William Gibson Books www.williamgibsonboard.com www.williamgibsonboard.com NEUROMANCER & OTHER WORKS To William Gibson - Hope you understand
www.williamgibsonboard.com www.williamgibsonboard.com NEUROMANCER & OTHER WORKS To William Gibson - Hope you understand|
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Wouldn't it be amazing if Bill Gibson publishes a great cyberpunk novel again? It certainly would give the genre a new stimulus. I know WG's reasons why he turned to present-day fiction, but honestly I miss his visions of the future, his way of writing an intriguing Sci-Fi story. What about a second part of Neuromancer or a sequel to the trilogy as a whole, containing some characters we already know, such as Turner, Slick Henry, Case, Automatic Jack etc.?
Or for my part something completely new. What do you think Mr. Gibson? Please tell us in your blog what you think about my suggestion. |
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Good luck on this.
Based on interview content I expect the day he produces another "cyberpunk" "genre" work will be the day he's developed a serious drug habit, gotten a divorce, and lost his family in a tragic seal clubbing accident. Or when he's bankrupted his personal ethos\moral code\awesome-ness. What I think would be better is to have some computard smartie use all the "classic" CP texts as a corpus for a meme machine to algorithmically generate "new" CP books, on demand, forever and ever, amen. I mean they have these little dealies that will do this for music, complete with slider bars, and other lil controls. Even Townshend is in on it: http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2...ic-creation-software Why not genre fiction? Look at the popularity of Twilight, Anita Blake, etc, crap, etc. Select number of heroes. Select gender of heroes. Select... etc. Or leave it all blank, hit random, and see what it p00pz out. That in and of itself is a bit cyberpunky. And has there ever been a CP whodunnit in the CP literary world? I THINK NOT! Corporate Extraction teams infiltrating the Ghost of Stephen King's house via the hacked firmware of his bio-robotic pleasure doll to hack his latest meme-ware, allowing them to beat the competitors to market by publishing the output of said creative parameters to a paid journal thus preventing the original publishing house from using them. Literary sabotage! Once you organize such a collection of software (no reason it cannot be done now, seriously) then you can get various "name" ex-CP (it's dead, they are all ex- now) folks to contribute paid content. Three word Gibsonisms, and plot seeds and such. So it could even produce "legit" or "canon" material. |
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It's funny, I was raised a die-hard SF fan. Besides Stephen King, I'd never read a non SF fiction book until I turned 18. Now, despite that upbringing and despite how much I love Gibson's CP work, I absolutely adore his new work, especially Pattern Recognition, more so than his CP.
If he did choose to write a new novel in the genre, it would of course be the best ever, and would likely go just as nuts for it, but since that isn't likely to happen, I'm happy reading CP from other authors, and loving Gibson's current world. ------------ "I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts...because it's the onlything that'll make it stop hurting." -Heinlein- "Writing fiction's akin to meditation and lying." -Gibson- |
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Bio, how old are you?
Tracking demographic preferences. |
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I think he said 20 or 21 in another thread. But I could be wrong. I wonder as well about: When folks started reading and what "era" that was. What else folks had read concurrent\prior. Other Sci-fi? Anything? Literature? Porno slashfic? And then of course to what extent us older more mature readers have had our opinions changed over that time. I'd certainly have been psyched for a new CP Gibson when I was 20. Now? Less so. But how much of that was the 80s? And how much was my raging hormones? |
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I thought about this issue when I read Spook Country. Cyberpunk's no longer necessary, IMHO, because the modern world and real life have already taken up the reins of things that were pressing issues back when Omni magazine was still in print.
Gibson need not go over the same ground again. If the world needs more mirrorlenses and wetware jacks, then by all means write them into existence. I will say that I think WG's works have lost a little of their new/fast/glamourousness, simply because in the 2 or 3 decades since then, the world has gotten newer, faster, and more glitzy. Neuromancer holds a lot of allure simply because it was way way way out there back then, and still ahead of the curve now. I think the bridge series holds up best, and will hold up best, because it just so happens to land on a pivotal time that still could be in our near future. Still a little SF-ey. Pattern Recognition and Spook Country are good reads, but they feel like they could be happening a few blocks away. Hey, it's good he changes. I like it. jbx's suggestion that computers could be left to CP shows you just how much it's played out. I guess you could say that about a good deal of literature. |
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Indeed the world is all about this now, yes? Art vs. fanservice. Basically. Literature vs. "literature" vs. Pynchon vs. Stephenson vs. Gibson. Prose quality? Prose quantity? Idiosyncratic digression? or "informing the narrative"? Or what? Another action\adventure RomCom or a Being John Malkovich. And when does such a awesomely crazy work of high art collapse into it's own singularity of incomprehensible Finnegan's Wake type nonsense? Or is Finnegan's Wake a work of such high art that mere mortal minds cannot understand it, much like Metal Machine Music. |
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I am 22. I started reading Gibson's body of work when I was 18. And now I'm missing his Science Fiction. I think no matter how advanced today's times are, there will always be a future to write about. |
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Based on what he says in interviews and the like, WG disagrees with you. On the other hand, I agree with you. I just think we're waiting for the next William Gibson to show us the way (or maybe he or she has arrived and I haven't noticed). |
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Being John Malkovich. Movie making for movie making's sake. Self conscious but makes you think in a new way.
It's hard to find things these days that are as strange and enjoyable and entertaining as that one was... I just drank a Moxie cola (soda? pop?) the other day. I felt the same way about it. Not happy (it wasn't great or anything), but pleased to have stumbled across something so odd. So out of place in our quest for fast and slick and tasty. |
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So just novelty then? Or something more? Does the new way of XXXX carry over to the rest of one's life? Inform the on going perception? Or just a fading pleasant memory? |
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Well, amongst the hoards of Michael Bay and Tom Cruise and Will Smith vehicles that always bombard us, it was gratifying to find a movie that someone clearly put a lot of work into, knowing full well that it would be a box-office disaster. The production values are slick, in Being John Malkovich, but it couldn't have been relatively expensive. So I would guess that they went about it simply for the sake of making a movie that was thought provoking and enjoyable and well acted. Not to turn a quick buck.
Like Pepsi vs. Moxie. I don't imagine they make Moxie anymore just to turn a profit. Some other kernel of truth they are hanging onto. Probably so folks like me can say "Huh, so that's Moxie! Glad I tried it." Or maybe there's a slew of old men and women who drink the stuff like water, wistfully thinking of the good old days. If there's something to hold onto in there, it's maybe do good work for the sake of good work. Hey, YMMV. I guess you could say the message of Being John Malkovich might be "Be happy with who you are. Celebrity isn't all it's cracked up to be." I dunno. |
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OK, Bio, you're 22. Most of his readers who are younger want more CyberPunk, it speaks more to youth. I like his cybe a lot too. I think I would have been more apt to have said that I want more of it when I was 20, maybe. But By the time I was 20 Idoru was out and I was already well into the Bridge Trilogy, so I really just wanted more Gibson and it always pained me that he didn't produce his novels as fast as I would have liked.
But, regardless of whether you like the cool flash of the cyber, the truth is, that world is necessarily over. We're in it. Cowboys and cuberpunks (I like this typo) and the like, they are dated. Even if he hadn't "matured" as a writer, he still couldn't peddle cyberpunk-type books very successfully I don't think. I guess he could do what Morgan does, but that's now the same cyberpunk as far as I know. So, even though you want more of the Sprawl, tell me how he could get it to work in almost-2009? Not to mention most "authors" aren't content to stay in their comfort zone, while many "writers" are. Scarlett Thomas, who you likely don't know, started out writing chick mysteries. Had she stayed there, well, I doubt many here would know who she is nor care. Sticking to what got you famous doesn't allow for much growth. You become your own franchise, you James Patterson it, you Tom Clancy that monkey. You may make a lot of money, but still. I find any novel subtitled with "A INSERT NAME Mystery/Novel/Thriller" Is a good indication of a writer who has stagnated. I know how much reading feels collaborative, and it is, but when you write, a lot of it is still about you, as an artist, a human being, whatever and to satisfy that, you mostly have to grow. Thus, while you want Bill to continue to write CP, you're kind of asking the kid not to grow up becuase you liked it better when he stayed home on the weekends and didn't hang out with girls and that "bad element." |
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Thanks, UberDog. This was a really helpful message. I think you're kind of right with the growing up thing and so on. My point is as follows. Certainly our planet and whole society has advanced since the 1980s. We drive much more advanced cars, live in very huge mega cities, have to face terrorist groups as a new enemy and we're surfing a virtual place called the "world wide web". But when you're honest to yourself you must admit that we still haven't reached the world of the sprawl trilogy and we'll need about 50 to 60 years to achieve the technology of a 3D cyberspace because in our today's terms this is rather utopic. And I know that there are virtual realities even today, but these are way too primitive to call them cyberspace. Furthermore cyberpunk is very welcome in today's science fiction community. The CP game "Deus Ex" for example was a huge success with an even huger fan community. Besides the only reason why CP literature is considered to be dead is because no one writes it anymore and what is written is terrible. That's the sad truth. And BTW I know quite a lot people who would like to read CP today because actually no one of the younger people cares that we already live in this dark, wretched world. Not to mention that Gibson always states that science fiction only deals with the present you live in. Looking at it from this point of view there could always be successful CP novels, if someone would take the effort and publish them. |
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 I know, I know, I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. |
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If agents and editors thought they would sell, Bio, they'd publish kiddie porn. They would. If it.s not getting published it is likely not do to no one sending it in, its due to the industry feeling its done and milked for all its good for. |
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Cyberpunk served its purpose. It brought a somewhat moribund SF (for every Joanna Russ, Tiptree, and Delany in the 70s, there are a thousand hacks) some benzedrine hexagons of thrill.
»» "Forget infinity. I've got books waiting for me to read them." — colin »»"Speculative novels of last Tuesday." — William Gibson |
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[cough]dexedrine[/cough]
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That too.
»» "Forget infinity. I've got books waiting for me to read them." — colin »»"Speculative novels of last Tuesday." — William Gibson |
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Porno slashfic. The existence of this as an acknowledged genre sums up well why Gib no longer tries to invent a dystopian near-future centered around media ubiquity, with raw resource decline jockeying with ever new compound creations, and people increasingly internalized and exploring any corner of their psyche they will. |
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William Gibson Books www.williamgibsonboard.com www.williamgibsonboard.com NEUROMANCER & OTHER WORKS To William Gibson - Hope you understand
www.williamgibsonboard.com www.williamgibsonboard.com NEUROMANCER & OTHER WORKS To William Gibson - Hope you understand© Copyright 2005, AuthorsOnTheWeb.com