7 ms·

Neuromancer was amazing. I realize now that Gibson's books monotonically decreased in quality. The books have gotten thicker, artier, more self-indulgent, and

by crucini 12y ago

Neuromancer was amazing. I realize now that Gibson's books monotonically decreased in quality. The books have gotten thicker, artier, more self-indulgent, and weaker. I'm sure he'd like to recapture the magic he had at 34, but maybe it requires the fear he spoke of. And an absolute ignorance about computers and networks. I think it shares more with The Maltese Falcon than with any SciFi. Saw WG complaining about GamerGate recently and thought how much he's aged, and how ungracefully, since GG and Operation Disrespectful Nod reminded me of the Panther Moderns.

dilap 12y ago
Wow, his books have changed (and Neuromancer is an absolute classic...you don't get that with every book), but I think all of his output that I've read has been quite good. His most recent, The Peripheral, is excellent.
- huhtenberg 12y ago
  I don't know. I found his book about jeans fashion to be remarkably awful and disappointing, just a bleak reflection of Neuromancer. * PSA: Zero History. It was called Zero History.
  - DigitalJack 12y ago
    Neuromancer was spectacular. Count Zero was ok. I don't really remember anything about Mona Lisa Overdrive. Everything after that may be written as well or better, but they simply aren't stories I want to spend my time on.
devindotcom 12y ago
I don't know. I mean, he's still got his finger on the pulse. "Idoru" was excellent, and the idea behind the main character in "Pattern Recognition" (brand allergy) was brilliant. His stories are a bit more conventional. But I think that's because the strange future he visualized has become more conventional as well. What about his opinion on GamerGate troubled you?
- DigitalJack 12y ago
  I grew up on neuromancer and the burning chrome short stories, count zero, etc... I thought those books were excellent. Pretty much from The Difference Engine (awful) forward, I haven't liked anything he's written. The thought that runs through my mind whenever I read his non matrix stuff is "what the hell am I reading and why am I spending time on it?" I realize it doesn't matter if I like the books or not, other people obviously do. I'm just jealous because I enjoyed the early books so much, and they were so influential in my life. I wish I could like his more recent works, but they just aren't for me.
  - crucini 12y ago
    Have you found any other authors like the early Gibson? I would say Snow Crash is similar. Other than that I've found cyberpunk a dead end. Also, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler are slightly similar, but much less intense.
    - arafalov 12y ago
      A very different style and language, but I felt Richard K Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs series' had a similar non-relenting future-technology somatic pressure as I was reading them. http://www.richardkmorgan.com/books/broken-angels/ http://www.richardkmorgan.com/books/broken-angels/ (using Count Zero as reference) As to Idoru, I definitely remembered it when the AKB48 news came out some time ago: http://ksfm.cbslocal.com/2011/06/24/new-member-of-japanese-pop-group-is-computer-generated-fans-upset/ http://ksfm.cbslocal.com/2011/06/24/new-member-of-japanese-p...
      - JonnieCache 12y ago
        Seconding the Richard Morgan reccommendation. The Kovacs novels are great. The investment banking/mad max one is an absolute hoot as well. I sometimes wonder if they'll ever make films of them. It would be good. They'd be pretty hardcore though.
    - modusponens 12y ago
lnanek2 12y ago
Hmm, can't say I agree. The Peripheral that came out recently was quite good, as good as Neuromancer in my opinion. Felt very real and visceral except for the time travel nonsense which I guess has to be accepted to make a story of it. He integrated all the new stuff we know is going to happen very well, like drones and trading algorithms. Not sure if it was longer or shorter myself, though. I remember Neuromancer being quite a thin paperback as a kid, but The Peripheral was an even thinner Kindle app on a smartphone and read easily in a couple days. He didn't get into any weird iffy computer existences like in the past which were always a bit of a stretch, so he seems to have dropped some of the self-indulgent stuff you are complaining about maybe. He could have easily gone just as mysterious about the Chinese server or the crime analyzing algorithms in The Peripheral as he did about the Japanese previously, but he just left it alone, much to the book's benefit.
- angersock 12y ago
  Just finished The Peripheral in an evening binge, and honestly I don't care for it. Gibson, in the Sprawl trilogy (probably his best works), and the associated short stories, used to do a much better job of focusing on the characters. You usually had some lower-class or poor folks scurrying about, trying to eke out a living. I likened it to a friend once as ants fighting on the edges of glaciers: fierce, crude, and utterly inconsequential in the orbits of their environs. The problem I had with Peripheral, as well as with Zero History, is that he's fallen into "Oh, hey, here's a bunch of rich people--so super rich you can't even imagine--and they'll just deus ex machina everything along". I hate that. In the earlier works, those characters (the dim spectre of Maas Biotech, or the Tessier-Ashpool for example) are just background threads, occasionally injecting events or setting the stage, and focus is kept on the minions and protagonists. In Peripheral, the real badguy is just dull "oh and then this evil thing happened", and the rich people are kind of separated from any of the action and stakes that matter. Indeed, the central conceit of the story is such that, by definition, there is no real impact beyond a slightly-higher-than-normal gentleman's game going on. Contrast this with Case, or Armitage, or Automatic Jack, or any of those characters in the Sprawl verse. Those characters occasionally directly deal with high-up powers, constantly get used by them, and are fully aware of it, and yet there is the very real chance that maybe--just maybe, if they play their cards right--they could perhaps get a slim chance to act instead of react. No such setup is available in Peripheral. Moreover, I'm really disappointed in the way that Homes and the veteran stuff is handled. Like, I kind of dig the "haptic veterans" human refuse thing, I get some of the used-world feel, but honestly it all feels kind of phoned in. Contrast this with what Stephenson pulled off twenty years ago, or even what Gibson himself pulled off in Count Zero. Like, the notes are there, but there's no soul behind it.
waterlesscloud 12y ago
Opinions will differ, of course. Personally, I think his Bigend Trilogy is every bit the equal of his Sprawl Trilogy. Extraordinarily perceptive about the contemporary world and the way our social lives have changed over the last 15 years, in both scope and in experience. I'm not crazy about his Bridge Trilogy, though it has its moments. Overall, I think those were his weakest books. The Peripheral also sort of underwhelmed me. I liked the near-ish future, with the look at how hopeless redneck-ville would be affected by technological and economic trends. There's a mix of the past and the present (our present and our future) in those bits that plays quite nicely and feels very real. His far-future London, though, felt very under-imagined. I don't think it went far enough. I also think he tried something interesting with hicks being just as dangerous as the sophisticates, but it didn't quite gel the way I think he meant it too. Still, it's not a bad book, it's just not as good as I'd hoped.
- crucini 12y ago
  OK, I need to give the Bigend Trilogy a try. The Bridge books were the end of the road for me. If they're just a temporary low spot, I'll keep going.
  - arkem 12y ago
    I definitely think the Bigend Trilogy is as strong as the Sprawl Trilogy. Pattern Recognition and Neuromancer are my two favorite of his novels. Sadly however, I'm having trouble with The Peripheral (his latest), maybe it'll grab me but it has yet to do so.
- tedks 12y ago
  The Blue Ant/Bigend trilogy is basically the Sprawl trilogy rewritten in the present day.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Yeah. They're quite good, definitely better than the Bridge novels, although I read those again recently and they were better than I remembered. He still leans a bit too heavily on contextual striptease, though.
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
If, like me, you haven't read Neuromancer in 20 years, from wiki: "A street gang named the "Panther Moderns" is hired to create a simulated terrorist attack on Sense/Net. The diversion allows Molly to penetrate the building and steal Dixie's ROM." I'm not really seeing why this (or the fedora squad) is something to be welcomed.
- egypturnash 12y ago
  Yeah. Anonymous/GG is a bunch of jerkholes on the Internet, and so are the Panther Moderns. I thought the Moderns were pretty rad when I was 12, but I thought a lot of stupid things were pretty rad when I was 12. (Like the word 'rad'.)
jacquesm 12y ago
Just read them in the reverse order and you'll feel that they are getting better with every book. Scoring a big hit like that when you're young sure sucks, everybody will be disappointed in your forever after.
- CocaKoala 12y ago
  >Scoring a big hit like that when you're young sure sucks, everybody will be disappointed in your forever after. Nah, you just need to have the right attitude about it; see Joseph Heller: "When an interviewer told Mr. Heller that he had never written anything as good as 'Catch-22,' the author shot back, 'Who has?'"
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    hehe, excellent answer. Thanks.
makmanalp 12y ago
Also, having written a classic like Neuromancer early on is a surefire way to screw your career over, if only purely in terms of living up to and topping expectations. Just look at J.K. Rowling and her new book. She (rightfully) tried to get a pen name so that people wouldn't associate the new stuff with the old, but clearly they didn't let her have that. No shit it wasn't another Harry Potter, rarely can people churn out classic after classic. If you write anything that isn't even more mindblowing, it's considered a flop, and I think that's pretty harsh. I quite enjoyed his essay book "Distrust that particular flavor", and I just read The Peripheral and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Nothing genre-expanding, but solid, and has good ideas.
listic 12y ago
I don't have anything to say on the matter above what this guy says: http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/140521/do-writers-get-better http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/140521/do-writers-get-better He questions whether the writers actually get better over time, as a rule. His conclusion is: not necessarily, because they are not getting the feedback. NB: fimfiction now accounts for 2-3% as much reading as do all of the new books sold in America? http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/401563/we-are-the-twoandahalf-percent http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/401563/we-are-the-twoandahalf...
na85 12y ago
>I realize now that Gibson's books monotonically decreased in quality. That's interesting, I always felt that Count Zero was the best of that trilogy. Neuromancer to me felt like he hadn't quite found his pacing yet, and the characterization in CZ was much fuller.
- pmoriarty 12y ago
  Agreed. Count Zero was the best. Neuromancer was good. Mona Lisa Overdirve and onwards was garbage.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

by crucini 12y ago

dilap 12y ago

Wow, his books have changed (and Neuromancer is an absolute classic...you don't get that with every book), but I think all of his output that I've read has been quite good. His most recent, The Peripheral, is excellent.

huhtenberg 12y ago
I don't know. I found his book about jeans fashion to be remarkably awful and disappointing, just a bleak reflection of Neuromancer. * PSA: Zero History. It was called Zero History.
- DigitalJack 12y ago
  Neuromancer was spectacular. Count Zero was ok. I don't really remember anything about Mona Lisa Overdrive. Everything after that may be written as well or better, but they simply aren't stories I want to spend my time on.

devindotcom 12y ago

I don't know. I mean, he's still got his finger on the pulse. "Idoru" was excellent, and the idea behind the main character in "Pattern Recognition" (brand allergy) was brilliant. His stories are a bit more conventional. But I think that's because the strange future he visualized has become more conventional as well. What about his opinion on GamerGate troubled you?

DigitalJack 12y ago
I grew up on neuromancer and the burning chrome short stories, count zero, etc... I thought those books were excellent. Pretty much from The Difference Engine (awful) forward, I haven't liked anything he's written. The thought that runs through my mind whenever I read his non matrix stuff is "what the hell am I reading and why am I spending time on it?" I realize it doesn't matter if I like the books or not, other people obviously do. I'm just jealous because I enjoyed the early books so much, and they were so influential in my life. I wish I could like his more recent works, but they just aren't for me.
- crucini 12y ago
  Have you found any other authors like the early Gibson? I would say Snow Crash is similar. Other than that I've found cyberpunk a dead end. Also, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler are slightly similar, but much less intense.
  - arafalov 12y ago
    A very different style and language, but I felt Richard K Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs series' had a similar non-relenting future-technology somatic pressure as I was reading them. http://www.richardkmorgan.com/books/broken-angels/ http://www.richardkmorgan.com/books/broken-angels/ (using Count Zero as reference) As to Idoru, I definitely remembered it when the AKB48 news came out some time ago: http://ksfm.cbslocal.com/2011/06/24/new-member-of-japanese-pop-group-is-computer-generated-fans-upset/ http://ksfm.cbslocal.com/2011/06/24/new-member-of-japanese-p...
    - JonnieCache 12y ago
      Seconding the Richard Morgan reccommendation. The Kovacs novels are great. The investment banking/mad max one is an absolute hoot as well. I sometimes wonder if they'll ever make films of them. It would be good. They'd be pretty hardcore though.
  - modusponens 12y ago

lnanek2 12y ago

Hmm, can't say I agree. The Peripheral that came out recently was quite good, as good as Neuromancer in my opinion. Felt very real and visceral except for the time travel nonsense which I guess has to be accepted to make a story of it. He integrated all the new stuff we know is going to happen very well, like drones and trading algorithms. Not sure if it was longer or shorter myself, though. I remember Neuromancer being quite a thin paperback as a kid, but The Peripheral was an even thinner Kindle app on a smartphone and read easily in a couple days. He didn't get into any weird iffy computer existences like in the past which were always a bit of a stretch, so he seems to have dropped some of the self-indulgent stuff you are complaining about maybe. He could have easily gone just as mysterious about the Chinese server or the crime analyzing algorithms in The Peripheral as he did about the Japanese previously, but he just left it alone, much to the book's benefit.

angersock 12y ago
Just finished The Peripheral in an evening binge, and honestly I don't care for it. Gibson, in the Sprawl trilogy (probably his best works), and the associated short stories, used to do a much better job of focusing on the characters. You usually had some lower-class or poor folks scurrying about, trying to eke out a living. I likened it to a friend once as ants fighting on the edges of glaciers: fierce, crude, and utterly inconsequential in the orbits of their environs. The problem I had with Peripheral, as well as with Zero History, is that he's fallen into "Oh, hey, here's a bunch of rich people--so super rich you can't even imagine--and they'll just deus ex machina everything along". I hate that. In the earlier works, those characters (the dim spectre of Maas Biotech, or the Tessier-Ashpool for example) are just background threads, occasionally injecting events or setting the stage, and focus is kept on the minions and protagonists. In Peripheral, the real badguy is just dull "oh and then this evil thing happened", and the rich people are kind of separated from any of the action and stakes that matter. Indeed, the central conceit of the story is such that, by definition, there is no real impact beyond a slightly-higher-than-normal gentleman's game going on. Contrast this with Case, or Armitage, or Automatic Jack, or any of those characters in the Sprawl verse. Those characters occasionally directly deal with high-up powers, constantly get used by them, and are fully aware of it, and yet there is the very real chance that maybe--just maybe, if they play their cards right--they could perhaps get a slim chance to act instead of react. No such setup is available in Peripheral. Moreover, I'm really disappointed in the way that Homes and the veteran stuff is handled. Like, I kind of dig the "haptic veterans" human refuse thing, I get some of the used-world feel, but honestly it all feels kind of phoned in. Contrast this with what Stephenson pulled off twenty years ago, or even what Gibson himself pulled off in Count Zero. Like, the notes are there, but there's no soul behind it.

waterlesscloud 12y ago

Opinions will differ, of course. Personally, I think his Bigend Trilogy is every bit the equal of his Sprawl Trilogy. Extraordinarily perceptive about the contemporary world and the way our social lives have changed over the last 15 years, in both scope and in experience. I'm not crazy about his Bridge Trilogy, though it has its moments. Overall, I think those were his weakest books. The Peripheral also sort of underwhelmed me. I liked the near-ish future, with the look at how hopeless redneck-ville would be affected by technological and economic trends. There's a mix of the past and the present (our present and our future) in those bits that plays quite nicely and feels very real. His far-future London, though, felt very under-imagined. I don't think it went far enough. I also think he tried something interesting with hicks being just as dangerous as the sophisticates, but it didn't quite gel the way I think he meant it too. Still, it's not a bad book, it's just not as good as I'd hoped.

crucini 12y ago
OK, I need to give the Bigend Trilogy a try. The Bridge books were the end of the road for me. If they're just a temporary low spot, I'll keep going.
- arkem 12y ago
  I definitely think the Bigend Trilogy is as strong as the Sprawl Trilogy. Pattern Recognition and Neuromancer are my two favorite of his novels. Sadly however, I'm having trouble with The Peripheral (his latest), maybe it'll grab me but it has yet to do so.
tedks 12y ago
The Blue Ant/Bigend trilogy is basically the Sprawl trilogy rewritten in the present day.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Yeah. They're quite good, definitely better than the Bridge novels, although I read those again recently and they were better than I remembered. He still leans a bit too heavily on contextual striptease, though.

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago

If, like me, you haven't read Neuromancer in 20 years, from wiki: "A street gang named the "Panther Moderns" is hired to create a simulated terrorist attack on Sense/Net. The diversion allows Molly to penetrate the building and steal Dixie's ROM." I'm not really seeing why this (or the fedora squad) is something to be welcomed.

egypturnash 12y ago
Yeah. Anonymous/GG is a bunch of jerkholes on the Internet, and so are the Panther Moderns. I thought the Moderns were pretty rad when I was 12, but I thought a lot of stupid things were pretty rad when I was 12. (Like the word 'rad'.)

jacquesm 12y ago

Just read them in the reverse order and you'll feel that they are getting better with every book. Scoring a big hit like that when you're young sure sucks, everybody will be disappointed in your forever after.

CocaKoala 12y ago
>Scoring a big hit like that when you're young sure sucks, everybody will be disappointed in your forever after. Nah, you just need to have the right attitude about it; see Joseph Heller: "When an interviewer told Mr. Heller that he had never written anything as good as 'Catch-22,' the author shot back, 'Who has?'"
- jacquesm 12y ago
  hehe, excellent answer. Thanks.

makmanalp 12y ago

Also, having written a classic like Neuromancer early on is a surefire way to screw your career over, if only purely in terms of living up to and topping expectations. Just look at J.K. Rowling and her new book. She (rightfully) tried to get a pen name so that people wouldn't associate the new stuff with the old, but clearly they didn't let her have that. No shit it wasn't another Harry Potter, rarely can people churn out classic after classic. If you write anything that isn't even more mindblowing, it's considered a flop, and I think that's pretty harsh. I quite enjoyed his essay book "Distrust that particular flavor", and I just read The Peripheral and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Nothing genre-expanding, but solid, and has good ideas.

listic 12y ago

I don't have anything to say on the matter above what this guy says: http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/140521/do-writers-get-better http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/140521/do-writers-get-better He questions whether the writers actually get better over time, as a rule. His conclusion is: not necessarily, because they are not getting the feedback. NB: fimfiction now accounts for 2-3% as much reading as do all of the new books sold in America? http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/401563/we-are-the-twoandahalf-percent http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/401563/we-are-the-twoandahalf...

na85 12y ago

>I realize now that Gibson's books monotonically decreased in quality. That's interesting, I always felt that Count Zero was the best of that trilogy. Neuromancer to me felt like he hadn't quite found his pacing yet, and the characterization in CZ was much fuller.

pmoriarty 12y ago
Agreed. Count Zero was the best. Neuromancer was good. Mona Lisa Overdirve and onwards was garbage.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]