William Gibson C/D

It really does. I hope that gets shaved down to nothing in the final book - like, there's one sentence referring to the president as "she" and then the standard Gibson plot goes on.

*unreasonable expectations for the new book*

If it's still the "wut if Hillary won" plot he was talking about, I'd say any expectations are unreasonable.

"Agency" now showing Jan 21, 2020 as a "new William Gibson book" search result.

From this NPR review, I guess it's really, finally, truly released today.

I preordered an e-cooy and it showed up yesterday evening. Digging it.

Purchased and now anticipating! Rounded out the Amazon order for free shipping with the Sicario soundtrack. RIP, JJ.

i hope it's better than The Peripheral

completely forgot it was coming out this week and tackled something like three chapters before falling asleep last night

so far: if you didn't like The Peripheral, it does not bode well for you. it's a continuation

guh, if it's a sequel then I need to re-read the Peripheral I guess

"San Francisco, 2017"

what is this, historical fiction?

(i'm going to need to reread the peripheral too, given that i can't remember anything about it beyond the name)

((need to read the sprawl trilogy again, as it's my favourite))

> Rounded out the Amazon order for free shipping

in the uk the free postage threshold is £20 for non-book things but £10 of books qualifies the entire order for free delivery, which is odd, but useful. (and this was £12 ish)

Sprawl trilogy is my favorite trilogy of his too! Best individual book for me is Pattern Recognition (best response to 9/11 in fiction I've encountered, not that I am looking) followed closely by Neuromancer.

Started in on the Peripheral, wow I bet this one is off-putting if you aren't already in Gibson's corner.

I need to revisit the Bridge trilogy as I feel like those have probably aged the worst.

The trilogy before this one (Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, Zero History) was really good, even if it got a little thin, conceptually, toward the end - I remember thinking, Really? This is a book about pants?

About 2/3 of the way through Agency now; will probably need to read it twice.

hahaha, the Blue Ant trilogy it's called... and yeah, he seems to really be indulging his own interests in that one. Although he was always doing that, he just... now has different interests than I do (clothing design, watches, augmented reality). We used to be on the same page... apocalypse, cute bike messengers, corporate malfeasance. Who can't relate to those things.

iirc the blue ant trilogy ended in an anticlimactic fight about a mile north of here.

i missed the neuromancer trilogy completely, and the first thing i bought was a remaindered copy of Virtual Light.

Started on the new one last night, realized two pages in I needed to re-read the Peripheral. 15% of the way into that, still struggling to keep the names straight.

better go back to Burning Chrome and take it from there

pattern recognition was good but didn’t manage much of the peripheral.

I love the Bridge Trilogy, especially Virtual Light, but I revisit Pattern Recognition every few years, it's flawed but idk, so enjoyable.

where's a good place to start with classic gibson? just neuromancer?

def - i think it’s aged v well

If choosing classic, yes. It leads to Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. Or go for the short stories of Burning Chrome, maybe, if you haven't read anything and are curious if you'd even like his writing.

From his Wikipedia entry, this is interesting.

After viewing the first 20 minutes of landmark cyberpunk film Blade Runner (1982) which was released when Gibson had written a third of the novel, he "figured Neuromancer was sunk, done for. Everyone would assume I'd copped my visual texture from this astonishingly fine-looking film." He re-wrote the first two-thirds of the book twelve times, feared losing the reader's attention and was convinced that he would be "permanently shamed" following its publication; yet what resulted was a major imaginative leap forward for a first-time novelist.

So Agency's delay isn't the first instance of delays due to rewriting.

neuromancer, virtual light, pattern recognition all good starts (all are starts of trilogies).

(as for ageing, iirc one of the books, i forget which, maybe the Johnny Mnemonic thing in burning chrome, talks about megabytes as if it's a lot...)

Thanks for the recs, folks

milo z is right, the beginning of the Peripheral is worse than an Agatha Christie novel, dude is throwing so many names at you it is v. confusing

The section of Virtual Light where Rydell describes his mom and how he grew up in Knoxville is maybe a bit too on the money for 2020.

There's no easy way into Gibson, you just have to take a dice so Neuromancer is as good a place as any really. Although if you are in the mood for something other than hard dystopian sci-fi then I would say Pattern Recognition also is a good place to begin.

every time i read a new one of his books i want to start a william gibson mad libs like "In the year [YEAR NO MORE THAN 15 NO FEWER THAN 3 YEARS IN THE FUTURE], a renegade [HACKER/BIKE MESSENGER/BOUNTY HUNTER WITH MADE-UP SCI-FI JOB NAME] comes into possession of [URBAN PLANNING DOCUMENTS/PASSWORD TO SOMETHING/ORPHAN CHILD WITH SPECIAL SKILL] and has to battle off [RUSSIAN GOONS/OTHER HACKERS/OTHER BOUNTY HUNTERS WITH MADE-UP SCI-FI JOB NAMES/SENTIENT COMPUTER] in a race to save [CITY/COUNTRY/WORLD].

― max, Wednesday, January 28, 2009 3:36 AM (ten years ago) bookmarkflaglink

^This, though is still pretty much on the money for much of his career.

I read Neuromancer for the first time last year and the treatment of the main (and p much only) female character has aged very badly, I would say.

razorgirl molly millions is not the most well-drawn character in the gibson canon, it’s true

Agency feels like he was rushing to wrap up the ending, the Clinton stuff is cringeworthy. Worst of the post-Pattern Recognition novels.

My copy arrived yesterday, and now slotted in reading pile after a few library borrows. I like the tactile cover's feel!

erm, but you know what they say...?

I liked it, but it's definitely a little light. The "present-day" characters are much more interesting than the "alternate-future" characters, something that wasn't true of The Peripheral. And the initial protagonist is a passenger in the plot — like, she literally spends a lot of the book being driven here and there and given things that will be necessary for the plot later. The book is called Agency, but she has very little. (Which may be ironic and deliberate.) I'll re-read it in a few months.

re-reading the peripheral ahead of the new one.

he talks about one of the peripherals being a "washing machine", which is an actual thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_6p-1J551Y

also, the wheely boy is also a thing (which i posted at the time). as seen on Community.

http://www.doublerobotics.com/

finished the new one. agree with unperson about Verity. not entirely sure a lot of the other characters did much either. ash? wilf? rainey? all pretty much only there because they were in the last book.

still, was a good excuse to reread the peripheral.

Should note that I read an interview with Gibson where he said that Verity's lack of agency was deliberate.

Smiled wryly on page 54, as Rainey and Wilf are discussing Verity's stub (timebranch):

"...Why aren't they happy there?"

"The drivers for the jackpot are still in place, but with less torque at that particular point." He took a seat at the table. "They're still a bit in advance of the pandemics, at least."

Reading the Fractured Europe quadrilogy instead of re-reading the Blue Ant books. They make for an interesting comparison as a series that could be set in the same universe - more Le Carre, less Japanese denim.

Reading Burning Chrome, it's funny that his foreword has a bit about the big sci-fi guys of his adolescence (Asimov, Heinlein) reading the future incorrectly... then it's just "wot if Japan took over the world" in every other story.

The story about the guy dropping into visions of the perfect art deco sci-fi version of the '80s was great.

Was Neuromancer the last time anyone in a Gibson book had sex?

been working through the sprawl trilogy myself

Count Zero has a merc in rehab having sex in the first act. Gibson definitely shied away from writing sex for the most part as time’s gone on

Who needs sex when you can have selvage denim devoid of branding or decoration?

Gibson pioneered consumer affect pornography, the scene mh mentioned is in the fact the only thing he's written post-Neuromancer that ISN'T a sex scene

I kinda remember the security contractor/private eye guy from Knoxville in Virtual Light getting it on, but maybe that is just what you think Private dicks do in books.

(virtual light ebook is 99p on amazon.co.uk (and kobo.com) at the moment btw. last month it was idoru. i am waiting for ATP.)

I ordered the UK Penguin paperbacks of the Bridge trilogy from Blackstones last night. I like the matching covers and haven't read the books since they were new, so birthday present to myself (I turn 50 next month).

yeah, i re-bought the original trilogy (and the matching Burning Chrome) after i lost the first set to a flood.

virtual light was the first i bought, remaindered in a bookshop in leicester. everything since has been the hardback. and ATP is signed "merry xmas '99" (was a present, i didn't get to meet him).

There’s probably something Gibsonian to the fact that I own paperbacks of the sprawl trilogy but the idea of digging out a yellowed, dusty copy that’d make me sneeze and turn my reading light up made me just procure the ebook

The footage forum stuff in Pattern Recognition reads like early ILX. You lurk in’, William?