'Aliens have taken the place of angels' - NP: Gibson

[horvathg]

> Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 17:34:03 -0400
> From: Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: 'Aliens have taken the place of angels'
> On 7/19/05, David Casseres <david.casseres at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That's a very good article, thanks for posting it.
> 
> She mentions William Gibson in passing, so here's a word or two about
> his last two books, All Tomorrow's Parties and Pattern Recognition.
> 
> He turned a corner with All Tomorrow's Parties. Although it's the
> last part of a trilogy set in the near future and involving
> cybernetics, which reads as both science fiction and speculative
> fiction using Atwood's definitions, ATP itself does not read as genre
> fiction at all. Not to me, anyway. It left me intensely curious as
> to what he'd do next.
> 
> Pattern Recognition does not disappoint. It takes place in the
> immediate present and technology is incidental. Its themes include
> the struggle between art and manufactured taste, and alienation, and
> somehow, in the background, the September 11 attack in New York. I
> think your average Pynchon reader would enjoy it.
> 
> David
> 
> 
> I did.

The only problem with PR is that it cuts short in the end.
You see a really nicely built sort of paranoid plot then it ends up abruptly
with a nothing.
I think he got tired of it, or missed the muses.
Or the world isn't saved:)

The ATP is much better. Try reading the 'trilogy' (is Virtual Light
included??) in one run, it's marvelous.

My main problem with Gibson is that he feels himself obliged to thoroughly
introduce the visual parameters (i.e. clothes, hair, etc.) of any new
characters at the first step to the scene.
This is the ugliest way to build a character, if that is his intention. 
Stephenson is much better at it. And much longer, so he may have more 'time'
for it.

Gabor