Count Zero by William Gibson

Count Zero

I feel like I've read the Sprawl series as a set of flashbacks. I started with the most recent, Mona Lisa Overdrive, slammed all the way back to Nueromancer, and then wound up filling in the final blanks in the middle. I don't know if it's because I have all the pieces now or just the way this one was put together, but Count Zero is my favorite of the three. (The only big flaw being the complete lack of Molly).

But what's not to like? Corporate rule may be my "favorite" form of dystopia in fiction - it's just so god damned possible these days - and Gibson loves it as much as I do. There's less out and out techbabble and more story (necessary, I guess, when you have at least three plot lines tangling up together and no dearth of worthwhile characters to follow) - although, as usual with the godfather of cyberpunk, most of the techy stuff is right on the nose some 20+ years later.

From what I understand, the reason Gibson let his image of the internet wander so far is that he really didn't have much of a clue about computers when he started writing these things. He heard a few things about it, came up with ideas that sounded cool to him, and went with it. That's how he wound up presenting us with steampunk computers and fractured AI personalities mimicking Vodun spirits and the web itself as a sort of shared hallucination of infinite space and possibility. He didn't know what was considered impossible, so he went ahead and invented it anyway.

Having finished all three of his Sprawl novels, I'd like to see a book of short stories by different authors set in that vast urban landscape. Jack Womack, China Miéville, maybe even someone like Haruki Murakami. Just an idea.

final thought: Putting aside his agile story-telling, his amazing tech predictions, and his ability at world-building, you know what I really do appreciate about Gibson? He offers a sort of hope for his characters at the end, and us through them. Not everyone makes it, but those who do are often better off, thanks to dumb luck and their own effort, at the end than they are at the beginning. And after 8 months of nearly unmitigated dark resolutions, that's something worth having.

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Neuromancer

This damn book took me forever to get through. Not that it's not great sf, by the way - because it is. Just as forward thinking and right on as the rest of his work. But I'm more interested in the odd little side details - the Sprawl itself, the people in the bars, Panther Moderns, 3Jane - than I am in all the tech forecasting.

Now, any book with Molly, the modern samurai with the embedded glasses and razor tip fingers, is worth picking up. Don't get me wrong - if I'd started the Sprawl series with the first one like I should have, I'd probably have enjoyed it more. But working backward put it in a different frame, and I got fairly bored halfway through.

I may have to revisit this one later. I suspect I am simply burned out on Gibson's cyberpunk view of our future/now. Which is why I jumped into some classic Harlen Ellison stories last night, changing directions for a new view.

final thought: You have to really admire that so much of it has already come true. I wonder what else will.

Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson

Mona Lisa Overdrive

Normally, I'm a stickler for reading series (serieses?) in order, but so far I keep reading Gibson's work all which-a-way. His novels are fairly convoluted, too, so I'll probably reread it in the future, once this whole dystopian list is over and done.

That being said, I do enjoy his work. I'm not enough of a geek to get all the techy little computer/matrix/nano stuff, but as long as I keep up a good clip and let the story roll, it's clear enough. His world isn't that far from our own (in fact, it's dead similar in certain places), and people are people regardless of what kind of hardware they wear/are jacked into/have implanted in their skulls.

You know, a lot of really tech-noodling speculative fiction is a total sausage fest. It's still a boy's club in a lot of ways. But Gibson does a really good job hopping gender to gender. Even his purely artificial personalities come across as more realistic than some of the "people" offered to us by some other authors I've picked up lately (Rand, I'm looking at you).

I think I need to read the first two Sprawl books before I can offer up much on the actual plot, frankly. I'm just starting to really delve into the cyberpunk genre, and I feel like I need to take a better look around before I can fully comment.

final thought: Even as shallowly as I have read Gibson's work, it's clear to see why he is considered a true genius of cyberpunk. He was writing in the 1980s about technology we're just starting to consider common now.