion

The Street finds its own uses for things.

In the study of violence it seems to me that "violence" is often a strange act that nobody ever recovers from. It's like a drug state. Even when the drug is gone the feelings and associations, and memories, are all still there. You can twist it around and try to "make sense" of it, but it never really works, adrenal effects are often too strong, unreliable meat memories, etc. All you can really say, after the fact, is that it happened.

Sometimes I think The Gibz had written in many mighty sub-contexts for us to enjoy in SC.

Mostly I think that readers of books project themselves in to the book, and thus whatever pops out the other side is really much more indicative of them, the reader, than it is of the story\writer.

Money, as I was posting before, is a form of raw magic. Contaminated magic is an interesting idea.

So then, did Teh Gibz write the book with intent, or did it just end up that was as a result of his process?

Presuming it might have, the final chapters seem very ....there was another book of his like this, with "vague" chapters towards the end, been intended to contain a story with references to "the real" world, tho, I'd thought, clearly, that he's not really interested in that level of commentary, then it runs in to the same post-post-modern issues.

It doesn't make any sense. It's just something that has happened. Milgrams escape. Tito and the rope around his waist. All just things that have happened, which, like violence, leave you grasping for meaning, trying to "make sense" when in fact there is no such thing involved at all.

So too then with the book itself. Teh Gibz tried to write one thing, but, naturally, it became something else, something unrelated, and thus the end-product, SC, is a bit weird.

You (OP) expect something cool. But it's not about the objects right? The story is about helicopters lifting 40 footers off ships in the middle of the night, not the contents of the box.

I think the whole book is like that. It's very much about locative art, but it's not about locative art at all. It's very much about the ideas of the things that occur in the book, but it's not really about any of the specific events in the book.

It's certainly not about broasted potatoes for instance, but certainly broasted potatoes are in it.

Right?

I was perfectly satisfied w/ the McGuffin. Money, irradiated at that: great.

But the book climaxed 2/3s of the way through and then, instead of the usual 5-10 page epiloguic fade of the past 7 Gib novels, it went another third. In the final third, I saw Gib on unfamiliar ground, ground on which he made, for Gib's standards, some mistakes that bled the book's overall effect, creating a slight anemia of conclusion.

However, mistakes are good when their maker is an avid learner, which I think Gib is. It is for this reason, this mistake by way of new departure, that I deem this Gib's most important book since Neuromancer's importance by way of establishing his career.

quote:

Originally posted by fuldog:

quote:

Originally posted by [-astroboy-]:
But no. Just money =/

In a way... that's the one thing that redeems everything one might find loose or weak in the book. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it clicks right on with the understated feeling about the book's intention; it's money. Just fuckin' money. We all expected the Ark of Covenant, Sumerian sacred stones, alien artifacts, dirty bombs, cold fusion engines or the real Zapruder film, but no, we get the real reason of it all: money. It's what it's all about, now; why these are spooky times.

The discovery of the mundane quite deflates our apophenia, you're right.

quote:

The discovery of the mundane quite deflates our apophenia, you're right.

I would reparse that as 'the perception of mundanity, et cetera', but even then, apohenia's most mundane quality, that is, its definitional sine qua non, is to transform the mundane into the wondrous.

(kenmeer is suddenly attacked by a swarm of nits, as he deserves

Neither of you find non-existent patterns in the mundane?

That's like my central source for all that stuff.

Where else would you look? Any sort of non-mundane event would seem unlikely to produce patterns, even non-existent ones, simply based on frequency.

I mean, all those people that feel that sodium street lights turn on (or off) "always" whenever they pass under them? Isn't that about as mundane as it gets?