321–330 of 404 posts
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Wow. Wild Palms .... I don't hear that one mentioned often (or ever). Glad to hear I'm not the only one who's seen this weird, obscure, flawed gem of a series.
I remember watching this on Fox and being transfixed. I curious how my reaction to it would be today. Need to watch it again.
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Early cyberpunk tends to be power fantasy wrapped in dystopia. So, Hellblazer with more blinking lights and megacorps instead of demons. And it bears remembering that Gibson was 34 when he wrote Neuromancer . You can see a shift in his characterization by the time he gets to Mona Lisa Overdrive (a book and 4 years later). And certainly with the subsequent Bridge trilogy. IMHO, the Sprawl trilogy that starts with Neur…
Personally I feel like the series only goes downhill with Count Zero and worse with Mona Lisa Overdrive, but they're both fine books. Count Zero does world building well, it's cool to see the BAMA eastern seaboard, but Bobby is not as compelling of a protagonist. If anything the simstim star Tally Isham is a lot more interesting but there's a lot of human trafficking adjacent stuff happening there too. Don't remember…
I’m constantly amazed at how Metaverse aficionados quote Snow Crash and and other 1990s works as cornerstones of cyberspace, when Gibson invented the term and Neuromancer was written in 1984. Gibson is the original. The passage where Case connects to the matrix (also a Gibson term) again for the first time once his nervous system is repaired is heartbreakingly beautiful. I relate to it as a young phone phreak growing…
The Snow Crash metaverse is infinitely more relatable to most people than the Neuromancer one. (And bonus points when it comes to being widespread, the novel is a lower-effort read. Which isn't a comment on quality... the genres are COMPLETELY different so I don't think that's really a reasonable comparison anyway.)
I’m constantly amazed at how Metaverse aficionados quote Snow Crash and and other 1990s works as cornerstones of cyberspace, when Gibson invented the term and Neuromancer was written in 1984. Gibson is the original. The passage where Case connects to the matrix (also a Gibson term) again for the first time once his nervous system is repaired is heartbreakingly beautiful. I relate to it as a young phone phreak growing…
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The commentary I've read (and agree with), is that the metaverse itself just didn't hold up. The internet did not become a new reality. Instead, our own reality is melding with the internet through always-on devices and miniaturized sensors and wide wireless networks. Instead of some kind of digital lovecraftian portals hidden away in parts of realspace that connect to this magical deadly realm, the modern vision of…
Wasn't it Gibson himself who wrote this, right in the beginning of Zero History if I'm not mistaken, when Cayce is meeting with some French artist in a warehouse in the outskirts of Oakland? The artist is making an augmented reality installation of a cyber whale that you can see in real life with mirrorshades. And then the artist says 'the internet is e-ver-ting'.
I was honestly underwhelmed by Neuromancer. Maybe because so many people raved about it or that I read it many years after it was written. I honestly don't know. It was... OK. But amazing? I don't see it. I love science fiction. One thing you have to realize about science ficiton is that it is a product of the time it was written. It may share many of the aesthetics, themes, philosophies and politics of that time. Li…
Neuromancer was groundbreaking in its time. I read it when it came out in 1984 and it blew me away. These days so much other media has been influenced by it that it doesn't look nearly as original. But just imagine reading it when there were no books or movies about: - cyberspace inhabited by AIs - neural interfaces - corporate armies - insanely rich people living in Earth orbit - genetically engineered assassins wit…
A book written 125 years ago.
I reread Neuromancer recently and it was surreal reading all the refs in it to The Matrix. literally I'm rereading Snow Crash now and you cant go 10 pages without reading about The Metaverse. and so much of its VR world reminds me of Ready Player One everything old thats good seems to get endlessly reinvented, riffed on, or just blatantly ripped off? lol
> I reread Neuromancer recently and it was surreal reading all the refs in it to The Matrix. literally Given how time goes, I'd say it was the other way around with the references.
go read Neuromancer. then come back here. I'll wait :-)
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You know, I feel silly admitting this, but I still haven't ever watched "Heavy Metal". Now I'm thinking I should make that my top TODO item after work tonight. That's been on "the list" for, like, forever.
The Josan Gonzalez “Deathburger” images on the article could be lifted directly the Heavy Metal movie. And Gonzalez did artwork for the Heavy Metal magazine. When Musk launched a Tesla into space, there was a lot of speculation that he was inspired by the opening scene in the Heavy Metal film [0] [1]. This film was Ivan Reitman before he did Ghostbusters and same year he did Stripes, and became really famous. A film…
Some samples of Darrow's work: [3] - [8]
Gonzalez also seems to have a bit of a Moebius vibe.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geof_Darrow
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Boiled_(comics)
[3] - https://i.redd.it/wfb1561hqbe01.jpg
[4] - https://i.pinimg.com/736x/75/71/f7/7571f7929dfd8f3cef2e32af2...
[5] - https://i.pinimg.com/originals/68/3e/15/683e154af1fb4fbc267c...
[6] - https://d2lzb5v10mb0lj.cloudfront.net/common/salestools/prev...
[7] - https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d9/48/de/d948de58e6cd3ccc01cc...
[8] - https://i.pinimg.com/474x/2a/08/11/2a081125fc927a628f1dfb2b1...
I’m constantly amazed at how Metaverse aficionados quote Snow Crash and and other 1990s works as cornerstones of cyberspace, when Gibson invented the term and Neuromancer was written in 1984. Gibson is the original. The passage where Case connects to the matrix (also a Gibson term) again for the first time once his nervous system is repaired is heartbreakingly beautiful. I relate to it as a young phone phreak growing…
Matrix isn't Gibson's term. Doctor Who used the term Matrix back in the 70's referring to a supercomputer simulated reality environment.
