3 ms·

I read it twice, once in the mid-1990s, then a couple of years ago. I still love Gibson's language, and I love the ideas about AIs, but the flaws were much more

I read it twice, once in the mid-1990s, then a couple of years ago. I still love Gibson's language, and I love the ideas about AIs, but the flaws were much more apparent the second time around. For one, the creaky mechanics of the plot were much more transparent to me on re-eading it. The characters rush from location to location to find the next McGuffin, Case mostly being a passive spectator throughout. It feels like there's a checklist of items being ticked off one by one, and Gibson is never able to make it feel like an organic progression of events until near the end, where a very linear easter egg hunt turns into something less predictable. The characterizations are also weak; most of the characters, Case included, are just chess pieces that are shuffled around for the convenience of the plot. Gibson, in all his books, puts a certain cold distance between himself and his characters, and Case is perhaps the most distant of them all. I suppose Gibson's novels (well, I skipped The Peripheral and never read The Difference Engine) have all disappointed me in some way. They're enjoyable, but I never feel like he's able to land them. I love the prose. I love his ability to conjure a certain kind of dirty, messy future. His action set pieces are often very rewarding and disturbing. Certain elements, like the guy living in the cardboard box in a subway in "All Tomorrow's Parties", I find rather haunting. But he's so often let down by lackluster character development and plotting. Pretty much every single novel follows the same architecture: Fabulously rich, unreliable mystery man of dubious moral integrity (possibly being a front for a near-omniscient A.I.) hires one or more people to find one or more McGuffins; Gibson is really into behind-the-scenes, large-scale manipulation by forces unknown, and it gets a little old. Perhaps it is that Gibson is so good at aesthetics, but not as good at the emotional dimension; I find Neuromancer's ending to be very aesthetically admirable, less so emotionally, because I truly don't care that much about his characters. And this is true about many of his novels. 70% of Count Zero is a masterpiece. It's just that the remaining 30% is an uninspired mess. (If you didn't like Neuromancer, there's a good chance you'd like Count Zero better, though. It's definitely a novel where he got a little more mature about character development and plotting.) To this day, I find his most successful work to be his early collection of short stories, Burning Chrome. "Fragments of a Hologram Rose", "New Rose Hotel", and "Burning Chrome" itself are all fantastic, in ways that I felt he's rarely been able to replicate in his novels.

eropple 8y ago
I feel like the biggest criticism I can make of Gibson is that he plots. Most novels have a plot. But the good ones don't let you in on it. As you say, the characters rush around for MacGuffins, and you characterized it as "creaky"--that's a good word for it. I have not always been the biggest Stephen King fan (as an author; growing up in Maine, I've always been a fan of King-the-person) but On Writing is an excellent book. I don't have my copy right here so I can't quote what he says about plotting (paraphrased: "try not to") but this quote from an interview with Goodreads resonates strongly with me: "I start a book like Doctor Sleep [his most recent book] knowing just two things: the basic situation and that the story will create its own patterns naturally and organically if I follow it fairly...and by fairly I mean never forcing characters to do things they wouldn't do in real life...For me, the first draft is all about story. I trust that some other part of me—an undermind—will create certain patterns." So long as your beginnings and ends are only modestly far apart, short stories (and I again agree that Burning Chrome is probably his best work) let you get away with a lot more of this. But novella and novel-length works can't hide the machinery of a plotted-out story as well unless you are inordinately good at it. (And I mean, this is a ding against authors like J.R.R. Tolkien as much as Gibson; it's not like he isn't in good company with this weakness.)
- atombender 8y ago
  Good points. The crux of the problem is really in this distinction between plot and story. A great plot-driven writer who manages a superb synthesis of both is Iain M. Banks. One of his less well-known books, Feersum Endjinn, is a favourite of mine. Its journey is very linear, but it's a journey, a story that happens to a character. The skeleton of the plot is under a thick skin of emotional resonance. It's a good story. You could say that Gibson is a writer who is uninterested in plots (to the extent that he's not able to come up with an original one) but who, paradoxically, still manages to write extremely plot-driven books.
- jefurii 8y ago
  > I feel like the biggest criticism I can make of Gibson is that he plots. Interesting. I've seen him twice at book signings and both times he said that he specifically does not plot beforehand. He starts with characters and "follows" them through the story. He did say he often ends up at a certain in the novel where he has to chart out what's going on so he can finish though. On the other hand, if I remember correctly he's said he's a fan of old-school pulp sci-fi which has a lot of plotting and he's perfectly fine with that even if it offends lit-crit types.

eropple 8y ago

I feel like the biggest criticism I can make of Gibson is that he plots. Most novels have a plot. But the good ones don't let you in on it. As you say, the characters rush around for MacGuffins, and you characterized it as "creaky"--that's a good word for it. I have not always been the biggest Stephen King fan (as an author; growing up in Maine, I've always been a fan of King-the-person) but On Writing is an excellent book. I don't have my copy right here so I can't quote what he says about plotting (paraphrased: "try not to") but this quote from an interview with Goodreads resonates strongly with me: "I start a book like Doctor Sleep [his most recent book] knowing just two things: the basic situation and that the story will create its own patterns naturally and organically if I follow it fairly...and by fairly I mean never forcing characters to do things they wouldn't do in real life...For me, the first draft is all about story. I trust that some other part of me—an undermind—will create certain patterns." So long as your beginnings and ends are only modestly far apart, short stories (and I again agree that Burning Chrome is probably his best work) let you get away with a lot more of this. But novella and novel-length works can't hide the machinery of a plotted-out story as well unless you are inordinately good at it. (And I mean, this is a ding against authors like J.R.R. Tolkien as much as Gibson; it's not like he isn't in good company with this weakness.)

atombender 8y ago
Good points. The crux of the problem is really in this distinction between plot and story. A great plot-driven writer who manages a superb synthesis of both is Iain M. Banks. One of his less well-known books, Feersum Endjinn, is a favourite of mine. Its journey is very linear, but it's a journey, a story that happens to a character. The skeleton of the plot is under a thick skin of emotional resonance. It's a good story. You could say that Gibson is a writer who is uninterested in plots (to the extent that he's not able to come up with an original one) but who, paradoxically, still manages to write extremely plot-driven books.
jefurii 8y ago
> I feel like the biggest criticism I can make of Gibson is that he plots. Interesting. I've seen him twice at book signings and both times he said that he specifically does not plot beforehand. He starts with characters and "follows" them through the story. He did say he often ends up at a certain in the novel where he has to chart out what's going on so he can finish though. On the other hand, if I remember correctly he's said he's a fan of old-school pulp sci-fi which has a lot of plotting and he's perfectly fine with that even if it offends lit-crit types.