Your first three books were set relatively far in the future from when they were written –
For my own purposes I assumed that “Neuromancer” was set in 2035, but I was very careful to keep out of the book anything that would allow anyone to date it by internal evidence, which I think was a smart move, considering the longevity that it has strangely enjoyed.
The next three were set in the near future, and your latest three have been set in an “imaginary present.” Are you working your way around to the past?
I once thought I was, but I think I’ve actually worked my way around to the future again. The first three were full-on “This is the future” genre sci-fi books; the next three were like the ‘90s in high cyberpunk cosplay mode. Those [characters], for me, hadn’t been altered by history at all. They were like ‘90s people, but inhabiting this satirical set. I never saw a critic or a reader even remark on that. They accepted them as folk from the very near future, and noticing the lack of response to that was one of the things that emboldened me to write “Pattern Recognition” [2001] and then the next two books [“Spook Country” (2006) and “Zero History” (2010)], which are speculative novels of the very recent past, in that they are each set in the year prior to the year in which the book is actually published, with huge amounts of internal evidence of when it is. A lot of people said to me, “Why are you doing that? It’s going to date it.” I said, “I want to date it. It’s in some way a description of life, and I want to know which month these imaginary events supposedly happened in.”
TagWilliam Gibson
Damage from Planet Damage asked his “22 major arcana of cyberpunk” who they thought should be cast in a Neuromancer movie. I was honored to be included.
[CASE]
Klint: Joseph Gordon-Levitt Anabelle Cat: I love Cillian Murphy-superb choice and Joseph Gordon-Levitt Matt: An Unknown Rob: As for Case, the only person even slightly close to the target age that I feel could pull it off would be Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I think a lot of that has to do with his role in Brick, which was seriously perfect. M1k3y: Ryan Gosling as Case, if only to see him cyberpunk’d up. But mostly because he’s talented as shit.
Majority verdict? Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Planet Damage: (Warning: some of the sidebar images may be NSFW)
The Paris Review has an interview with Gibson in which he explains how her arrived upon the idea of cyberspace. I knew the famous story about seeing the Apple ad at the bus stop, but in this he puts the whole process together:
I was walking around Vancouver, aware of that need, and I remember walking past a video arcade, which was a new sort of business at that time, and seeing kids playing those old-fashioned console-style plywood video games. The games had a very primitive graphic representation of space and perspective. Some of them didn’t even have perspective but were yearning toward perspective and dimensionality. Even in this very primitive form, the kids who were playing them were so physically involved, it seemed to me that what they wanted was to be inside the games, within the notional space of the machine. The real world had disappeared for them—it had completely lost its importance. They were in that notional space, and the machine in front of them was the brave new world.
The only computers I’d ever seen in those days were things the size of the side of a barn. And then one day, I walked by a bus stop and there was an Apple poster. The poster was a photograph of a businessman’s jacketed, neatly cuffed arm holding a life-size representation of a real-life computer that was not much bigger than a laptop is today. Everyone is going to have one of these, I thought, and everyone is going to want to live inside them. And somehow I knew that the notional space behind all of the computer screens would be one single universe.
Paris Review: William Gibson, The Art of Fiction
Unfortunately, in order to read the whole interview you have to buy the entire issue in print. Update: The whole interview is now available.
I saw William Gibson‘s “Five to Follow” list for The National Post (congratulations on making the list Meredith!) and thought, since the Post will probably never ask me, I’d share my own list here.
These are the top 10 people I think readers of this blog should follow. I couldn’t break it down to five – 10 was hard enough! Apologies to everyone I left off – it was a hard list to write.
Chris Arkenberg. “Research, forecast, & strategy from the Left Coast. Tech, new media, energy, geopol, complex systems. Beatmaker, surfer, nature lover.” You can read my interview with him here.
(((1/f)))). “Mathematics and particle astrophysics. Also writing a book or two.”
Kyle Findlay (aka Social Physicist). “Chaos, networks, reality. Itinerant scholar.” Read my interview with him here.
Tom Henderson (aka Mathpunk). “Mathematician, gamer, writer, comedian, eater of foods. Futurity now!” Read my interview with him here.
Wade A. Inganamort. “Screenwriter • Partner/Co-founder/Producer @HukilauNow.”
Rita J. King. “Co-Director (with @Josholalia) of IMAGINATION: Driving the Future of Education and Work.”
Venessa Miemis. “Digital ethnographer, futurist, blogger. MA in Media Studies.”
Alex Pang. “Historian | futurist | information ecologist.”
Theoretick. “I am a Quantum Mechanic working through my Love/Hate Relationship with Tech.”
Cat Vincent. “Essayist on occult/fortean topics, former professional exorcist & combat magician. Unnatural Philosopher. Lives in Bristol, England.”
And of course, if you want to follow me I’m @klintron on Twitter. You can also receive updates from this blog by following @techn0ccult.
Gibson’s been talking a lot lately about atemporality, this idea that we live in a sort of endless digital now. In “Zero History” we have an echo of “No Future”: everything compressed into the present. This idea is what Zero History is really about. (This is the Order Flow: the future is defined by the present; who pinpoints the present controls the future.)
While not one to contradict Gibson himself, I’m not sure I buy this exactly: indeed, the wikihistoriography project was, in part, a refutation of this view. But it’s undeniable that something is happening, a network effect produced by the sudden visibility of just how unevenly distributed those futures are.
I want to give it a name, and at this point I’m calling it Network Realism.
Network Realism is writing that is of and about the network. It’s realism because it’s so close to our present reality. A realism that posits an increasingly 1:1 relationship between Fiction and the World. A realtime link. And it’s networked because it lives in a place that’s that’s enabled by, and only recently made possible by, our technological connectedness.
Zero History is Network Realism because of the way that it talks about the world, and the way its knowledge of the world is gathered and disseminated. Gibson seems to be navigating the spider graph of current reality as wikiracing does human knowledge.
booktwo.org: Network Realism: William Gibson and new forms of Fiction
(via Justin Pickard)
A Discussion with William Gibson from DANGEROUS MINDS on Vimeo.
The other night in Portland, Gibson said Twitter was the equivalent of only $300 worth of imported magazines – guess the value has already inflated.
I thought Richard’s comment about how there may never be another LOST was interesting.
See also:
In your last three books, you’ve developed this world where marketing is treated like espionage. There are agents and double agents and intrigue upon intrigue, but it will be in the service of something like a new denim line. Is this approach intended to be satire? Or is it closer to the truth as you see it?
If something really is satire, I don’t enjoy it. It can’t be satire and be that good. What I like is something that’s closer to a useful, anthropological description that has a really, really sharp satirical edge. Satire, traditionally in our culture, pushes the exaggeration past where the edge really hurts, and you sort of just goof on it. But other cultures, like the British, totally get it. Where you want to be with satire is right on the razor’s edge, where it really hurts and you can’t tell whether you’re being put on or not.
One of the easiest illustrations of the differences between their satire and ours would be the two versions of The Office. The British Office had a genuine humanity to it. It could be totally moving. The American take on it is far more buffoonish, and the attempts at humanity in it are maudlin.
Yeah, absolutely. The original Office is heartbreaking, it’s totally heartbreaking. And it’s not that we can’t do it, but that sort of work doesn’t have the prominent foregrounding in American culture that it does in British culture. And it’s something that can often scare Americans the first time they discover it.
Maybe it’s that most people prefer to know what they’re getting beforehand. They don’t like to feel confused about genre or intent.
I think that I am kind of functionally incapable of staying absolutely true to genre or form. Sometimes I feel sorry for somebody in the Atlanta airport who’s just bought one of my books when what they really want is Ludlum or Clancy. They get on the plane to the other side of the world and all they’ve got to read is this screwy shit about designer blue jeans.
(via Matt Staggs)
You can buy the book here.
Maze of Death by Philip K. Dick.
Inception seems to owe more than a little to Philip K. Dick’s reality-bending sci-fi yarns. In Maze of Death, which takes place in a world in which god seems to be an objectively real entity, several down-and-out misfits are assigned to work on a harsh, mostly uninhabited planet. But after losing radio contact with their employer they find themselves stranded without even knowing what their assignment is.
Japanese author Haruki Murakami is a master of writing surreal, dream-like novels. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World revolves around a “calcutec,” who uses his brain as a type of encrypted storage. Companies hire him to store securely store trade secrets. Until, of course, something goes wrong.
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Neuromancer by William Gibson.
I thought of Inception initially as a Dickian film, but my friend Ian pointed out it’s actually more of a Gibsonian film. Neuromancer, Gibson’s first novel, is a heist story taking place in virtual reality. Inception fans should feel right at home.
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