No Maps For These Territories. The William Gibson Thread

[bels]

[bels]

Brief Introduction To William:

[CleanThug]

I read Zero History first not knowing it was a series.

Finished Pattern recognition a week ago and Spook Country arrived today.

What's Gibson working on currently?

[starfox64]

[vgtbls]

I've read maybe 8 William Gibson books and he's definitely one of my favorite authors. I'm always so impressed with his ability to perfectly nail down not just a scene but a FEELING of a scene. He's a real master at extraneous details that elevate his stories from people in a blank room to flushed out humans in a jam-packed world. His Burning Chrome collection of short stories is a great primer to his style.

[bels]

I'd guess William Gibson is currently working on a story set in 1993 about Gophernet.

I'd say that whilst Gibson's characters and plots are generally lifted almost verbatim from pulp fiction (detective novels, spy novels and early science fiction seem to be his most mined from genres) his books carry an eerie sense of place which feels contemporary even when they were written 20 years ago and set 20 years into the future.

[bels]

Grilliam Ribson Paris Review Inteview:

http://www.theparisreview.org/interview ... iam-gibson

[bels]

[bels]

Great Moments In Cyberpunk:

https://twitter.com/erlsn/status/506593119018962944

Gerraldson Pugh reads the galleys of Gillian Robson's latest book.

[bels]

Really though, can you claim to be even remotely cyberpunk any more?

[mc-lunar]

I just read my first William Gibson book last week, All Tomorrow's Parties. Did a bit of research afterwards cause i quite liked it and it turns out he wrote Neuromancer which is one of those books i've been meaning to read for years. I really enjoy Neal Stephenson style writing (snow crash, reamde, and cryptonomicon are books i reread often) but Gibson really fleshed out the world of the novel without doing it overtly (not so much x is so and so and y is so and so but the reader learns through the characters). Neuromancer's definitely next on my list now

[Iliam]

[DeafIdiotGod]

Check it out, William Gibson did an interview with Rawr Denim

http://www.rawrdenim.com/2015/03/willia ... henticity/

[stappard_]

[bels]

Looking around to see what Bill had to say on subcultures for the wavey garms thread and found this:

http://www.dezeen.com/2014/12/18/willia ... k-opinion/

and this:

http://www.wired.com/2012/09/william-gi ... unk-memes/

[rjbman]

what did you think of The Peripheral?

[bels]

I thought the concept seemed wack so I didn't read it yet.

[ramseames]

Was talking with my friends parents tonight about what we'd been reading and when I mentioned gibson they said they'd met him a few times through a friend of theirs in the architecture community here; apparently he was much more quiet and restrained than they had imagined

[bels]

[teck]

i feel gibson is the fashion writer the fashion world needs, obsessive and critical.

however i find his dialogue to be so...thriller-y. its like two dudes just trading edgy witticisms.

"Do you like it?"

"What's to like?"

"That's the thing. There's nothing. Everything."

"Yes."

"Edgy."

"Witty."

"Smoking cigarette and zipping up my bomber."

[bels]

I kind of want a buzz gibson. If anyone sees one for £15 that would fit a size M hit me up

[Northwest]

Willy and Michael St. John Smith have a collaborative project/comic coming out in May titled Archangel that he just announced on twitter. Variant cover on his twitter implies time shenanigans involving flight. Shows a B-2 spirit (the first plane you think of when you hear the words stealth bomber; absurdly geometric) flying alongside WWII era (?) fighters. Imagery brought up shades of Miyazaki's The Wind Rises montage of the history of flight. Seems like an excellent place for his sensibilities. The psychology of flight, obsessive engineering detail that becomes part of the design language of violence could certainly fit into his examinations as unmanned vehicles do the same to air forces as they have to other branches of the military.

Plus, it'll be fun to see how Gibson works with an illustrator. His words alone inspire so many people to draw their ideas of what he is trying to say.

[bels]

[Northwest]

Things keep sounding better with regard to how much I think I will enjoy Archangel.

Quick summary of Q&A linked above: plot uses similar conceit to The Peripheral where a "splitter" was invented in desperation to escape the timeline humanity has ended up on. Main characters will be Naomi Givens (RAF intelligence officer in 1945 Berlin), her ex (American OSS officer), and the Pilot ("a nameless marine from a seriously harsh-ass 2016 America).

Preview images here:

Personal favorite is the depiction of what I believe is alternate history White House, completely isolated from any surrounding geography with immediate access to a security bunker.

[rjbman]

[rjbman]

- discusses how privacy and history overlap

[uames]

Agrippa-- the disappearing electronic poem

(video has embed disabled)

Documented in the Agrippa Project:
Excerpt from book chapter on Agrippa by Matthew Kirschenbaum:

the agrippa poem shows a more sentimental side to gibson than almost any other work-- and he obscured the whole thing with an elaborate conceit (self-encrypting disk with no included key) designed to make it borderline impossible to read. almost like he's afraid to show too much of himself. i sometimes wonder if the pattern recognition trilogy's milgrim was something of an autobiographical character for gibson-- always seeking some kind of security blanket effect, first from drugs but later from a pair of interesting green trousers.

[odradek]

[rjbman]

[rjbman]

I so screwed up - never shared the article about the upcoming follow-up to The Peripheral (it's called Agency)



Thoughts? I'm a little peeved at the decision to set it in a future w/ Clinton winning (wanna trade, Peripheral folks?) because it feels like a bit of a cop out to write a book so present-day and focused but without dealing with the monstrosity that is Trump.