I went for a nice walk after taking the dogs out this morning. It was clear and fresh. There was a bit of frost on the pumpkin, so to speak. The stars and moon were out and I saw very few cars or people, so kind of a perfect walk. Now I'm listening to curling, as it's on the TV in the family room while I work on this in the den right next door.
I made a bit more progress on my reading this morning after my walk. I think I'll manage to finish two or three more books at least this month. But who knows, we'll see anyway.
Today my look at the Science Fiction novel will focus on Canadian - American author, William Gibson.
The Science Fiction Novel - William Ford Gibson
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| William Gibson |
At the age of 18, Gibson moved to Canada to sort of evade the draft for the Vietnam War. As he describes it, during his draft hearing, he told them that his aim in life was to try and sample every mind altering drug possible so he didn't really avoid the draft, they just didn't draft him.. Sounds like Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant...
In 1972, he married and settled in Vancouver with his Canadian wife. He was a stay-at-home dad surviving on his wife's teaching salary. Beginning in 1981, his short stories began to be published. His early works focused on the influence of cybernetics and cyberspace on the human species. The themes he espoused in his early short stories were incorporated in his first novel, Neuromancer, also my first exposure to his writing. He has written a number of mini - series; the Sprawl trilogy, the Bridge trilogy and the Blue Ant trilogy, plus some standalone novels and short story collections. For the most part I've enjoyed his unique look at Sci-Fi very much, but there have been some misses as well. I specifically refer to The Difference Engine (1990) which he wrote with Bruce Sterling (I just didn't get it, I'm afraid) and his short story collection, Burning Chrome (1986). I liked some but not overall. So let's look at a few of his works and also the two I've got on my bookshelf awaiting my attention.
"Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards
Case was the sharpest data thief in the Matrix, until an ex-employer crippled his nervous system. Now a new employer has recruited him for a last-chance run against an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence. With a mirror-eyed girl street-samurai riding shotgun, he's ready for the silicon-quick, bleakly prophetic adventure that upped the ante on an entire genre of fiction." (4 stars)
"Cayce Pollard is an expensive, spookily intuitive market-research consultant. In London on a job, she is offered a secret assignment: to investigate some intriguing snippets of video that have been appearing on the Internet. An entire subculture of people is obsessed with these bits of footage, and anybody who can create that kind of brand loyalty would be a gold mine for Cayce's client. But when her borrowed apartment is burgled and her computer hacked, she realizes there's more to this project than she had expected.
Still, Cayce is her father's daughter, and the danger makes her stubborn. Win Pollard, ex-security expert, probably ex-CIA, took a taxi in the direction of the World Trade Center on September 11 one year ago, and is presumed dead. Win taught Cayce a bit about the way agents work. She is still numb at his loss, and, as much for him as for any other reason, she refuses to give up this newly weird job, which will take her to Tokyo and on to Russia. With help and betrayal from equally unlikely quarters, Cayce will follow the trail of the mysterious film to its source, and in the process will learn something about her father's life and death." (4 stars)
"Tito is in his early twenties. Born in Cuba, he speaks fluent Russian, lives in one room in a NoLita warehouse, and does delicate jobs involving information transfer.
Hollis Henry is an investigative journalist, on assignment from a magazine called Node. Node doesn't exist yet, which is fine; she's used to that. But it seems to be actively blocking the kind of buzz that magazines normally cultivate before they start up. Really actively blocking it. It's odd, even a little scary, if Hollis lets herself think about it much. Which she doesn't; she can't afford to.
Milgrim is a junkie. A high-end junkie, hooked on prescription antianxiety drugs. Milgrim figures he wouldn't survive twenty-four hours if Brown, the mystery man who saved him from a misunderstanding with his dealer, ever stopped supplying those little bubble packs. What exactly Brown is up to Milgrim can't say, but it seems to be military in nature. At least, Milgrim's very nuanced Russian would seem to be a big part of it, as would breaking into locked rooms.
Bobby Chombo is a "producer", and an enigma. In his day job, Bobby is a trouble-shooter for manufacturers of military navigation equipment. He refuses to sleep in the same place twice. He meets no one. Hollis Henry has been told to find him." (4 stars)
"2005: Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of what used to be California. Here the millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a bicycle messenger turned pickpocket who impulsively snatches a pair of innocent-looking sunglasses. But these are no ordinary shades. What you can see through these high-tech specs can make you rich--or get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the run, zeroing in on the digitalized heart of DatAmerica, where pure information is the greatest high. And a mind can be a terrible thing to crash..."
"21st century Tokyo, after the millennial quake. Neon rain. Light everywhere blowing under any door you might try to close. Where the New Buildings, the largest in the world, erect themselves unaided, their slow rippling movements like the contractions of a sea-creature. Colin Laney is here looking for work. He is not, he is careful to point out, a voyeur. He is an intuitive fisher of patterns of information, the "signature" a particular individual creates simply by going about the business of living.
But Laney knows how to sift for the interesting (read: dangerous) bits. Which makes him very useful--to certain people. Chia McKenzie is here on a rescue mission. She's fourteen. Her idol is the singer Rez, of the band Lo/Rez. When the Seattle chapter of the Lo/Rez fan club decided that he might be in trouble, in Tokyo, they sent Chia to check it out. Rei Toei is the beautiful, entirely virtual media star adored by all Japan. The Idoru. And Rez has declared that he will marry her.
This is the rumor that brought Chia to Tokyo. But the things that bother Rez are not the things that bother most people. Is something different here, in the very nature of reality? Or is it that something violently New is about to happen? It's possible the Idoru is as real as she wants or needs to be--or as real as Rez desires.
When Colin Laney looks into her dark eyes, trying hard to think of her as no more than a hologram, he sees things he's never seen before. He sees how she might break a man's heart. And, whatever else may be true, the Idoru and the powerful interests surrounding her are enough to put all their lives in danger."
The complete listing of Gibson's works can be found at this link.
Have a great week!
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