4 ms·
Wow! This reminds me of the book Idoru by Willam Gibson. Idoru on Wikipedia: "In the post Tokyo/San Francisco earthquake world of the early 21st century, Coli
by BjornW 16y ago
Wow! This reminds me of the book Idoru by Willam Gibson.
Idoru on Wikipedia:
"In the post Tokyo/San Francisco earthquake world of the early 21st century, Colin Laney is referred to agents of the aging mega-rock star Rez (of the musical group Lo/Rez, and seemingly very much styled after former The Smiths frontman, Morrissey) for a job using his peculiar talent of sifting through vast amounts of mundane data to find "nodal points" of particular relevance. Rez has claimed to want to marry a synthetic personality named Rei Toei, the Idoru (Japanese Idol) of the title, which is apparently impossible and therefore questioned by his loyal staff, particularly by his head of security, Blackwell.[...]"
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idoru http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idoru
- barber 16y agoI'm starting to think Gibson is writing the future.
- vcrash 16y agoThese days, he focuses on writing the present
- mrcharles 16y agoBut only because by his point of view, the present is effectively the future he looked forward to. I've always felt it's both an interesting and bold position for a writer of sci-fi to take.
- ghshephard 16y agoDoes this mean that sometime soon, Gibson will be writing historical fiction?
- chipsy 16y agoIn one sense, he already has.
- aaronbrethorst 16y ago"The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson#Visionary_influence_and_prescience http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson#Visionary_influe...
- Jd 16y agoAlso a significant discussion of this phenomenon in PK Dick's VALIS trilogy
- zacharycohn 16y agoVALIS was a trilogy? What were the other two books (aside from the obvious VALIS)?
- nathanielksmith 16y agoDivine Invasion, VALIS, and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (perhaps not in that order). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VALIS_trilogy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VALIS_trilogy
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- throw_away 16y agothis is my favorite line in idoru, which I think is relevant to hn (realizing now that even the name of the collective is prescient): "Someone had the idea to turn the killfile inside out. This is not really how it happened, you understand, but this is how the story is told: Hak Nam were angry, because the net was very free, you could do what you wanted, but then the governments and the companies, they had different ideas of what you could and couldn't do. So these people, they found a way to unravel something. A little piece, a piece, like cloth. They made something like a killfile of everything, everything they didn't like, and they turned that inside out."
- corysama 16y agoThis is one case where Gibson was slightly behind. Japan has been looking forward to holographic rock stars since Macross Plus in 1994 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKcud4Qs4_U#t=4m50s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKcud4Qs4_U#t=4m50s) --just ahead of Idoru (1996).
- zacharycohn 16y agoThis reminds me of a short cyberpunk story. I can't remember the name/author, but it was about a world where the next level of entertainment was essentially generated from a brainmap of the "artist." There was a girl who was disabled/disfigured/diseased, and she ended up becoming the biggest and most popular artist ever due to the raw emotions she was conveying. At the end she transfers her consciousness "to the cloud" and becomes completely digitized. Anyone else read this?
- srcerer 16y agoAlso Gibson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winter_Market http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winter_Market
- zacharycohn 16y agoBingo, thanks.
- nathanielksmith 16y agoThis sounds like a really interesting story. Thanks for the tip.