4 ms·

Not true that Gibson's prose has a short shelf life. Neuromancer is in my view a timeless masterpiece, and Gibson's most recent book is set in the future.

InternetOfStuff 8y ago
Well, Neuromancer's first line doesn't make sense any more :-P That said, it's one of my favourite books.
- bitwize 8y ago
  It didn't really make sense then either. No sky looks like television static. Jeff Minter's Polybius game pokes fun at it by showing the text "The sky was the colour of television tuned to a dead channel" -- before thrusting you into a level that literally had a static sky.
  - InternetOfStuff 8y ago
    > It didn't really make sense then either. No sky looks like television static. If you'd like to be literal about it, dense snowfall, perhaps? Anyway, the point, I think, was that it shouldn't look like any sky today, but rather like a futuristic sky.
- mistersquid 8y ago
  I realize you say this somewhat in jest, but I want to respond to this because the first sentence of of William Gibson's _Neuromancer_ is paradoxically both timeless and time bound. > The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. That first sentence characterizes the novel's diegetic (in-narrative) setting by giving the sky a property of an alternate medium (television). Unlike gentler rhetorical assertions such as simile, the declaration that the sky possessed a property of television suggests that the setting--like the intra-diegetic setting of the (Morrocan) beach in which an unnamed adversarial AI imprisons Case--is also a media construct in which the reader is imprisoned. In other words, the media topology structuring the novel's outermost narrative is a recursive formation of one medium inside another medium and this structure is timeless. It's merely recursion. However, fully understanding the literary (as opposed to narrative) significance of such a structuration depends upon knowing what television was and why any of its channels might be "dead" as opposed to "live". A useful point of comparison can be found in William Shakespeare's _As You Like It_ (II.VII.139-143) All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. [. . .] The significance is timeless, drawing power from the assertion that life is in fact lived on a stage. On the other hand, the description is also time bound (as well as culturally circumscribed) depending as it does on the greatly diminished (since Elizabethan England) medium of live performance. EDIT: Fix predicate in first sentence. Formatting. Change "at" to "a" in penultimate sentence.
  - taeric 8y ago
    I think the point is that my children will likely never know what a television tuned to a dead channel looks like. I've almost forgotten, myself. I say that as someone that finds that line rather nice.
    - SuperPaintMan 8y ago
      You reminded me of a post JWZ made a while back with a TV in his bar. It's neat how these things can be embedded into our collective experince. (Copy and paste the link, referrer shenanigans.) https://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/01/snow-crash-simulated/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/01/snow-crash-simulated/
      - taeric 8y ago
        I didn't realize newer televisions simulated the static. That is rather amusing, in many ways. Also, thanks for mentioning the copy/paste referrer nonsense. Didn't realize they blocked referred links from here and was curious what the reference was for a time. :)
    - notheruser 8y ago
      A television tuned to a dead channel looks like the HBO logo... A quick google search said it was still in use as of 2015.
      - taeric 8y ago
        What? I was assuming it meant a static "white noise" image. And... yeah, I remember them happening. But in modern transmission systems, that is a complete fabrication. There is nothing about getting white noise to transmit to look like that, and it in fact takes more effort to create such a screen. Last television I hooked up using a digital antenna would simply not show anything if the signal didn't exist. If you had poor signal, you'd get more compression artifacts. Nothing there should translate to the white noise image. Right?
KineticLensman 8y ago
I think the technology descriptions have really dated. Exhibit A: Neuromancer. the Dornier-Fujitsu space yacht Haniwa, assembled in Orbit. "Case made out the familiar chatter of a printer turning out hard copy...Case snatched a length of twisted paper and glanced at it."
adamc 8y ago
When I read it at the time, I thought the techno-babble might as well have been called magic. It was OK, but masterpiece?
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  Surely there are a few masterpieces where explanations are given in magic-babble.

InternetOfStuff 8y ago

Well, Neuromancer's first line doesn't make sense any more :-P That said, it's one of my favourite books.

bitwize 8y ago
It didn't really make sense then either. No sky looks like television static. Jeff Minter's Polybius game pokes fun at it by showing the text "The sky was the colour of television tuned to a dead channel" -- before thrusting you into a level that literally had a static sky.
- InternetOfStuff 8y ago
  > It didn't really make sense then either. No sky looks like television static. If you'd like to be literal about it, dense snowfall, perhaps? Anyway, the point, I think, was that it shouldn't look like any sky today, but rather like a futuristic sky.
mistersquid 8y ago
I realize you say this somewhat in jest, but I want to respond to this because the first sentence of of William Gibson's _Neuromancer_ is paradoxically both timeless and time bound. > The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. That first sentence characterizes the novel's diegetic (in-narrative) setting by giving the sky a property of an alternate medium (television). Unlike gentler rhetorical assertions such as simile, the declaration that the sky possessed a property of television suggests that the setting--like the intra-diegetic setting of the (Morrocan) beach in which an unnamed adversarial AI imprisons Case--is also a media construct in which the reader is imprisoned. In other words, the media topology structuring the novel's outermost narrative is a recursive formation of one medium inside another medium and this structure is timeless. It's merely recursion. However, fully understanding the literary (as opposed to narrative) significance of such a structuration depends upon knowing what television was and why any of its channels might be "dead" as opposed to "live". A useful point of comparison can be found in William Shakespeare's _As You Like It_ (II.VII.139-143) All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. [. . .] The significance is timeless, drawing power from the assertion that life is in fact lived on a stage. On the other hand, the description is also time bound (as well as culturally circumscribed) depending as it does on the greatly diminished (since Elizabethan England) medium of live performance. EDIT: Fix predicate in first sentence. Formatting. Change "at" to "a" in penultimate sentence.
- taeric 8y ago
  I think the point is that my children will likely never know what a television tuned to a dead channel looks like. I've almost forgotten, myself. I say that as someone that finds that line rather nice.
  - SuperPaintMan 8y ago
    You reminded me of a post JWZ made a while back with a TV in his bar. It's neat how these things can be embedded into our collective experince. (Copy and paste the link, referrer shenanigans.) https://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/01/snow-crash-simulated/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/01/snow-crash-simulated/
    - taeric 8y ago
      I didn't realize newer televisions simulated the static. That is rather amusing, in many ways. Also, thanks for mentioning the copy/paste referrer nonsense. Didn't realize they blocked referred links from here and was curious what the reference was for a time. :)
  - notheruser 8y ago
    A television tuned to a dead channel looks like the HBO logo... A quick google search said it was still in use as of 2015.
    - taeric 8y ago
      What? I was assuming it meant a static "white noise" image. And... yeah, I remember them happening. But in modern transmission systems, that is a complete fabrication. There is nothing about getting white noise to transmit to look like that, and it in fact takes more effort to create such a screen. Last television I hooked up using a digital antenna would simply not show anything if the signal didn't exist. If you had poor signal, you'd get more compression artifacts. Nothing there should translate to the white noise image. Right?

KineticLensman 8y ago

I think the technology descriptions have really dated. Exhibit A: Neuromancer. the Dornier-Fujitsu space yacht Haniwa, assembled in Orbit. "Case made out the familiar chatter of a printer turning out hard copy...Case snatched a length of twisted paper and glanced at it."

adamc 8y ago

When I read it at the time, I thought the techno-babble might as well have been called magic. It was OK, but masterpiece?

bryanrasmussen 8y ago
Surely there are a few masterpieces where explanations are given in magic-babble.