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/lit/ - Literature

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5019782 No.5019782 [Reply] [Original]

So I somehow only recently realized William Gibson was someone I have to read. Where should I start?

>> No.5019799

>>5019782
Neuromancer.

Be warned though, the style's very condense. It takes a while to get used to.

>> No.5019802

Neuromancer had a great audiobook version.

>> No.5019803

Start with Neuromancer then realise you don't need to read anything else because it's YA and completely off the mark when it comes to everything.

You know how old science fiction portrayed air-to-air combat as being like sea combat was at the time? Huge Zeppelins firing cannons at each other and shit? Then less old but still bad science fiction portrayed space combat as being like air-to-air combat? Lots of dogfights between small ships? Gibson's understanding of technology is wrong in that sort of way. A waste of time.

>> No.5019820

>>5019803
You are a fucking faggot. The book has some of the first and still the best scifi coverage of the nature of intelligence and sentience. If you can't recommend Neuromancer based SOLELY on the flatline, you literally suck dicks.

>> No.5019844

>>5019820
>the first
maybe

>the best

no

gibson's a hack

>> No.5019925
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5019925

>>5019803
>Gibson
>YA

Are you retarded?

>> No.5019943

>>5019799
>Be warned though, the style's very condense. It takes a while to get used to.
I thought it was very easy and accessible. Also

>you will never be a space rasta

>> No.5019972

>>5019820
faggot detected

>> No.5019979

>"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

GOAT opening line. Too bad no one will get it in a few years.

>> No.5019990

>>5019782
Neuromancer was his only good novel bc he wrote it while he was acid tripping. Everything else is garbage.

>> No.5019992

>>5019844
So is every other "writer" in his "genre"

>> No.5020051

>>5019979

I have no idea what it means. A big Samsung logo?

>> No.5020096
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5020096

>>5020051
>Too bad no one will get it in a few years.

IT'S HAPPENING.

>> No.5020124

Also read Pattern Recognition.

>> No.5020125

>>5020096
Static isn't a color. Gibson isn't a good writer, and his conception of the future isn't that interesting. I'm with this guy >>5019803 in terms of recommendation, albeit not in logic.

>> No.5020132

>>5020125
It isn't a color, but it has a color.

In before grey/black/white aren't colors.

>> No.5020173

>>5020132
The first line of Neuromancer is overwritten (read: tryhard). It's indicative of Gibson's writing in general.

>> No.5020181

>>5020173
>overwritten
>not deliberate faux noir

>> No.5020196

>>5020181
Exactly. Gibson is just so dedicated to his craft he's just been pretending to be a terrible writer for the last thirty years.

>> No.5020208
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5020208

>>5020173
You're wrong.

>> No.5020215

>>5020208
If you think Gibson is a good writer then you really need to read more.

>> No.5020220

>>5019820
I did recommend Neuromancer you utter moron. I just said it's a great example of how shit his stuff is. It's just genre fiction.

>>5019925
>Your definition of what is for children includes things I like! You must be stupid!
Enjoy your trash fiction.

>> No.5020246

>>5019782
lmao good job op
you learned the sacred formula for summoning the elitist fag horde

>> No.5020293

>>5019803
Wow that's a dumb reason to not recommend a book. Personally I'd not recommend it because it's fucking terrible.

>> No.5020294

>>5020125
>Static isn't a color.
>Metaphor is not a literary device.

>> No.5020417
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5020417

>>5020220
>Audience is determined by what I consider trash!

Mmhm.

>> No.5020433

Can we at least agree on one thing--that Gibson wrote one good novel and then because of reasons never did it again?

>> No.5020456

>>5019782
Read his books as sci-fantasy. Then they're actually fun.

>> No.5020462

>>5020220
YA fiction is fiction that is distinctly written with children in mind. It is a genre.

Just because a book is "childish" or is read by young adults does not mean that it is YA. You can't just say a book is YA if it isn't.

>> No.5020511

The thing about Gibson that turned me off massively was that he apparently met his wife while she was in bed with his roommate after they spent the whole night fucking and he had to serve them breakfast.
He was a draft dodger, he said he had tears in his eyes when they brought him on set at that shitty Johnny Mnemonic movie and he said which such confidence that only Chris Cunningham could fulfill his vision of a Neuromancer movie while it was quite obvious that Cunningham was on his way out of the spotlight.

Also, I suspect him of being a SJW whiteknight type person.

>> No.5020555
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5020555

>All this pseudo-intellectual ass-hurt.

>> No.5020560

>>5019844
>neuromancer was possibly the first scifi coverage of the nature of intelligence and sentience
did you actually read his post before disregarding it?
pretty sure the natue of intelligence and sentience is a pretty common theme throughout a tonne of post (and even pre) 1960 sci-fi.
e.g.
>flowers for algernon
>half of everything written by Philip Dick (electric sheep is the obvious example)

>> No.5020563

>>5020560
wait I'm a fucking idiot lol, I must have somehow missed that the guy you were replying to did actual say that neuromancer was the first discussion of intelligence in sci-fi
probably because that statement is so stupid it literally failed to register

>> No.5020573

>>5020511
>He was a draft dodger
This is meant to be a bad thing?

>> No.5020631

I was really surprised by how much I didn't like Neuromancer considering I'm a big fan of things like Deus Ex and Ghost in the Shell. It was the most recent book I've read that I felt I was reading to get it over with. In hindsight nothing really sticks out plotwise and I hated how it was written. I liked space rastas but characters like Molly are done so much better in the sorts of media that were inspired by the novel than in the actual damn novel. I don't like throwing around the term "mary sue" but it seemed like Gibson was writing up a waifu for himself.
All in all I'd recommend people just read The Stars My Destination instead.

>> No.5020685

>>5020573
I suppose when someone like Ted Nugent is one, it is, right tumblr?

>> No.5020930

>>5020631
That's the problem with being the first of your kind. He didn't have the mistakes of previous cyberpunk works to build on the way you do now.

>> No.5020941

>>5020930
30 years later and still making those same mistakes.

>> No.5020958

>>5020433
Pattern Recognition and Neuromancer are very good, and I started Count Zero yesterday, seems worse than PR and NRM, but is still nice.

I'm like 50 pages in though, so I could be wrong

>> No.5020969

His stuff is more about the words than it is about the plot or characters.

>> No.5021096

>>5020173

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

There's nothing overwritten about this. It is as concise and perfect as prose gets. Not a single wasted word, and he doesn't spend any more time describing the sky or the weather, and he's already immediately set the setting.

>> No.5021101

>>5021096
that is the other thing about Gibson. He just throws you into the middle of things.

>> No.5021198

Thanks everyone. Any reason to read something besides Neuromancer first?

>>5020124
>Pattern Recognition
That's one of the books that've piqued my interest the most, but I don't mind taking the slow path through a writer to get the most out of them.

>>5020511
>he apparently met his wife while she was in bed with his roommate after they spent the whole night fucking and he had to serve them breakfast.
>draft dodger
>cares about how his work is represented
>SJW whiteknight type of person

All that makes me want to read him more. He seems like a thoroughly interesting and decent person from what I've heard and read.

Why would any of that turn you off?

>>5021096
I think maybe what's holding people up about it is how it's a kind of hammy, performative line - the really pejorative way of way of construing it would be, "ooh, I'm writing about technology, lemme reference it in a laconic sentence where I still pack in a reference to a seedy port and the word 'dead!'"

But I like hammy, performative prose, and I read the first few pages on online preview and it all works perfectly. It's got the same kind of resonance that the opening monologue in "F#A# Infinity" does - "The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel / and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides / and a dark wind blows."

Like, yeah, >edgy and posturing any half educated person is going to know that, but at the same time so real and right.

It's like the people who thought Rachel Kushner was just trying to seem smart and cool in the Flamethrowers, writing about revolution and motorcycles - they betray they're the ones too "smart" and too cool[-headed] to enjoy sexy subject matter, or revel in stuff that dares to strike a pose - the way formal linguistic precision and image and emotional association can play off eachother and get at something very alive and real.

>> No.5021912

>>5021198
No, no reason.

Also I'm surprised The Difference Engine wasn't mentioned, that seems to be a well liked novel.

>> No.5022576
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5022576

>>5021198