[Search for users] [Overall Top Noters] [List of all Conferences] [Download this site]

Conference noted::sf

Title:Arcana Caelestia
Notice:Directory listings are in topic 2
Moderator:NETRIX::thomas
Created:Thu Dec 08 1983
Last Modified:Fri Jun 06 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:1300
Total number of notes:18728

591.0. "William Gibson" by HAZEL::CLARK () Mon Mar 07 1988 19:21

    Anybody heard anything lately on anything new from William Gibson?
    I was just recently turned on to his work, and it's fabulous!
    Is there anything new out? What happened to the movie script(s)
    he was working on?
    
                         I'm hooked and need more!!
                                  Alan S.
T.RTitleUserPersonal
Name
DateLines
591.1RE 591.0DICKNS::KLAESThrough the land of Mercia...Mon Mar 07 1988 19:564
    	See SF Topics 416 and 357.
    
    	Larry
    
591.2I did...HAZEL::CLARKTue Mar 08 1988 16:455
    re: .1
    I did that first. I'm looking for more up to date info,
    if there's any available. Thanks for the reference though.
    
                                Alan S.
591.3A teaser :-)FENNEL::BALSSave books. Books are sacred.Wed Mar 09 1988 14:0215
    I follow the trades pretty well, and the latest info is the most
    current. I think I read in the USENET cyberpunk newsgroup that Gibson's
    next book ("Mona Lisa Overdrive") is scheduled to be released in Great
    Britain in late Spring/early Summer 88, with the U.S. release scheduled
    for November. Don't hold me to those dates. :-)
    
    I hate it when other people do this, but I'll do it anyway. :-) I'm also
    aware of another new undertaking by Gibson, a collaboration with another
    well-known cyberpunk author. I can't say anything more about it,
    as I was asked not to. More detailed information will probably be in
    the next edition of "OtherRealms," which should be out within the next few
    weeks. If you don't know what am "OtherRealms" is, do a dir/title.
    
    Fred 
                                         
591.4Mona Lisa OverdriveELWOOD::WHERRYSoftware Commandoes Ltd.Mon Jul 18 1988 20:5910
    
    	I just finished _Mona_Lisa_Overdrive_ and I thought I would
    give an opinion or two.  _MLO_ was more fragmented to read than
    _Count_Zero_...Ie. there are more than three storylines to follow.
    Gibson ties things up quite deftly and I don't expect to see another
    "sprawl" novel; (I do hope he will still write short stories set
    in this world.)  As far as enjoyment goes, I found it quite satisfying,
    although, I don't think it was as good as _Neuromancer_.
    
    brad
591.5Try re-reading Count Zero first!VAOU02::ACOATESWed Jul 05 1989 17:5813
    I found MLO very enjoyable but admit that I started it, realized that
    (at least some portions of) the plot was a continuation of Count Zero,
    (many details of which I had forgotten) so decided to re-read Count
    Zero first.
    
    Then I decided to give it a fair shot and re-read BOTH Neuromancer and
    Count Zero finishing MLO. It worked and I really enjoyed all three
    back-to-back.
    
    I can see sometime in the furture a "trilogy" being released....
    
    Andrew Coates
    Vancouver
591.6Gibson has nothing to *say* hereHEFTY::CHARBONNDI'm the NRAWed Jul 05 1989 19:405
    Count Zero was half as good as Neuromancer. MLO was half
    as good as Count Zero. Don't care to see another story
    in this series. Geometric progression...
    
    Rather re-read Burning Chrome. 
591.732651::CONNELLYDesperately seeking snoozin'Thu Jul 06 1989 01:5410
re: .6

I tend to agree.  _Mona Lisa Overdrive_ had major plot and motivation
holes.  It was pretty exciting up to the point where you realized that
there were a lot of red herrings and loose ends that Gibson just wasn't
going to deal with.  There was a lot of action that was there strictly
to gloss over a lack of plot continuity.

							paul

591.8IOWAIT::MESSENGEREnough of this stuff, Spuds!Thu Jul 06 1989 17:092
    Gibson himself says he's not going to write any more 'sprawl' stories.
    				- hbm
591.9TLE::DMURPHYDennis MurphyThu Mar 14 1991 19:0416
    I just picked up a copy of _The Difference Engine_ by William Gibson &
    Bruce Sterling the other day on the basis of a review of the book 
    printed in the New York Times Book Review of March 10, 1991.

    I won't reproduce the entire review, just its final paragraph.

	   'The best science fiction has always worked my the power of
	suggestion, and seldom has the power source worked so effectively 
	as in  "The Difference Engine". Working together, Mr. Gibson and 
	Mr. Sterling have written a book that is even better than their and 
        considerable solo efforts. Grateful readers can only hope that this 
	represents the begininning of a long and fruitful collaboration."

    Now to find time to read it.

    Dennis
591.10A Week Too Late for Vacation...DRUMS::FEHSKENSlen, EMA, LKG2-2/W10, DTN 226-7556Fri Mar 15 1991 15:055
    That makes two of us - I picked up a copy last night on the strength
    of the Times' review.  Stay tuned...
    
    len.
    
591.11review of "The Difference Engine"RGB::REDFORDSun Mar 31 1991 19:4358
    "The Difference Engine"
    William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
    Bantam Spectra (hardcover) 1991
    
    Disastrous.  These are two of the best authors in SF today, but the 
    book is so poorly plotted that you wonder where the editors were.
    Characters are simply forgotten, as is the plot motivator.
    It goes to show how the reputation of authors can protect
    them from much-needed criticism.
    
    The premise is that Charles Babbage succeeded.  He got his
    Difference Engine and his Analytical Engine, the first real computers, 
    to work in the 1830s.  Even though they were built of brass gears
    and rods, they had stored programs and could do branches on data.
    It's now 1855 and we're in a cyberneticized Age of Steam. 
    Telgraphs drive daisy-wheel printers.  Photography has barely
    started, but graphics are done with mechanical pixels.  Steam
    gurneys trundle down the roads.  The Industrial Revolution has
    gone into hyperdrive.
    
    The technical changes are matched by political ones.  The
    Romantic poets went for politics instead of dissipation.  Byron
    is Prime Minister.  Britain is ruled by the Industrial Radicals,
    a party of technocrats.  Babbage, Darwin, and Faraday are now members
    of the House of Lords.
    
    The book opens by following Sybil Gerard, daughter of Walter
    Gerard, a Luddite rabble-rouser who was hung by the Rad Lords. 
    (They were actually characters in a novel by Disraeli.) She
    becomes the mistress of an aide to Sam Houston, who is in Britain
    campaigning for funds to recapture Texas with a Mexican army.  
    From there it switches to Edward Mallory, who is a standard
    Victorian scientist-adventurer.  He becomes entangled in plots
    around Lady Ada Byron (Lovelace), Queen of Engines.  There's a
    deck of punch cards that everyone seems to be after, a horrific
    bout of smog, and anarchist mobs led by a Captain Swing.  From
    there it switches to a Smiley-like character named Oliphaunt, who
    pursues the cards to France, where something has gone wrong with
    the largest Engine of all, the Great Napoleon.
    
    It's an interesting world, and Sterling has thrown in every bit of
    trendy science that he knows, from computer simulations of bird
    flocking behavior, to the Burgess Shale, to catastrophe theory. 
    Gibson has some nice play with the Mallory character, in that this
    Professor Challenger type is forced to deal with something that
    never appears in such stories - women.  
    
    The story never goes anywhere, though.  Even sections that should
    be travelogues through this world, such as the trip across a
    smog-crippled London, aren't that revealing.  As each section
    ends, that character disappears.  Little is ever resolved.  Even
    the secret of the punch cards turns out to be banal. I found it
    frustrating and disappointing.    Gibson's novels have never been
    well-plotted, and Sterling is more an expounder instead of a
    story-teller, so between the two of them, they've written a book
    with hardly any story at all.
    
    /jlr
591.12Here come da JUDGE!FSDB00::BRANAMSteve Branam, DECcallserver ProjectWed Aug 21 1991 19:2611
Despite the bad vibes, "The Difference Engine" sounds intriguing. Perhaps Gibson
will take this world he has created and write some other books about it. One
thing I enjoyed about the Sprawl books was the little tidbits of the world that
gradually come out, sort of like painting a picture with peripheral vision (boy,
that's deep 8^) ). A description of the Sprawl world would probably be pretty
dry reading, but catching snatches of it as you go is very entertaining. The 
Sprawl is like a character unto itself, as interesting as any of the people.

For more cyberpunk, there is "The Glass Hammer" by KW Jeter. This is a lot 
slower reading, but it is interesting. I almost put it down unfinished, but was
eventually glad I kept on.
591.13Gibson's age?REGENT::POWERSThu Sep 26 1991 11:577
How old is Gibson?
The copyright page of my town library's copy of Mona Lisa Overdrive
indicates a birth date of 1914, but the photo on the back cover
is not that of a 74 year old (as of 1988) man.
1941, perhaps?

- tom]
591.14RUBY::BOYAJIANCarpe NoctemFri Sep 27 1991 06:0714
    Someone is confused. There's a different William Gibson who's
    been part of the mainstream for quite a while, and no doubt,
    "our" Gibson is being mixed up with the earlier one.
    
    It's somewhat similar to the confusion between the two John
    Gardners -- the one who currently writers the James Bond pastiches
    is not the one who wrote GRENDEL and FREDDY'S BOOK and a number
    of other things (and who died some years back).
    
    Even 1941 sounds too far back for "our" Gibson. I'd be surprised
    if he was born prior to 1950, and most likely he's even younger
    than that.
    
    --- jerry
591.15REGENT::POWERSMon Sep 30 1991 11:136
When I took MLO back to the library, I looked Gibson up in the catalog.
There his birth year is listed as 1948.
So he's older than he looks and younger than some publishers (or 
Librarians of Congress) think.

- tom]
591.16"The Difference Engine " revisitedVCSESU::BRANAMSteve, VAXcluster Sys Supp Eng LTN2-2/F15, DTN 226-6056Mon Feb 24 1992 20:4733
RE .11 and .12: Well, I finally got around to it (or maybe the publishers just
now got round to putting it in paper back, I haven't even set foot in a
bookstore in ages...). 

I loved it! Minor spoiler warning...

I agree that the mystery of the cards is almost frustrating enough
to shred the thing. Gibson and Sterling seem to try to deflect you from them
with a bunch of anecdotes gathered from the wind. However, I enjoyed the rest
immensely. Other than politics, the world has not changed all that much 
that I can tell as a result of the Engines, but then I'm not much a 
19th century historian. Mostly there's bits of life here and there 
that are affected, but as with Gibson's other  books, it's the curious 
meanderings of his characters that entertain you. 

I found it amusing to read of the "modern", "scientific" world, contrasting
so starkly against the dirt and crudity of everyday life 140 years ago. The
steam gurney engineers standing so proudly by their latest contraptions that 
belch choking black smoke and soot, the government Engines with their files 
on everybody in their ultra-clean rooms (well, maybe not by semiconductor
standards!), meanwhile the raw effluvia of London about ready to kill off 
every living being. Some of the language was pretty amusing, too. Steam
gurneys are "line-streamed" according to the latest principles of Bernoulli.
Engine hackers are known as "clackers" due to the clacking sound of the gears,
levers, and mechanical pixels (color displays, even back then!). "A 
mathematical clacking term, sir," explains one devotee importantly. What a
hoot!

I have always found Gibson's endings pretty lame. You get a good read along the
way, but then it just drops off, wrapping it all up with a flip of the wrist.
This is no different. I will have to try some of Sterling's work. I would 
describe this book as...jaunty! A movie of it might have the flavor of
a cross between "The Great Race" and George Pal's "The Time Machine".
591.17more on "The Difference Engine "...DKAS::KOLKERConan the LibrarianThu Jul 30 1992 13:5916
    .16
    
    I too enjoyed the "Difference Engine" which should have be entitled
    "The Analytic Engine".  A few minor nits.  The hidden artifact was a
    deck of program cards called the "Modus". In the story it was hinted
    that the Modus was a foolproof betting system, however in the latter
    part of the novel, a sort of epilog, we see Ada (who didn't die of
    overian cancer in this timeline) lecturing on a theorem she proved
    concerning self reference paradoxes (Ada's theorem = Goedels theorem).
    
    It further hints that the Modus is an application of Adas theorem which
    has caused the main French Engine, the Napolean, to go whakoid.
    
    My problem is this. How can a Jacquard based computer with its program
    separated by data, be virused or bugged like this. Any opinions?
    
591.18wear and tear, resonant frequencies?TLE::JBISHOPThu Jul 30 1992 15:399
    See BANZAI::WAR_STORY, particularly topic 12, "break the hdwe with SW".
    
    A tight loop running on a mechanical computer might easily wear parts
    to destruction.
    
    The idea that a computer can be broken by giving it a logical paradox
    (e.g. numerous bad SciFi movies and Star Trek episodes) is unrealistic
    but popular.
    			-John Bishop
591.19As if life isn't difficult enough already...VERGA::KLAESI, RobotTue Dec 22 1992 18:3044
From:	ARGUS::VINO::LEROUF::CASEE::VNS "The VOGON News Service  22-Dec-1992 
        1009" 22-DEC-1992 05:38:04.34
To:	VNS-Distribution
CC:	
Subj:	VNS #2731  Tue 22-Dec-1992

<><><><><><><><>  T h e   V O G O N   N e w s   S e r v i c e  <><><><><><><><>

 Edition : 2731              Tuesday 22-Dec-1992            Circulation :  7496 

        VNS MAIN NEWS .....................................   57 Lines
        VNS TECHNOLOGY WATCH ..............................   15   "

        Please send subscription and backissue requests to CASEE::VNS

VNS TECHNOLOGY WATCH:                           [Mike Taylor, VNS Correspondent]
=====================                           [Littleton, MA, USA            ]

                     A Computer Book You Cannot Put Down

    Call it the first performance-art electronic book.  Agrippa, by computer 
    science-fiction author William Gibson, is an autobiography that comes
    only only on computer diskette, encased in a paper book of illustrations 
    printed in with a special ink.  If you touch the drawings, they will be
    distorted permanently. And once you begin reading the contents of the
    diskette on your PC, you cannot stop the text from scrolling or alter
    its speed.  In addition, a special program deletes the text forever
    after the first reading.  Thus, this artwork forces the reader to make
    an irreversible decision:  Enjoy the book once or keep it as an unread
    collector's item.  By doing so, the $500 artwork ($1,500 for a deluxe
    copper-trimmed version) is commenting on life.  Says publisher Kevin
    Begos Jr., "You must accept your decisions without regret."

    {Business Week December 21, 1992}

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
        Please send subscription and backissue requests to CASEE::VNS

    Permission to copy material from this VNS is granted (per DIGITAL PP&P)
    provided that the message header for the issue and credit lines for the
    VNS correspondent and original source are retained in the copy.

<><><><><><><><>   VNS Edition : 2731     Tuesday 22-Dec-1992   <><><><><><><><>

591.20Review of Virtual LightVERGA::KLAESQuo vadimus?Mon Aug 23 1993 18:20163
Article: 1070
From: bluejack@news.delphi.com (BLUEJACK@DELPHI.COM)
Newsgroups: alt.books.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Virtual Light
Date: 22 Aug 1993 11:31:11 -0400
Organization: General Videotex Corporation
 
William Gibson, Virtual Light, Bantam, 1993.
Reviewed by Bluejack
 
     It is a big day for cyberpunks everywhere. A big day, but not
necessarily a happy day. William Gibson's new novel Virtual Light has just
hit the stores, and it thoroughly disappoints. It may be true: Gibson has
lost his edge.

     In his first books, William Gibson founded 'cyberpunk,' a new style of
science fiction that blends cutting edge technology with a bleak social and
ecological future. Gibson's Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa
Overdrive, took technologies currently under development to their probable
conclusions and set them in a world in which national boundaries have been
replaced by corporate boundaries, and political structures have become
vestigial features of the landscape of information. In the cyberspace,
cyberpunk world, human flesh and human technology merge, and the desparate
struggle for survival and success take place in the intersection of a dying
planet and a blossoming computer-generated artificial world. This vision
caught the imagination of a new generation of science fiction readers not
just because of the range and maturity of his ideas, but also because of
the sheer beauty of Gibson's writing.

     Following the success of this trilogy, cyberpunk took on a life of its
own, peopled by the creations of uncountable imitators, fueled by both the
alternative and mainstream media. It has determined the direction of new
technologies from computer networks to multimedia; it has sparked thousands
of real-world applications of virtual reality technology. So, when William
Gibson releases a novel, it is cause for great stirring in the world of
science fiction.

     Think of him as a prophet. He has a personal mythology: when he first
began to write Neuromancer, he didn't know a bit from a byte, a modem from
a motherboard. He did a little reading in the popular science press, and
combined it with an incisive vision of the future of urban America. He
introduced characters that science fiction wasn't used to: small time
crooks, underdogs, and pathetic heros, most blissfully and adolescently
unaware of the dangers they were putting themselves into. He plunked it out
on a manual typerwriter.

     Gibson claims he wasn't trying to do anything original. He saw himself
in the tradition of Robert Silverberg, Ursula LeGuin, Philip K. Dick, or
Stanislaw Lem: writing science fiction that was about society, about real
people, and about the world we live in now. But he was also writing
exciting sci-fi in a voice no one had heard before -- the gravel throated
drawl of the downtrodden.

     But recently there has been reason to doubt. Gibson's last work, The
Difference Engine, co-authored by Bruce Sterling, was a great
disappointment to many fans. It had neither the depth, the intricacy, nor
the style of his previous works. One could blame it on Sterling, who, while
a heavyweight in the cyberpunk mythos, just doesn't have the talent that
Gibson has. Thus it was with a sense of great anticipation and dark
foreboding that we awaited Virtual Light.

     The story: Berry Rydell has failed as a cop & now he has blown his job
with IntenSecure, world's largest private security corporation. Rydell, it
seems, can take his work a little too seriously, throwing everything he has
at a situation that calls for delicacy. It's not his fault that he steers
his Hotspur Hussar (affectionately nicknamed Gunhead) through the high-
power security gate and into the living room of a wealthy couple, only to
find the wife cavorting with a gardener: some hacker got into his onboard
computer and sent a kidnap in progress warning, children in mortal danger.
Nonetheless, IntenSecure couldn't keep him on. They did, however, place him
with a freelancer up in San Fran who was on a particularly important
mission for the corporation.

     Meanwhile Chevette, a quick but naive young bike courier in San
Francisco finds herself in a bit of trouble. It was the last run of her day
and she found herself in the midst of a very high class party. Not a nice
party. When an obnoxious, creepy man, who also turns out to be a courier of
a different sort, feels her up, Chevette retaliates by quietly relieving
him of his parcel. Only later, when all the weight of the Columbian
information cartel comes down on her courier company does she realize quite
how big a mistake she has made.

     Virtual Light finds a new setting: San Francisco in a near future that
has suffered a major earthquake. It is the same world of urban decay and
environmental degradation that Gibson's other work has been in, but we see
less of it, the picture is less detailed, the presence of a massive tangle
of corporate interests and intrigues is missing. There are, however, some
beautiful ideas, most notably the Bridge:

     "Its steel bones, its stranded tendons, were lost within an accretion
of dreams: tattoo parlors, gaming arcades, dimly lit stalls stacked with
decaying magazines, sellers of fireworks, of cut bait, betting shops, sushi
bars, unlicensed pawnbrokers, herbalists, barbers, bars. Dreams of
commerce, their locations generally corresponding with the decks that had
once carried vehicular traffic; while above them, rising to the very peaks
of the cable towers, lifted the intricately suspended barrio, with its
unnumbered population and its zones of more private fantasy."

     This is the Bay Bridge, damaged beyond repair in the great quake, but
still sturdy enough to be haphazardly constructed upon by the outcasts of
an unforgiving world of all-powerful corporations. These are the outcasts
that Gibson brought into science fiction, this is vision that gave birth to
cyberpunk.

     So what's wrong with it? It's a good story, told with more style than
most of his imitators. The language is still hip, the technology is still
speculative, the characters are still real.

     Problem is, it's the same characters but with different names. It's
the same misfits and underdogs trying to outwit the pros, the same small
time folks that have wandered through all Gibson's other novels. They are
losing their grit, they have become formulae.

     Problem is, it's the same hip language, the same too-cool style. Now
that everyone is talking it, there's not much to lift Gibson above the
crowd of his followers except the historical point that he did it first.
It's nothing new, now.

     Problem is, he's lost his ability to articulate speculative technology
in a convincing way -- the only new technologies in Virtual Light are a
collection of ambiguous quasi-organic sciences referred to variously as
German Nanotech, nanospore, and nanomech. But the workings are opaque and
uninspiring; it ends up a simple fantasy of impossible, magical technology.

     But most of all, the problem is that Gibson's vision has grown stale. 
One gets the feeling that somewhere in his success Gibson has lost touch
with the outcasts of our own world and has gone looking for inspiration not
in the ghettos, not among the burnt-out factories or the junkyards or the
deserted rail yards, but rather in the glossy pages of Mondo 2000 or in the
books of his own followers. In Neuromancer one felt that Gibson knew what
it was like to hungry for a couple of weeks, that he himself had tasted
this desperate craving for victory that his characters sought. The story of
failure, despair, and improbable victory became real. In Virtual Light one
feels that Gibson has spent to much time playtesting Virtual Reality
headgear and eating at good restaurants.

     Indeed, in comparison with works by some of his recent imitators,
Virtual Light seems very light indeed. Of particular note are two recent
additions to the Cyberpunk canon. Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash has neither
the smooth voice nor the tight plot of any Gibson novel, but it has a cast
of fun characters and a love of new technological ideas that is missing in
Gibson's new work. Most interesting of all, published in early '92, Snow
Crash also features a cute young woman who is a skateboard courier. Of more
serious intent and of more challenging substance is Norman Spinrad's Little
Heroes. Spinrad, a longtime sci-fi author with lifelong subversive intent
uses the cyberpunk milieu to explore the possibility of music/software as a
drug with which to incite revolution. Has Gibson been reading this stuff?
Both books do have Gibson-quotes on the cover...

     With as much acclaim as he has received in recent years, perhaps it is
inevitable that his work should suffer. There are few instances where an
author's work was improved by the unabashed admiration and imitation of
others. No longer a prophet in the wilderness transcribing the visions of
his genius, Gibson is a celebrated patriarch. He is part of the phenomenon.
He is linked into Internet, he makes regular appearances in Mondo 2000
surrounded by the flattering voices of the faithful, he is an idol to a
whole new generation of would-be hackers. The ancients were known for
exiling or destroying their prophets, perhaps we eliminate ours through
process of assimilation.
 
-- Bluejack
Philadelphia 1993
 
591.21CUPMK::WAJENBERGMon Aug 23 1993 20:028
    Re .20:
    
    Bluejack is wrong in thinking that underdogs and pathetic heroes were
    new to sf when cyberpunk came in.  Pathetic heroes, called "antiheroes"
    by the critics, came in with the New Wave in the late '60s.  Underdogs
    are even older.
    
    Earl Wajenberg
591.22a film in the works?MARX::KRUYThis space for rentWed Sep 07 1994 17:5716
	Arrrrghhh!

	A friend of mine read part of an interview of Gibson in "some
entertainment magazine (she thinks it was Entertainment Weekly)" in a lobby a
few weeks ago.  In the bit that she read, Gibson was being asked about his
"upcoming film".  My friend (a non-sci-fi person (but I'm working on that))
couldn't remember the name of the film, but thought "Neuromancer" sounded
closest of all the Gibson book titles.

	I've canvased many book stores and my local library.  I can't find the
article (which begins on page 107).

	Can anyone confirm/deny this rumour?

						-sjk
591.23NETRIX::thomasThe Code WarriorWed Sep 07 1994 18:252
The film is an adaption of _Johnny Mnemonic_ which is a precursor to 
_Neuromancer_ (the appearance of Molly ties the stories together).
591.24MARX::KRUYThis space for rentWed Sep 07 1994 20:436


	When is it going to be released?  (Has it been?)

						-sjk
591.25Virtual LightMTWAIN::KLAESNo Guts, No GalaxyFri Sep 16 1994 18:1558
Article: 675
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews
From: ROBERTS@DECUS.CA (Rob Slade)
Subject: "Virtual Light" by Gibson
Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch)
Organization: The Internet
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 1994 23:59:50 GMT
 
"Neuromancer" was a very demanding book.  First of all, it was set 
in a most unattractive future.  Secondly, it had very unsympathetic
protagonists.  In addition, you had Gibson's very choppy, intercut
style.  (It is quite reminiscent of the time that Snoopy, in his
eternal novel writing, punches out about eight completely unrelated
scenes and then explains to the audience that "In chapter two, I tie
all of this together.")  Finishing "Neuromancer" required no little
dedication to task. 
 
"Mona Lisa Overdrive" at least had the advantage of an attractive
central character.
 
"Virtual Light" is less demanding, still.  The central characters are
people you can easily care about and the future society, while
unpleasant, isn't quite as apocalyptic as its predecessors.  Devotees
of the gritty and grotty cyberpunk world will likely be disappointed by
Gibson's latest, but it will undoubtedly bring in a wider audience.
 
Mind you, it's still kind of choppy.
 
Enough of my uneducated pretensions to literary criticism.   What about
the tech stuff?
 
There isn't any.
 
Oh, sure, this is set in the future.  Handguns are more powerful.
Cellular phones have more range.  (Not much battery life, though.)
There are virtual reality sets, and "virtual light" sets that let you
see without light (by imposing sensations directly on the optic
nerve).  None of this, however, is in any way necessary to the plot,
which is really a straight mystery centred around a secret deal to ...
well, that's a secret, isn't it?  The virtual light glasses are no more
central to the story than the "hackers" who eventually "save the day".
 
Maybe Gibson is moving into Ludlum's turf.
 
copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994   BKVRTLIT.RVW  940701
 
%A   Gibson, William
%T   Virtual Light
%I   Seal Books/McClelland-Bantam, Inc.
%C   Toronto, ON
%D   1993
%G   ISBN 0-7704-2568-2
 
======================
DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters
Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733
DECUS Symposium '95, Toronto, ON, February 13-17, 1995, contact: rulag@decus.ca