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The amount of research Gibson did for Neuromancer is really impressive and sometimes shines through in the text. For example, at one point he talks about an "an
by AlanYx 4y ago
The amount of research Gibson did for Neuromancer is really impressive and sometimes shines through in the text. For example, at one point he talks about an "annealing" algorithm. The term "simulated annealing" was first coined in a paper by Kirkpatrick et al. one year before Neuromancer was published. Was he talking to scholars who were reading cutting-edge scientific computing/optimization papers? Or was he familiar with metal annealing and just made the leap himself? Either way, it's impressive.
(I've also heard that the chemistry/pharmacology in Neuromancer also makes sense in a fairly detailed way, but I'm not qualified to assess this personally.)
- Jon_Lowtek 4y agoHe was probably reading scientific magazines. Cheap Truth, a zine from back in the days, had a review in #7 telling everyone how valuable they are for science fiction writers. Now sure that is not a fact about Gibson personally, but it's insight into the crew he hang with. >> non-fiction magazines can help the SF writer and reader escape genre stereotypes and come to grips with the real social and technical issues of the human future. ~~ V.O.
- AlanYx 4y agoThat makes sense to me. Kilpatrick's simulated annealing paper was published in Science in 1983, so he could have run across the term while browsing through issues of Science. (Another theory is that he might have spotted various computer science talks at UBC when he was taking the creative writing course and decided to sit in on some as fodder for his fiction.)