New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson

Post by apercu » Sun, Aug 23, 2026, 8:24 PM UTC

Duanemclemore wrote: post #185

apercu wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t Gibson Canadian?

Nope, he fled the draft there from South Carolina* . He has been there since '67 though. He appears in an old CBC documentary about the Yorkville neighborhood and the hippies there from then. https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/1.3202122 * ETA: Whoops I just realized he was born in SC, but he grew up in Virginia. So THAT'S where he fled to Toronto from.

Post by robotresearcher » Sun, Aug 23, 2026, 11:28 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #101

keiferski wrote: post #10

I am a big fan of both, but I think what's missing in reality, but in their fiction (and cyberpunk fiction in general) is a sense of coolness and caring about aesthetics. For all the evil that the mega corporations do in a Gibson novel, they still have an aesthetic appeal. Real-world corporations aren't that interesting. Amazon, Facebook, or Google have nothing "culturally" or aesthetically on Hosaka, Arasaka or Sens…

Those aesthetics are only "cool" in the sense that stylized comic book / military sci-fi conceptions of tech are cool. Also '80s nostalgia, and satire. In reality, none of that could exist practically in the modern day. Real-world high-tech is either consumer-oriented family friendly or hopelessly enterprise beige and gray. LA NIMBYs are not going to let you build a corporate pyramid. The closest we have in reality i…