
William Gibson: How I wrote Neuromancer - _pius
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/26/william-gibson-neuromancer-book-club
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abruzzi
"The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel"
\-- That is one of the all-time classic opening lines. It is also something
people will gradually lose since most people no longer have that grey static.

~~~
GauntletWizard
Worse yet, some generations will misread the symbolism, as my current TV
displays a bright blue screen when set to an input that's not in use. This is
probably a passing phase, though, as the TVs of the current generation have
strange media hubs with crappy builtin apps.

~~~
monk_e_boy
Oh God. I can see it now. [Static app] for your TV, purchased by old fogies.
Configure Static app to come on when you fall asleep in front of the tv.

Most often purchased with [Off: Vanishing dot], [Stand by mysterious hum],
[wired VCR controller (comes with 3 feet of wire)], [bad signal - signal
degrades depending on weather]

....

~~~
pdkl95
[http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/01/snow-crash-
simulated/](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/01/snow-crash-simulated/)

We already have [Static app] in some devices, which apparently play some sort
short _video recording_ of static. So now we get static with DCT compression
artifacts.

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veidr
An interesting brief history of what is, if I was forced to pick one, (still!)
the best among the thousands of novels I've read.

The whole Sprawl trilogy is fantastic, and while I agree with other commenters
here that Gibson's subsequent novels have become somewhat less awesome, it's
hard to complain too much about that if you believe, as I do, that the author
in question's first attempt resulted in _the best novel of all time_.

Still, Neuromancer is indisputably dated, as any such work would inevitably
be, so I am glad to have originally read it in the 1980s.

~~~
lhl
I recently re-read Neuromancer this year as part of my VR research, and while
it basically had no technical relevance, it stood head and shoulders above the
rest (Snow Crash, etc) as a literary work, and if you rework some
numbers/treat as slang the few bits of technical flavor ("three megabytes of
hot RAM"!!!) it actually doesn't feel very dated to me - mostly due to just
how clear/strong the writing is.

I _was_ surprised by how strongly it evokes this sort of late-80s oppressive
paranoia though. A reminder/argument for science fiction as a lens on
contemporary society I suppose.

~~~
veidr
Yeah, it doesn't feel _that_ dated until you get into the technical details. I
think part of that stems from the fact that Gibson didn't really know anything
about computers and technology (and, IIRC, wrote _Neuromancer_ on a manual
typewriter). The novel itself is about humans. Well, and a couple AIs also.

But a glaring example, as Gibson himself has mentioned, is that lack of cell
phones. In fact, once of the most powerful scenes in the novel -- that I
remember raising the hairs on the back of my neck as a read it -- involves the
AI, Wintermute, wanting badly to talk to Case. Case is walking through an
airport, past a bank of payphones, and the AI causes each phone to ring in
turn as he passes it.

There aren't even long banks of cellphones in airports anymore, but that
notwithstanding, why wouldn't Case and Molly and everybody have cellphones, in
this future-world where they have fully immersive VR interfaces to the matrix?

Of course they would. But you can't really hold that agains the decades-old
novel... especially since it was so remarkably prescient in so many ways.

~~~
ctdonath
People turn off their cell phones when they really don't want to be disturbed,
or sometimes in anticipation of the "turn off your devices" rule of air
travel, or it's just a dead battery. What's an AI to do when wanting to talk
to someone who's phone is off? ring every cell phone he walks by?

~~~
waterlesscloud
That would actually be even cooler.

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laichzeit0
This is very interesting to me from the "performing under pressure" point of
view. I've been under the gun, so to speak, on more than one occasion and
invariably I've delivered and learned most rapidly during those times.

Makes me wonder if people who "get shit done" operate on that sort of do-or-
die mental state, or how long it's possible to put yourself in that mental
state without either burning out or breaking down. I've read similar anecdotes
from people like John Carmack and Richard Feynman (again, pressurized during
WWII).

It's almost like we're operating at 50% efficiency, maybe we go to 75% when
we're really focusing, but actually only when we're in the self-preservation
state, we go to 90+%

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yzzxy
I find Gibson's greatest gift is naming things and coming up with vernacular.
Panther Moderns and ice are obvious standouts but I particularly liked "funny"
as a term for pirated 3d printed objects in _The Peripheral._

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aikah
A great book. Unfortunately after Johnny Mnemonic , and the matrix(2+3) which
were total garbage, I'm not sure I would want a movie based on that book.

It however influenced so much good stuff,like Ghost in the shell which is
basically the same plot,Deus ex and others.

I enjoyed the audio-book read by Gibson itself,it was excellent.

~~~
andyjohnson0
_I enjoyed the audio-book read by Gibson itself,it was excellent._

Me too. For others who might be curious, it can be obtained from [1]. The
source is legally dubious, but Gibson's narration doesn't seem to be
commercially available at the moment.

[1]
[http://www.bearcave.com/bookrev/neuromancer/neuromancer_audi...](http://www.bearcave.com/bookrev/neuromancer/neuromancer_audio.html)

~~~
noir_lord
Didn't know about this thanks for posting it :)

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crucini
Neuromancer was amazing. I realize now that Gibson's books monotonically
decreased in quality.

The books have gotten thicker, artier, more self-indulgent, and weaker.

I'm sure he'd like to recapture the magic he had at 34, but maybe it requires
the fear he spoke of. And an absolute ignorance about computers and networks.

I think it shares more with The Maltese Falcon than with any SciFi.

Saw WG complaining about GamerGate recently and thought how much he's aged,
and how ungracefully, since GG and Operation Disrespectful Nod reminded me of
the Panther Moderns.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Opinions will differ, of course.

Personally, I think his Bigend Trilogy is every bit the equal of his Sprawl
Trilogy. Extraordinarily perceptive about the contemporary world and the way
our social lives have changed over the last 15 years, in both scope and in
experience.

I'm not crazy about his Bridge Trilogy, though it has its moments. Overall, I
think those were his weakest books.

The Peripheral also sort of underwhelmed me. I liked the near-ish future, with
the look at how hopeless redneck-ville would be affected by technological and
economic trends. There's a mix of the past and the present (our present and
our future) in those bits that plays quite nicely and feels very real. His
far-future London, though, felt very under-imagined. I don't think it went far
enough. I also think he tried something interesting with hicks being just as
dangerous as the sophisticates, but it didn't quite gel the way I think he
meant it too. Still, it's not a _bad_ book, it's just not as good as I'd
hoped.

~~~
tedks
The Blue Ant/Bigend trilogy is basically the Sprawl trilogy rewritten in the
present day.

~~~
anigbrowl
Yeah. They're quite good, definitely better than the Bridge novels, although I
read those again recently and they were better than I remembered. He still
leans a bit too heavily on contextual striptease, though.

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jessaustin
Interesting to find that editor/author Terry Carr was so instrumental. The
first scifi I ever read was his _Cirque_. That was a deeply weird book for an
8yo in the early 1980s (and thinking back I'm not sure whose bookshelf I could
have raided to find it) but I was hooked.

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wiredfool

      “Is it going to be OK?” I asked, my anxiety phrasing the
      question. He paused on the stair, gave me a brief,
      memorably odd look, then smiled. “Yes,” he said, “I 
      definitely think it will,”
    

Anxiety. Over the quality of the manuscript.

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hyp0
answer to title: _I would write, then, to the audience I imagined in the
future of my discovery by friendly if unimaginable forces, and to them alone._

