The Decline and Fall of SF

[Jay Herzog]

	I think Gibson shows Pynchon's influence in his
technological/media metaphors("the sky was the color of a television tuned
to a dead channel"), paranoia, pop culture and drug references, though I
think he owes more to Burroughs and Ballard stylistically. The cyberpunk
stuff of the mid 80's was the last SF I paid close attention to.  Gibson
himself said that there's too much really good stuff out there to waste a
lot of time on Genre SF. Even cyberpunk, which started out with original
individual voices(Gibson, Sterling and Rucker), has become a hackneyed
trope-I think a lot of folks outgrow SF when they're exposed to writers
like Pynchon who have a wider field of reference and aren't bound by genre
formula. 

On Thu, 27 Mar 1997, Brett Coley wrote:

> 
> I always thought W. Gibson owed a lot to a certain Mr. Brunner, among
> others.  I don't see the Pynchon connection, what am I missing here?
> It's been a while since I read Neuromancer, and I haven't felt like
> going back and rereading it, but I don't remember it seeming
> particularly "Pynchonian".
> 
> Regards,
> Brett
>