
William Gibson has written a comic - kiyanwang
http://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2016/05/william-gibson-has-written-a-comic-and-you-should-read-it/
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6t6t6t6
I was kid and, reading Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Count Zero, etc. I
used to imagine how would it be to be a hacker living in the future in Tokyo.

Well, now is the future, I live in Tokyo and my work involves "hacking virtual
realities" and "artificial intelligences"... And I must say that it is quite
less exciting than what I thought.

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pinum
Want to swap jobs?

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stuxnet79
+1

He is living the dream :)

But a better question would be how was he able to live every nerd's wet dream?
Japan does not seem to be making huge strides in AI at the moment so even if
you are able to find a dev job in Japan it seems unlikely that it would
involve robotics.

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mikekchar
If you speak Japanese, there are huge numbers of companies doing robotics in
Japan. All the big names. I bumped into someone on the Shinkansen the other
day working for Hitachi and doing robotics. Of course it is robotics for
manufacturing...

In Tokyo and Osaka, my understanding is that many IT jobs are in English.
Japan is also probably one of the easiest countries in the world for
IT/engineering workers to get a visa: have a degree and a job offer and you
are set. I don't know how many robotics jobs are English, though (the guy I
was talking to was Japanese and didn't speak English).

I think it's probably a lot easier to find a job like that than you think. The
reality is, though, that the salary (especially if you actually want to live
in Tokyo rather than Chiba, etc) will likely be shockingly low compared to US
salaries. I think senior devs are going for the equivalent of around $80K
these days. Possibly you can make up some of that with bonuses, though. I
don't work for a Japanese company (and I'm not in Tokyo), so I don't know the
details.

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toyg
WW2 and its immediate aftermath continues to endure as the founding mythology
of current Western culture, so much so that I've grown incredibly bored with
it. That war won't be fought again; by now we know in minute details how bad
the Nazi were and how bad everyone else was as well. We've also thought of
every possible alternative scenario for before, during and after the conflict,
likely including whatever Gibson is going to rehash here.

"Rise of fascism" scenarios can still carry some shock power when done well
(i.e. with a "banality of evil" spin), but everything from there to the '60s
has now been re-elaborated in every possible way and is so, so tired.

What about time-travelling our way out of the '70s oil crisis? What about the
Seattle G8 turning to revolution? There are so many focal points of recent
history that would be more interesting and fresh, even including goddamn 9/11,
that the thought of seeing another US/USSR/Nazi 1940s' uniform fills me with
dread.

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maxerickson
Warn Nixon about Watergate.

Just imagine the bliss of no -gate stories in the media.

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wonks
As opposed to the current situation:

"In other news, John Spinnerman of Conglomerate News Network has stepped down
after fabricating the story of the latest major scandal, in a sequence of
events Beltway insiders are now calling Gategate..."

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criddell
I've never been able to enjoy reading a comic, other than short three panel or
single page comics that you might see in a newspaper (like Herman or Far
Side).

There's something about the switch from reading the words to examining the art
work that is a little jarring. They just don't flow for me and so I never get
into them. Is this something that others have felt? Do you get over it after
reading comics for a while?

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CaptSpify
I'm not a visually-oriented person. I enjoy art, but I like concepts much
better. I like comics because it skips all of the description that books need
to do in order to tell their story. They just show it instead. A picture is
worth a thousand words, etc.

Some people like the descriptions that books offer, and that's fine. But for
me they are annoying, and I want to get back to the story/dialogue.

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sanoli
> A picture is worth a thousand words

A famous writer from my country had a good quote about that: "A picture is
worth a thousand words. Now say that with a picture."

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trentmb
You can probably do something interesting, similar to this: [https://s-media-
cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b2/2a/e0/b22ae0a33...](https://s-media-cache-
ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b2/2a/e0/b22ae0a335aa338e74fb9ef6627fcf1a.jpg)

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bryanlarsen
Sounds awesome. Would somebody please do us a favour and post when a full
story arc is available so we don't have to read it one issue per month?
Thanks. Normally in this sort of situation I'd pre-order the omnibus edition,
but we're not far enough in for this to be possible.

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kriro
I'll wait for the trade but this has me pretty excited. As an aside I am
always surprised there's so few "cyberpunk" comic books. Would be the perfect
medium and the typical reader is probably rather comic book friendly. I'll
gladly take recommendations I believe the only thing that comes close in my
collection is Transmetropolitan. [I don't know much about the Japanese market,
there was a bit more the last time I checked but overall still not that much]

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qzio
I would recommend Ghost In The Shell. Also, Appleseed by the same author. Then
Blame! is also one of my favorits.

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stuxnet79
All 3 are incredibly hard to parse (well actually I don't know about Appleseed
but Blame! and the GiTS manga are difficult to follow).

As a huge fan of GiTs SAC / Arise and the original movie, I tried reading the
manga but gave up as I felt it was too much work trying to unravel the
intricate plot line. So if I were to start somebody off the series I'd
recommend watching either the shows or movies first.

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andrey-p
I've read various William Gibson books and generally enjoyed them, but I find
his dense writing style exhausting sometimes. I think a comic written by him
could work pretty well.

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lobster_johnson
I'm the opposite — I wish there were more writers who were capable of writing
with the same kind of rich texture as Gibson.

J. G. Ballard comes close; The Atrocity Exhibition is very Gibsonesque in
places, though with a much bleaker sense of alienation than anything Gibson
wrote. Cormac McCarthy is also great, though not like Gibson at all.

People seem to like Neal Stephenson's early work (Snow Crash in particular),
but I was always put off by his apparent plagiarizing of Gibson's style.

Edit: Also James Ellroy.

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pault
I thought Gibson _and_ Stephenson were plagiarizing Pynchon's style.

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throw7
"A pair of tattooed Marines go back in time to stop him..."

Hmmm, I usually don't like it when time travel is incorporated into stories.

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chippy
>I usually don't like it

Have you made or are making an exception in this case?

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ajmurmann
Never having bought a comic in the US, I have a stupid sounding question:
Where does one buy this? Amazon only has the kindle version. Will regular
comic stores have this? How about book stores?

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defen
My local comic store is sold out, but they are carrying it, just waiting for
more stock.

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OddMerlin
Why is this on here?

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stuxnet79
William Gibson is always relevant on HN. He single-handedly made hackers and
hacking cool in the early-to-mid 80s. A pity that he was never technically
proficient, but perhaps that would have compromised his art somewhat.

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LionessLover
Why?

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contrast
RTFA

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mason240
I skip blatant clickbait on principle.

