- The effect that Gibson’s debut novel Neuromancer had on me when I read it as an adolescent – comparable to a defibrillator applied directly to my forebrain – was the same effect that it had on speculative fiction in general when it was first published in 1984. People who wouldn’t normally be seen reading a book about a hacker in the future who sneaks on to a space station to help a computer turn into a god – and that’s a lot of people, perhaps including you – they made an exception for Neuromancer, because it was just too brilliant to ignore.
hat tip to veen, who inadvertently linked to a link of it.
I saw William Gibson (WG) being interviewed by Doug Coupland (DC) back in 2012. The audio of the interview is here. I pulled out my favourite quotes:
DC: We are surrounded by the voices of dead people, such as Elvis. We take it for granted that we can hear the voices of the dead.
DC: All sentient beings imagine themselves as the centre of the universe.
DC: I grew up with the notion that my life is a story - This is a 20th C. outdated conceit. Now a kid grows up with the notion that his life is a spreadsheet.
WG: Life is one damn thing after another. It's not good to see life as a story.
DC: Doug's Law: You can have either information or a life, but not both.
DC: People today can't distinguish between lived life and virtual life. The speed and memory of being on line are irreversibly addictive.
WG: It's not really the speed and memory that are addictive. We are addicted to the transparency of experience. We want to be there in a "real" experience. We want reality on demand. Speed and memory are a natural desire.
Ed note (Lil) - my understanding of transparency addictiveness is that we want more thoroughly involved versions of now. -- at least that's what we believe we're getting by being connected all the time.
DC: "Imagined literary futures melt like ice cream in the trunk of your car." [literary futures such as 1984]
WG: If I knew what those in the future think of us, I'd know everything I need to know about them.
DC: 97 is the new 100 IQ. Does your brain feel different now than it did in 1992?
WG: With connection to the global instantaneous memory prosthetic (Google), the world is a bit less mysterious. Ignorance was a brilliant screen on which the imagination could project.
WG: If all the networks converge, it would be a singularity.
DC: Geek Rapture.
WG: We're already the borg. DC: The Catholic Church tried to suppress the fork because it resembled the devil's pitchfork. [DC talked about his rapture project. He is groupsourcing a mortuarial community.] DC: How is your life stranger than 20 years ago?
WC: I have good friends that I've never laid eyes on. It's a post-geographical world, an instantaneous penpal machine.
DC: Is the future friendly? Should we look forward to the future?
WC: We might as well.
My paternal grandparents were from Bastrop County, Texas. They spoke quite slowly. My maternal grandparents were from New Jersey. They spoke rapidly. However, my maternal grandparents found themselves repeating themselves a lot because that's the culture of the east coast - you say things quickly and inaccurately and then you circle back and reiterate the important parts. My grandparents never had to repeat themselves. My grandfather said "if you don't quite know what to say, wait. If it's important, they'll wait with you."
You know how you can watch War of the Worlds - the original - and it's still an amazing sci fi movie even though it's full of flying wings, atomic bombs, sherman tanks and newspapers? The Sprawl trilogy happens in a Cold War universe where Berlin has been nuked, there are recreational space stations and hackers are highly-paid rock star specialists that use virtual reality to break into artificial intelligences with the aid of rogue Rastafarians. and it is spectacular. This comment's first link has a great quote from William Gibson, which comes from the article above.
I read it per an earlier recommendation from kb. It's really as the author of this article puts it, electrifyingly imaginative and cool. I'm thinking about delving into more Gibson. He has a command of language, evokes huge picture machinations but does not skimp on the gritty details, that thrill kind of endlessly. I read Neuromancer and immediately gave my copy away to a friend and insisted they read it. Here's a quote that sends chills for me. Spoiler ahead possibly, redacted names:
There were cigarettes in the gift shop, but he didn't relish talking with [redacted] or [redacted]. He left the lobby and located a vending console in a narrow alcove, at the end of a rank of pay phones. He fumbled through a pocketful of lirasi, slotting the small dull alloy coins one after another, vaguely amused by the anachronism of the process. The phone nearest him rang. Automatically, he picked it up. `Yeah?' Faint harmonics, tiny inaudible voices rattling across some orbital link, and then a sound like wind. `Hello, Case.' A fifty-lirasi coin fell from his hand, bounced, and rolled out of sight across Hilton carpeting. `[Hello], Case. It's time we talk.' It was a chip voice. `Don't you want to talk, Case?' He hung up. On his way back to the lobby, his cigarettes forgotten, he had to walk the length of the ranked phones. Each rang in turn, but only once, as he passed.