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For me, this remains one of the most interesting studies in literary imagery, and one that only gets more interesting with time. By the 1990s, of course, TVs te
by mortenjorck 5y ago
For me, this remains one of the most interesting studies in literary imagery, and one that only gets more interesting with time. By the 1990s, of course, TVs tended to show an RGB#0000FF blue when given an unusable signal – something which itself has largely died out over the past two decades with modern TVs reverting to black instead of blue.
And yet... there's no mistaking the visual evoked by these opening lines. Even if you didn't grow up with over-the-air broadcast TV on a cathode-ray tube, the words "dead channel" are equally of their era and ground the book in its analog-and-early-digital milieu. The real timelessness comes in the juxtaposition of old, malfunctioning electronics and the natural environment: a pitch-perfect image to introduce the world of the Sprawl.
- somedude895 5y agoI don't live in the US and I never saw a dead channel on TV in the 90s. As I read your comment I suddenly wasn't sure which was meant anymore, so I found this on Reddit: > Gibson imagined an ancient TV ... that grey/green haze as the tube warmed to a channel that was 'active', but sending no programming. A 'dead' channel. > Most kids in the 90's imagined the static of a TV of THEIR childhood, when not tuned to any channel, just projecting a grey/white static. Gibson has often corrected people that this was NOT the 'Dead Channel' he was referring to. > Now, of course, a new generation is imagining a sickly bright blue ... probably the last generation to really know what a 'TV' is, when it connected to something called a 'channel'.
- zorked 5y agoYes, I also thought the GP comment was strange. The picture I had in mind was this, which seems to be what William Gibson intended: http://www.sensesfive.com/wp-content/uploads/tvstatic.jpg http://www.sensesfive.com/wp-content/uploads/tvstatic.jpg Not that author intentions matter at all.
- fouc 5y agoIt's not the white & black static screen your link shows. Looks green like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uz5hS5cJW0&t=49s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uz5hS5cJW0&t=49s
- atombender 5y agoIn the foreword to newer editions of Neuromancer, Gibson explains what he imagined: "I’d actually composed that first image with the black-and-white video-static of my childhood in mind, sodium-silvery and almost painful..." So, not green.