The prose of our Host.

Talk about his word smithing here.

Ah! You beat me to it!

Ok, here's mine:

The Three Word Gibson.

This is a rough theory, but you can play along at home.

Gibson very commonly uses a technique of describing objects using three words.

I find this technique terribly evocative and ever since I noticed it I can find them on almost every page of every book.


Here's a couple examples from Idoru since I've got it on hand:

...small, uneven mirror-letters...

...little chrome nubs...

Long green eyes.


They are debatable, but you can find them all over the place.

Like I said, it's rough, I haven't gone thru Little Brother or Snow Crash (yet) to see if such things appear in other writing, but thus far I believe this technique to be a Gibsonian hallmark\trademark.

Try it, they are fun to find.

What I like about them is that they impart to me, evoke, not just the object (they are used almost exclusively for objects, my examples above are not the best) but all kinds of other things about the object the location and how they relate. In three little words.

Much more evocative than far longer more detailed descriptions by other authors, much more *descriptive* even, than longer more detailed description.

So there's that to get us started. I've got more, and...I'll be baaaaaaack!


PS: The general form is color, sense impression, object.

grey, steel, slab

yellow, plastic, canister

note, general form, not exclusive form.

He also has the tendency to juxtapose three objects together to form a kind of "found poetics of detritus."

"White plastic kegs that warned with a black skeleton hand in black-and-white diamond, but were empty. Several rusted iron hand tools of so great an age as to be unidentifiable, at least to Tito. Rusted gallon paint cans whose paper labels had faded past reading."

If the labels had been "sueded" past reading it would have gotten bonus Gibson Bucks.

The rule of three is rather prevalent in good prose, comedic timing and religious allegory though.

Those are good examples

black skeleton hand
(color, sense impression, object)
rusted iron hand tools
("color", sense impression, object)
Rusted gallon paint cans
("color", sense impression, object)

It's fairly consistent. Fairly. And yes, rule of three's, for sure, but...he does it so well.

That's why it's about his prose, not just a general rule. He, specifically is good at it, and does it often, in ways I don't see other authors doing (tho, as above, I've not completed my analysis of the technique yet).

I think I "adopt" the technique alright from time to time, I'd have to go look to see if I do or if it comes off half-assed.

The opening lines of The Dif. Eng. also display the three juxtaposed objects manifesto. The quietude of the urban poet's retinal fetish.

There's that "The Dead Flag Blues" line with "We fell in to it...like a daydream, or a fever" and that's another thing I've noticed and very much enjoy about the WG style.

You get descriptions, but they are often impressionistic or incomplete.

Obvious examples being that we don't really know what Case looks like, or the Judge, Corpsegrinder, etc.

We get impressions, but not descriptions.

I think this makes the novels very dream-like, and in fact I suspect that the reason I was less impressed with ATP over Idoru was....too short! Need more of a fix!

So there's another one.

The Three-Word-Gibson technique is a sub-set of that in a way.

From the examples above:

what hand tools are they? How are the paint cans arranged? How "long" are those long green eyes? Is there writing on the yellow plastic canisters? Are they new? Old?

It's like how they say in a dream that objects are representations of things, so they can change form, but they still represent the same thing.

Rather than beat you over the head with it, the specificity I find so very very annoying in authors like Robert Jordan, is totally absent.

And one more:

Another thing about WG prose which makes it quanta above most sci-fi\CP writers is his lack of technological knowledge.

I often feel reading Sterling, Doctorow, Stephenson, Egan, that they are just so very excited about telling us their ideas they got from the headlines of Wired, but...that's what makes it boring.

The characters are about an inch deep and don't stick in memory, the plots are these constructed Disney rides so they can ferry you past their favorite speculative touchstones, and the prose is just nicely mediocre.

Which leaves just some pretty basic extrapolative ideas behind when the tide recedes.


Gibson has the reverse problem. The characters are extremely compelling. Somebody on this board claimed that Linda Lee was the "emotional heart" of Neuro. She's in that book for like 5 seconds, and she's a computer ghost for half of them. Most of Case's interaction with her are him being suspicious she's selling him out or conning him...and, in fact, that's basically true. And yet....she sticks in the mind.

The plots aren't constructed armatures so he can say, "Looooook! Looook how clever I am!!!", and run us past a series of neat ideas, they're weird, erratic, textured, wandering. Much more "organic" feeling, much more immersive, for me at least, because it doesn't feel like a fantasy novel or a kung fu movie with all the requisite "rising action, climax, resolution" stuff. That is, reading Gibson doesn't make me feel like I'm reading a story that somebody thought up, it doesn't feel like the world and the people are being put thru their paces so they can be shown off.

I also think that being too aware of real tech limits the mind.

I guess mostly other authors in the general Gibson class (well, there are not any, but perhaps in the general sense of where they are classed, other "cyberpunk" authors, or "speculative fiction of last Tuesday writers") strike me as being focused on the parts that don't really matter. They don't seem to be very good writers. Or maybe, not great, but serviceable. They seem to spend more time lurking /. than they do thinking about word choice. More time thinking about how the plot will work than thinking about the textures of objects in the alleys of the world.

I also think the lack of focus on the bits and bolts of the tech allows him to introduce more beautiful and abstract ideas.

quote:

Originally posted by jbx:
There's that "The Dead Flag Blues" line with "We fell in to it...like a daydream, or a fever" and that's another thing I've noticed and very much enjoy about the WG style.

You get descriptions, but they are often impressionistic or incomplete.

Which is why you don't get: "A chair on the left against the wall below the brass lamps attached to the wall. Along the north wall was a bed, readily made, but still mussed from the previous occupant who had entered from the North (footprints still disturbing fresh vacuum rows)... and so on."

Exactly.

Nothing wrong with describing things, and in a classic murder mystery, you probably should, but...some folks to seem to fetishize the process of having a meticulous internal vision of the scene and then sharing up with us.

Such behavior does not seem relateable to me. Upon walking in to a room I take impressions of the space and textures of specific objects.

Gibson's narratives feel much more natural in terms of observation which adds to the whole experience, particularly as he's almost always writing first person.

I certainly don't wake up in the morning and think about my "mouse brown hair" and my "clouded grey eyes" while I look at my "disheveled 40 year old face" in the mirror, so why would characters describe things in such ways?

Same reason we can debate\suggest\imagine the appearance of Cayce or Hollis, because they don't talk about their own specific appearance, why would they?

quote:

Nothing wrong with describing things, and in a classic murder mystery, you probably should, but...some folks to seem to fetishize the process of having a meticulous internal vision of the scene and then sharing up with us.

I think it's one hallmark of an amateur (or amateurish) writer. Even in a murder mystery, writing like that quoted by Uber would be bad, because it's not the way people perceive things. You wouldn't walk into a room and immediately think "Which wall is the north wall?" You might notice the bed is a mess, but almost nobody would start making deductions about why (or whether it was connected to footprints in the carpet). Even if these "clues" are essential to the story, they will be introduced by the characters' discovery of them. This is why Sherlock Holmes has a Watson, so he has someone to point things out to. (While carefully avoiding "as you know Bob..." of course.)

The only case where writing like that could be excusable is in a first person narrative of a detective or the like investigating the scene, and even then I think it's clumsy.

Anyway, I should avoid reading any more of this thread as I'll start worrying about whether I'm using these techniques when I'm writing, or whether I should be, whether that would be derivative or better and on and on and on.

Its actually very interesting about how Gibson writes, you'd think he were writing a style guide for a science fiction film. This I guess is that whole World Building thing that he's now playing down, and I understand why he's done that. As much as we like being given a very visual description of the world I think in a novel its totally irrelevant to how incredibly deep the characters are because I think really the most important part about a novel is the character situations and their dialog.

Of course Gibson's language that he uses sounds more like himself explaining things rather than the protagonist. Case for instance wouldn't waste a lot of time describing things.

quote:

Somebody on this board claimed that Linda Lee was the "emotional heart" of Neuro. She's in that book for like 5 seconds, and she's a computer ghost for half of them. Most of Case's interaction with her are him being suspicious she's selling him out or conning him...and, in fact, that's basically true. And yet....she sticks in the mind.

Exactly, that is why she's my fav character in the story and she explains a very important philosophical point about post-humanity which Gibson later explores in the later sprawl series. Not to mention that you also kind of feel sorry for her (despite what she had done to case).

quote:

Originally posted by jbx:

Gibson's narratives feel much more natural in terms of observation which adds to the whole experience, particularly as he's almost always writing first person.

Gibson never writes in the first person.

Not since his short stories.

quote:

Originally posted by Mr_Cyberpunk:
Its actually very interesting about how Gibson writes, you'd think he were writing a style guide for a science fiction film. This I guess is that whole World Building thing that he's now playing down, and I understand why he's done that. As much as we like being given a very visual description of the world I think in a novel its totally irrelevant to how incredibly deep the characters are because I think really the most important part about a novel is the character situations and their dialog.

Of course Gibson's language that he uses sounds more like himself explaining things rather than the protagonist. Case for instance wouldn't waste a lot of time describing things.

I don't know but I strongly suspect Gibson writes by prose technique more than anything else.

By which I mean he'd be more likely to write: "The flickering halogens strobed the shadows of dead moth's over Bunny's face."

Than he would: "Bunny stood under the light and thought about why Lise had left him, trying to string together the fragments of their last days into a mosaic that made some sense to him."

Good point. On reading Neuromancer you instantly feel Gibson has gone "here is this world I built.. here is case's bed, here is the chatsubo where case hangs out, here is Linda his girlfriend who he's having a rough time with.." that all changes when Cyberspace enters the story, where we're seeing a more first person perspective of this virtual world (see Johnny Mnemonic (Film) for a good example). VR can only be experienced from the first person, if we view it from the 3rd person its only because of dialog between characters. Johnny Mnemonic (film) did that so well and that scene where he jacks into cyberspace for the first time alone is why people watched and presently own the film .

All scenes where Johnny Communicates reverts back to the Meatspace/Real world.

Its a good technique.

quote:

Originally posted by Mr_Cyberpunk:
Good point. On reading Neuromancer you instantly feel Gibson has gone "here is this world I built.. here is case's bed, here is the chatsubo where case hangs out, here is Linda his girlfriend who he's having a rough time with.." that all changes when Cyberspace enters the story, where we're seeing a more first person perspective of this virtual world (see Johnny Mnemonic (Film) for a good example). VR can only be experienced from the first person, if we view it from the 3rd person its only because of dialog between characters. Johnny Mnemonic (film) did that so well and that scene where he jacks into cyberspace for the first time alone is why people watched and presently own the film .

All scenes where Johnny Communicates reverts back to the Meatspace/Real world.

Its a good technique.

Well, that isn't exactly what I meant...

Sorry I was referring to your reply to Jbx uber

So it might not have made a lot of sense.

I see what you're saying, CP, it's just not what I was getting at. To me, Gibson's paints an impressionistic picture. he focuses on small details and lets the mind of the reader fill in the background, the big-ticket items. Like buildings and trees and often the sky and such.

He trusts his prose and the reader's mind to make up the rest of a scene.

This is one of the reasons he doesn't world build.

I don't feel that Gibson is presenting his world or even "the" world to us. He dabs some paint, three brushtrokes and we paint the rest of the scene. he takes detail to IMPLY a world. Very much as he describes the courier's take on falling missiles and horrific news: background of his world.

The fact you think Gibson built a whole cyberpunk world is a testament to how deft he is with prose and narrative, not the fact that he ever built it.

Which I firmly believe he did not.

When the spotlight is off the items and people he describes, there isn't any "there" there anymore.

I get what you are saying there, and sure that is probably why its so hard to adapt neuromancer correctly, everyone will have a different interpretation I fully agree, this is why we have no idea what the heck things "Should" look like, we just have to assume and go with our gut.

I would argue though that world building is incredibly hard to do in a novel regardless, and its shit easy to do in a comic book or video game. (or for you "film" guys Storyboarding)

I'm somewhat worried now that going all out with the visual side will lead people to disappointment, only because it takes the fun out of coming up with your own aesthetic.

Perhaps I was being confused with Blade Runner now you can definitely argue some world building was going on there I mean it was a film after all.

quote:

When the spotlight is off the items and people he describes, there isn't any "there" there anymore.

But that is when it stops being Science Fiction and more a Post-Modernist essay. *Mr_Cyberpunk hugs his cyberdeck*

"Little rounded screen"

--Gibson's first television, NMFTT