If you recall, in one of William Gibson’s books, people wanted to get custom eyes to match those of internet star Tally Isham. Well, you can’t get whole custom eyes yet, but we are getting there.
(An earlier instance, of course is the man who “married” Hatsune Miko, reflecting Rez’s obsession with Rei Tohei.)
Just colored contact lenses. Not made by Zeiss Ikon.
For the authentic cyberpunk experience, they need to be black-market cyber eyes, installed to replace your own in a makeshift clinic in an alley somewhere in the Kowloon Walled City.
Re. Gibson’s last couple of novels, anybody else feel underwhelmed? Parallel universes? I get it’s ultimately a metaphor/plot device (what could be/could have been), but meh. AI/upload technology, nanobot assemblers-- we’ve seen it before. Plagues and environmental catastrophe wiping out 80% of the population? Let’s hope he is not prescient on that note. Shadowy Russian, Chinese et al oligarchs manipulating and running the world? That’s on the nose, and is indeed real life imitating Gibson, or vice versa, but he does little beyond mention it. So I wouldn’t be surprised if he made it a trilogy.
I wish Gibson was still writing cyberpunk like in his first two trilogies. And yes, the new books (well, the first one–I have the new one but haven’t started it yet) are even less compelling than the Blue Ant trilogy.
One interesting thing about his writing, though, is how so much of what he wrote about as the science fictional future in his first books is the prosaic present in the current books. The Blue Ant books (set in the presentish day) feature the word “cyberspace”, which was created by Gibson in his first, futuristic books but is now an everyday real-world word outside of his fiction. Not many authors get to do that over the course of their career. (I wonder if Gibson’s early books exist as fiction in the Blue Ant books, or if “cyberspace” was coined elsehow?)
Oh, and another thing in the new books that is already completely outdated as being “futuristic”-- the “iPod on a Segway” telepresence tech.
A few people in the new novel, even in the 2017 alternate universe, even mention that, specifically, as being outdated (who knows, maybe due to reader feedback). What they end up building are various military drones and battle robots. In the future timeline they of course have full replicant bodies, both AI and controllable via neural interface.
The flying car with the cloaking device sounds neat, except one wonders about the obvious problems parking it on the street while invisible (which the future cop is in the habit of doing).
The Jackpot! Is it just me thinking that this thread was going to be about that? What if Corvid-XX is just a bit nastier than the current contender?
I don’t why Gibson gets all that cyber love when John Brunner’s “The Shockwave Rider” predates Gibson’s stuff by 9 years and to me was more enjoyable reading.
I don’t know that Gibson gets all the love (I started criticizing him in this thread because I felt that his recent novels could have been better- more compelling), but he is a talented writer who has things to say (and wants to stay relevant) and his books are a fun ride, and he gets love for that. I peeked at the Guardian review, which closes with
which is cute. (How many writers are in that position?)
I nearly didn’t pick up the second novel, but he still has a chance to kick things up for the final installment in the trilogy.
Personally, I prefer Gibson’s later work to his earlier Sprawl trilogy. One of his strengths is characterization, and I think he got better at it later in his career. Case, Molly, Beauvoir, and Turner are fun to follow, but they feel like fantasy characters in an alien world, and are a trifle one-dimensional. Their appeal lies in their interactions with their environments.
But beginning with Berry and Chevette of the Bridge trilogy, Gibson began to create characters who were interesting in their own right, whose inner lives were more accessible and compelling. And he got better about placing them in, and depicting, social milieus. Case, Molly, Bobby, Marly are all outsiders on the fringes of an indifferent or hostile society. But Chevette and Fontaine, from the Bridge novels, are very much part of the community of the Bridge, and don’t reject its mores. And Rydell’s deepest motivation, or so it seems to me, is to find his way into a community. Even moreso the Blue Ant trilogy; the “quests” the protagonists undertake aren’t very dramatic - to find the source of a viral movie, to identify the designer of Gabriel Hounds jeans. The interest of the stories is in the characters’ reactions and insights on their goals, and the decisions that those drive them to. (Spook Country drags a bit for me, but Pattern Recognition and Zero History I can and have read dozens of times.)
Which is why I deeply enjoyed The Peripheral. Flynne is fleshed out enough to engage the reader with her inner life, but the consequences of her actions, and the conflict of the story have higher, more exciting stakes. This felt like a more “realistic” version of cyberpunk, as well. Neuromancer had AIs in orbital habitats, exotic body modifications like Molly’s lenses and razor fingernails, and surfing cyberspace by way of neural implants. Which is all very shiny and cool, and all, but feels like a fantasy.
The Peripheral is a bit grittier, to me; at least, the scenes set in the stub, involving Flynne, Barton, and their coterie. The effects of 3D printing, a globalized economy dominated by megacorporations, and an apparently militarized government are such that hardscrabble, working-class people are forced to the edge. Flynne, Barton, Connor and so are intelligent and hardworking, but their only options are working multiple jobs, some of them in the gray market (“funny fabbing”), or selling their bodies to the government by joining the military; the technological, economic, and social changes don’t allow them the range to grow into their full capacities.
Seems familiar, doesn’t it? This feels like Gibson stripping away the neon and noir of his early cyberpunk, to look at the effects of technological, social, and economic change on people in the sober light of day. “Mundanepunk”, I suppose you could call it.
That makes it more obvious why the scenes set in the “future” deliberately still had the exotic body modifications, flying cars, neural implants, and mandatory cosplay zones.
PS does any writer get all the love? Maybe Thomas Pynchon?