
William Gibson on the apocalypse: “it’s been happening for at least 100 years” - molecule
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2020/02/william-gibson-apocalypse-it-s-been-happening-least-100-years
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ksdale
I love William Gibson but it rubs me the wrong way a bit that he (or the
author) so casually attributes the apocalypse to flying (among other things)
and then, without irony goes on to say that he’s been visiting London for
several decades.... I’m assuming by plane, from Vancouver.

~~~
IggleSniggle
Acknowledging a truth does not make you duty-bound to address the problem.
Indeed, even though I know that a traffic accident is one of the most likely
ways that my children will die, and even though I adore my children, I still
drive them around almost every day.

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ksdale
Though I agree in general, I think acknowledging it kind of smugly changes the
calculus a bit.

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Roritharr
Why?

~~~
ksdale
If someone says, “Here is a wrong thing,” that’s just an acknowledgement that
the thing is wrong, but there is no hypocrisy.

If they say “Here is a wrong thing and anyone who does it sucks,” then it is
the definition of hypocrisy if they do it themselves.

The smugness is an implicit moral judgment, and the moral judgment has to
create a duty to act, or else it’s not a moral judgment (maybe? I’m not a
philosopher...)

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harryf
Alan Moore (author of Watchmen and many other things) presents a nice
interpretation of the Apocalypse here
[https://youtu.be/cBc71ROdGxU](https://youtu.be/cBc71ROdGxU)

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chadcmulligan
In the northampton Shoe Museum no less [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-
northamptonshire-2648652...](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-
northamptonshire-26486528) with 12,000 pairs of shoes in their collection.

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alecco
I used to be a big fan of his work in the 80s and 90s. But after 2000 I can't
finish one of his novels. And I read a lot.

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pjc50
Why not?

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ryan_h
I've read all of Gibson's books, but I found Agency hard to finish.

The book has two parallel story-lines, and very short chapters which makes it
a very disjointed read.

The characters were also very flat. For the last quarter of the book, the main
character's dialog is almost all short questions and other characters
explaining things to her. e.g.

<paragraph explanation> "why's that?" <paragraph explanation> "oh really?"
<paragraph explanation> etc.

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szopa
I read his new book, Agency, sick in bed last week. It hits very close home.

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qubex
How does it compare to _The Peripheral_? I quit that book about a third of the
way through because I had literally next to no idea what was going on in the
text.

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Apocryphon
> Agency focuses on an alternate present in which Britain did not vote to
> leave the EU and the US did not elect Donald Trump as its 45th president.
> But this is no Remainer fantasy: an unspecified conflict in the Syrian city
> of Qamishli has brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Reminds me of Ken MacLeod's The Execution Channel, which goes out of its way
to mention that Gore was elected president- and an alternate 9/11 that hits
Boston and Philadelphia leads to the War on Terror anyway. Though written in
2006 or so, it felt particularly prescient a peace later despite being pre-
smartphones and social media- it capture an increasingly paranoid world choked
full of state-sponsored internet disinfo, influential conspiracy theory
bloggers, climate change refugees. Despite the weird ending and not the best
plot, the world-building and general tone manages to have resonance nearly
fifteen years later.

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golergka
Assuming that his fans on the other side of political spectrum somehow don't
understand the message is very naive – you don't have to agree with the
author, or even interpret the work in the same way to enjoy it. After the work
is finished, author's intent – who was supposed to be the villain, what was
supposed to be the moral of the story – matters not.

And, well, his thoughts about theoretical "UN with teeth" is such a textbook
example of Utopiah fallacy, I'm amazed he's actually saying something like
this with a straight face.

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lopmotr
The funny thing about ends of the world is they're all so politically correct.
What if an apocalypse is caused by something we're taught to believe is good?
Some examples:

Maybe social welfare and international aid are selectively breeding a race of
humans who are unable to sustain their own lives without support of the
superior but relatively shrinking productive class?

What if repeated famines were the cause of the high intelligence we have
today? We stopped famines. Maybe the pressure to outsmart each other has gone
too.

What if Islam continues to spread? It's a kind of mind-virus filled with
techniques to keep its hosts infected (don't ask difficult questions about
God, kill people who stop believing, etc.) and to spread (kill or tax people
who don't believe, and when you might have killed someone in war, allow them
to live if they convert to Islam). Everyone being infected might be OK if it
was benign, but it's also anti-science (Predicting future outcomes is usurping
the power of God who's the one who decides what will happen). This is perhaps
what already happened due to Christianity in the dark ages. Took 1000 years to
recover from that end of the world.

Maybe modern medicine is breeding a race of unhealthy people who depend on it
for survival. Maybe we're in an arms race of humans needing ever-better
medicine and medicine having to treat ever-more difficult diseases.

How can you defend against a politically incorrect end of the world? The
obvious direct course of action is forbidden, which means even mentioning the
possibility of those being problems is forbidden socially, which means it
might blindside us. We might even welcome it coming. I can imagine future
degraded people laughing at their silly ancestors wanting technology and
healthcare instead of fighting enemies with their fists like a natural real
man. They might ostracize tinkerers who try to build useful things instead of
participating in the tribal rituals and fighting.

