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William Gibson Writes the Future

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70 pointsThevet40 comments

Gibson is an enigma for me and I don't necessarily look forward to his return to sci-fi. He's a good writer and Neuromancer is definitely a groundbreaking work, but it doesn't age well. It reads like someone read a book about hacking and then made a story of it. Gibson himself has admitted to being a bit of technophobe and it shows in his work that he really doesn't understand computer technology. It warrants comparison to Jules Verne.

It wouldn't be so bad if technology wasn't so central to his 80s and 90s sci-fi titles. I feel like I'm in the minority here, but I like Gibson's worlds, characters and stories, I just can't abide the details.

I understand your concern about Necromancer, but Gibson's essay In The Visegrips of Dr Satan provides some insights into his desire for a modern mythology, which is likely more what he was aiming for: http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/archive/2003_01_28_archive...

I've read that and believe I understand what he's trying to accomplish, but I'm just saying the execution takes me out of it somewhat. Much like I read Greek myths (or Jules Verne, for that matter) and wonder sometimes how anyone could believe them (though I also understand that the word "belief" is perhaps not the right word when talking about the mindset of ancient Greeks when relating to their mythology), I read Gibson and just think: "This is how my Grandmother thinks about computers". I feel the world he creates would be better suited for straight up far future sci-fi where "believability" is couched in pseudo-technical terms we all know are fake but are able to accept within the context of the story or with less focus on the explicit technologies involved and more on how the characters interact in a world where this technology is simply a given.

Part of it is likely his maturity as a writer and the time he inhabited during Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. A time where, much like Verne, the technology was both new and alien, yet it was becoming increasingly clear it was important and soon to be omnipresent. A world where literature dealing with this technology was necessary, but where it was still mysterious enough to have creative license. It's not bad, but it doesn't age well.

We really disagree on this one. I think it ages superbly well. You just have to get out of the mode that sees SF as predictive. If you see SF as a prophesy then all SF older than a few years is going to age badly. The reason for that is that the 'science' part is outdated the moment the ink is dry, good SF uses the state-of-the-art in science, changes one thing and then extrapolates from there. Lots of Gibson's work is predicated on AI and from that point of view the major element that could cause it to age badly hasn't happened or hasn't quite happened in the way that he foresaw. So it still has some aging to do in that respect and then the remaining item (the story) still holds but you're going to have to view it relative to the state of the art of the time that it was written.

Otherwise you end up feeling that Da Vinci's writings and drawings have aged badly because helicopters don't use 'airscrews' the way he depicted them.

http://www.scienceandinventions.com/files/2011/04/da-vinci.j...

When the amazing thing is that he foresaw a vertical ascent airborne vehicle in the first place.

So it's not so much about the details, in your words 'how your grandmother things about computers', but how society would respond if computers had the capabilities that Gibson endows them with. That changes the picture quite a bit.

Where Da Vinci succeeds is where Gibson fails, I think. Da Vinci is so fantastical that you can accept it for the stylized ideas they are. Gibson, on the other hand, is close enough to reality that it seems off. I mean, there's fax machines in his world. It's not like Da Vinci where mechanical flying machines are so far off from reality that you can suspend disbelief, it's more like Verne where it's close enough to reality to make it feel silly now. After all, there are still submarines, just not like Verne's. Just like there's an Internet, but not Gibson's Internet.

The whole appeal of the cyberpunk genre is that weird mix of archaic and modern. Steam, computers, POTS (and faxes) as well as space residences, AI and human-AI relationships all in one mash up. That's what defines the genre!

The thing you find irritating is actually a strength of his writing, not a fault.

Imagine if he had been more particular about the tech behind VR, how poorly would the writing have aged then?

Instead he chose a set of workable metaphors to encapsulate the ideas and ran with it. In the end succeeded in transmitting those ideas so thoroughly that (arguably) the entire first round of VR (and thus the nascent 2nd) was largely inspired by his writing.

I disagree.

In the sprawl trilogy, the big black character that gives the hero his mission he's using a fax machine embedded in the seat of the cab where they first met. A fax machine. That spit out paper with ink on it. It was already old tech and weird when I first read the book 4 years after the published date.

In Dune, they are reading texts on ridulian crystal. When I read it in the 90's I thought "must be some kind of indestructible paper". Herbert didn't describe the item which incidentally allowed the 2000's SciFi series to show ridulian crystal as some kind of a very thin and intelligent screen reader.

Ridulian crystal will never age but FAX machine, e-mail[0], etc will and they will pull you out of that suspension of disbelief state.

With that said, and for what it's worth, I prefer Gibson to Herbert and I dislike made-up name such as `ridulian system`.

[0] But let's not get into __that__ debate.

I think Herbert is much better at this than Gibson.

Gibson also uses proper names for everyday objects that severely date the material (ie: Porsche sunglasses ), which has the same effect.

I guess we should be glad that he didn't give his characters Wireless Apple Newton's for all their communication and research and entertainment. ;)

Personally I prefer Gibson's stories and writing style to Herbert but that's another story.

Fax and email as services does not really age. They are simply integrated as servers, messaging applications and printers. A VCR is now Netflix minus the record button. Byproducts of the underlying network topography, storage options and short term legal agreements. A future without fax is a service restriction, not modernity.

You are missing the point. The __words__ `FAX and email` in fiction (especially Sci-Fi) are at a much higher risk to age and disappear or seem anachronistic than `ridulian crystal` wich has zero chance of ever getting old since it's a made-up word that can refer to any imaginary artifacts or underlying tech.

> A VCR is now Netflix minus the record button.

And `ridulian crystal` can be FAX, e-mail, Netflix, kindle and VCR and the next tech whenever you read the book or see a screen adaptation and it won't get old. It's never going to put you back in the real world old where VCR and Faxes are basically dead and unknown by today's teenagers.

My favorite Neuromancer Time/Tech signpost is when the narrator mentions that the protagonist Case has a couple of Megs of hot ram he's looking to fence. I absolutely love this, because it worked at the time, but it seems horribly antiquated now for those of us surfing on the wave of progress described by Moore's Law.

Antiquated? Nah...he forgot to mention it was L1 cache :)

It might not age well but that has less to do with his lack of technical knowledge and more to do with the genre of cyberpunk as a whole. Compare Snow Crash, another foundational cyberpunk work which was written by someone who did have a lot of technical knowledge -- you read it today and it will feel a little ridiculous.

Cyberpunk is essentially retro-futurism now. That's an inherent problem in something that extrapolates to the very near future. I think the only thing I've seen that comes close and ages well is Serial Experiments Lain, and that's more of a post-cyberpunk work.

But you seem to be defining the genre by its failures (for lack of a better term). I agree that Snow Crash seems ridiculous now, though I would argue that's less about the tech and more about the weird action/tech combo he tries to pull off (think Daemon). Is it possible for there to be cyberpunk that doesn't seem dated? I doubt a lot of people would now argue that Jane Austen seems dated.

I just don't think it's possible.

The genre is rooted in what we as humans believed the scary future would look like. The real scary future just wasn't what we thought.

> Gibson himself has admitted to being a bit of technophobe and it shows in his work that he really doesn't understand computer technology. It warrants comparison to Jules Verne.

From what I gather Jules Verne was actually pretty on top of the technology at the time. His books were well researched.

It's not really about what he knew about actual technology, though. Gibson has said "And somehow I knew that the notional space behind all of the computer screens would be one single universe." It has a lot more to do with the idea of an interior and a collective unconscious, that kind of psychological stuff, rather than projecting what technology will do. With VR actually becoming practical, it feels to me that the idea of spending time in a private one-user VR experience will rapidly become something socially frowned upon and perceived as solipsistic.

Actually, I'm getting tired of the dystopian future that I see everywhere in popular media. The only one that has even a hint of positivism is The Hunger Games.

Why can't we have movies with the joy of discovery? The thrill of exploration and invention? The future doesn't have to be bleak.

There are some fictional worlds that come to mind that present a positive future (I'm not particularly well versed in it, but isn't that the whole appeal of the Star Trek universe?) What I think it boils down to, though, is that dystopias offer more narrative possibilities and stylistic choices for writers/filmmakers than do utopias. Utopian societies just aren't that fun to fictionalize, even though they're more fun to live in. There's a reason why more people Dante's Inferno than the Paradiso.

But it's not an either/or proposition. There are sci-fi works that are just in the future without being overtly dystopian or utopian. Asimov's Foundation Series and the Ender/Bean books, for example. Literature is dominated with dystopia now not just because of narrative possibilities, but because it sells and perhaps speaks to a contemporary world view many of us share. I can't speculate too much on why dystopia is popular, but it's just clearly not just because it's easier to write.

I think "bleak" is just another point of view. Thinking back at how the 50's saw science fiction and the future in general, we could easily conclude that what we have was quite a "bleak" version of that vision. The general cyberpunk point of view is just a radical departure from the established line of thought (and forecasting). The fun thing to do when reading a cyberpunk novel is to watch for things that stay similar. And there are quite a lot. Actually, if you start pulling apart the shockingly weird things that are depicted (like for example, the SF-Oakland bridge becoming a shantytown) you notice that in the end society still works by the same rules as it does now. Which I personally find quite funny, given that one would expect technology to bring some kind of impact to cultural and societal frameworks.

I agree with most of what you're saying. It's just another point of view, and it might only even seem "bleak" because Gibson is so nonchalant about the worlds he writes. They're futures that the characters just accept as normal, whatever they are. As another poster says, only the children realized that they were in space.

If you read them with a sense of wonderment, and put aside the narrative, you see things like (in the book I'm reading) an SUV that can survive a flood and a massive accident with impressive safety technology. That's pretty cool.

The rest of the book isn't about a bright, shiny happy future. Life isn't like that for anyone, and it's not something I could see being enjoyable to read or watch, as a style in a dramatic narrative. A comedy, maybe, but they tend not to be ground-breaking future-predictors.

if you just want pure positivism: with joy of discovery and thrill of exploration; dive into the one piece manga where the main character is his own living ideal

if you are talking specifically about spacey futures..

i'd suggest Space Station 76

it is a very stylised future that the tin might describe as space as the 70s dreamt it, but retains all of the social trappings of the day and contemporaries

its 'positivism' stems from the most real hope there is: hope in the next generation;

it is only bleak for the characters in how common everything is for them, and a child seems to be the only one on the ship who remembers they are all in space

it failed to get picked up for theatrical release so it went straight to dvd after SxSW; amazon prime is the only web service i know of that has it

even with its completely fun crutch of staging in a past's future, it is strangely some of the best futurism i've seen recently

Asimov, particularly in his "Robot" and "Foundation" series, famously had a rather up-beat outlook on the future and technology's role in it.

Foundation takes as its background setting the inevitable collapse of civilization. Many of the Robot stories feature accidents or murders, at least one is set on a very dystopian world (solaris? where people live one-to-an-acre and can't bear to be in the same room as another human), and the ultimate conclusion is a robot deliberately irradiating Earth and killing 90% of its population (because it's the only way to get humanity to spread among the stars).

Yes, but unlike many other futurist novels, I've always enjoyed the way that the resolution of so many of Asimov's stories are inclusive of technology.

I guess another way to say it is that many authors treat technology as somehow inherently evil. Asimov, on the other hand, treats technology as technology. That's not to say there are never mishaps or tragic consequences, but it's usually the result of human actions. The technology in his stories does not exert a malevolent force of its own. Some humans are good, some are bad, but technology doesn't change that.

It's simple: utopia is boring. Utopias do not contain many opportunities for exploration and invention, mankind has always been at its most creative when constrained or in trouble. And for quite a good sized chunk of the world today such dystopian futures would actually be an improvement in the standard of living so even that is relative.

First, it's harder to write a compelling story in a utopia. The late Ian Banks's Culture series does a good job of it, though most of the books deal with the Culture's interaction with less-enlightened societies. After all, that's where the action is.

Second, I'm not sure if media really is much bleaker than it was during say, the cold war. The threat of nuclear annihilation permeates many stories from that time. Moreover, many stories from the past (even rather optimistic ones) contain blatant sexism and racism.

I'm half way through the Culture series, and it really is one of the most uplifting things I've ever read. So much of everything he describes is just so spot-on. It is not often I find science fiction that just sounds so plausible and so right. Especially when it has been written more than a decade ago. There's usually things that seem slightly out-of-date or plot-driven. Or worse, grabs onto a current trend or fad. But Culture seems to nail it and just makes you want to live there, no reservations. In fact, it's hard to stop and realize we still have so many problems to solve.

I've read the Culture series (Ian will be missed), and it certainly is very utopia-like. But at the same time, you have to wonder if the Minds are actually the ones in control. While most of the ships are on the up-and-up, the ones that are members of Special Circumstances seem to be much more pragmatic about achieving their desired results.

>First, it's harder to write a compelling story in a utopia.

Ok, so write a story in a setting that's neither utopian nor dystopian, but perhaps merely positive as a way of looking forward from the present day. Things can be good without being perfect.

Personally, I'd just like to see a scifi story that doesn't assume capitalism will last forever...

I think it's because it's easy. Dystopia bring automatic conflict which is easy/lazy to dramatize.

Still all isn't bad, it isn't Star Trek, but there are non-dystopic popular fictions:

- Her

- Stargate SG-1 and spinouts

- Fringe

- Warehouse 13

- Eureka

- Sanctuary

- The new crop of super hero shows and movies, Arrow, SHIELD, The Flash

- Heroes

- The short lived new V series

- Dr. Who

- Guardians of the Galaxy

- Inception

- Gravity

and more....

in Literature there's a huge bounty of great non-dystopic stuff too.

- The Golden Oecumene

- The Culture series

- The Night's Dawn Trilogy

- The Gap series

You just have to know where to look.

>Why can't we have movies with the joy of discovery? The thrill of exploration and invention? The future doesn't have to be bleak.

Because they try to base them in the actual future, which WILL be bleak?

PSA: Positivism is not the same as positivity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism

IMO, the last well-done dystopian films I saw, and I've seen a lot, were The book of Eli and The Road. I think we need more big questions being looked at in this space rather than pure entertainment pushes.

Check out the South Korean/Western co-production 'Snowpiercer' - a real gem.

If you like it, hop over to any abandonware site and play the game Transarctica/Arctic Baron, which is essentially a RTS in the same setting. Very clever mechanics, too.

Very cool

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