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                         William Gibson
                   Bibliografi og anmeldelser
                       Hentet fra InterNet





For someone with only 3 novels and 1 story collection, William Gibson
has certainly made a mark in SF.  If you want a deep discussion on
cyberpunk, there's an entire newsgroup devoted to it (alt.cyberpunk).
Personally, I find William Gibson to be a marvelous writer, with mixed
reviews for the wannabe cyberpunkers.  But by all means read the
original, "Neuromancer"
is the best starting place.

[C] == Story Collection.

Gibson, William (Ford) (U.S.A., Canada, 3/17/1948- )   G
        (Casper 1989; Ditmar 1985; Hugo 1985, Nebula 1984; PKD
        Mem 1985; Seiun 1987)
        (pseudonym: Mink Mole)

Series
        __________Series
               Neuromancer (1984) [Phantasia, 1986] [Ditmar; Hugo;
               Nebula; PKD Mem; Seiun]
               Count Zero (1986)
               Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) [Casper]

Burning Chrome (1986) [C]
Virtual Light (1993) [Lord John, 1993]

with Bruce Sterling
        The Difference Engine (1990)

as Mink Mole with K. W. Jeter as Dr. Adder
        Alligator Alley (1989)






               "Count Zero" by William Gibson
                        Arbor House
                           $15.95

Science fiction allows an author to project current  reality
into  a  future world that does not exist yet.  Consider our
world today.  We are at the start  of  an  information  age.
Computers  are the medium of this age and are, by and large,
produced by large companies like IBM and  DEC.   Year  after
year  these  companies  grow  larger and branch out into new
areas. What will happen if companies like IBM, DEC, NEC  and
Fujitsu keep growing as they have been?  Population dynamics
should give us some clue.

Computer power increases even faster than the  multinational
companies  grow.   A  new  generation  of computers is being
born. These systems are parallel processors.  In  ten  years
we may see computer systems that are composed of millions of
processors.

Coupled with the information revolution has been  a  quieter
revolution in biology.  In the last ten years scientist have
been able to synthesize complex hormones like  insulin  that
in the past could only be obtained from animal sources.  The
human genes linked  to  a  number  of  disorders  have  been
mapped.  There  is  little doubt that there will come a time
when the keys to evolution will be in the hands of the human
race.

Imagine a world fifty years or so in the  future,  when  the
multinational  companies  have become more powerful that na-
tions.  A time when computer systems of  massive  power  are
globally  linked.  Where some of these computer systems sup-
port artificial intelligences.  A world  where  genetic  and
transplant  technology  can be used to alter the human form.
This is the world that William Gibson  first  showed  us  in
Neuromancer.   In  this world the computer breakers of today
(called hackers by the media) have  evolved  into  "cowboys"
who  break  into  the  huge computers on the global network.
The cowboys "jack in" to the computer network  via  consoles
that  provide  direct stimulus to the brain.  An illusion is
generated to help people work on the global  network.   This
illusion  is  referred to as the "cyberspace matrix" and ap-
pears as a vast three dimensional plain. The huge  corporate
computer  systems  are  visualized  as glowing structures on
this plane.

With the exception of the military  computer  systems,  most
computer  systems today have very weak security.  In Gibsons
world, where information is recognized as both currency  and
power, computer systems are guarded by complex security sys-
tems. These security systems consist of  both  cryptographic
measures  and active counter measures that can kill the com-
puter breaker by "flat lining" the brain ("flat line" refers
to  what  would be seen on an EEG). The security systems are
referred to as Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics, or ICE.
The programs the cowboys use to break into these systems are
referred to as icebreakers.

Gibson's new novel, Count Zero, is set in the same  universe
as  Neuromancer, but several years later.  Count Zero is the
"handle" of Bobby Newmark, who lives in  a  housing  project
and  dreams  of  escaping  to  a  better  life by becoming a
"cowboy".  A small time black market dealer rents  Bobby  an
icebreaker to use on his first cowboy run through the cyber-
space matrix.  The black market dealer even suggests a  sys-
tem  to try the icebreaker out on.  As it turns out the sys-
tem is heavily guarded and Bobby is almost flat  lined.  The
icebreaker  is  later  stolen  and the suppliers of the ice-
breaker attempt to recover it with Bobby's help.

Gibson interweaves Bobby's story with threads from the lives
of a corporate mercenary and a woman who previously owned an
art gallery.  Some of the other characters overlap from Neu-
romancer:  Finn, the black market dealer in software is back
and the three threads of the story are drawn together at the
end of the book by remnants of the Tessier-Ashpool empire.

Count Zero is highly recommended to  those  who  liked  Neu-
romancer or the movie Blade Runner.

                    Ian Kaplan
                    Loral Dataflow Group
             USENET: {ucbvax,decvax,ihnp4}!sdcsvax!sdcc6!loral!ian
             ARPA:   sdcc6!loral!ian@UCSD

From archive (archive)
Subject: Count Zero, a mini-review
From: [e-mail]
Organization: STC Telecoms, London N11 1HB.
Date: 13 Jun 86 09:06:44 SDT




I loved Burning Chrome, I liked Neuromancer. Why then do I feel
disappointed by Count Zero?

Well, let's look at the plus features first. William Gibson has his
story-telling act more together this time. Neuromancer has a messy
plot line; it reads like many stories welded together. In Count Zero
the three main characters, Turner the merc, Marly the disgraced art
dealer and Count Zero the beginner cyberpunk, each have their own
stories which converge neatly at the end. There's plenty of
atmosphere of the Blade Runner type, quite a lot of violence, very
little sex and lots of trademarks. I read it straight through.

In fact, just a slicker version of what we've seen already.

I'm afraid that Gibson, from promising beginnings as a sort of
Bester-Delany-Varley (plus his own ideas), is going to start turning
out pot-boilers. Count Zero contains what I regard as the kiss of
death in a novel - obvious script potential. You can see a Hollywood
man going over the book, with its filmic intercuts between characters
and plot lines, and thinking he's got a hot property here.
It annoys me the same way that a key-change in a song does.

What price volume #20 in the fabulous Sprawl saga - Slaves of
Cyberspace? Or a Titan-Wizard-Demon style trilogy?

I hope this doesn't happen. I hope that Gibson realises that he's
mined this particular seam out and writes something new. But I shall
approach the next novel with some scepticism.
--
        Peter Kendell <[e-mail]>

        ...!mcvax!ukc!stc!pete

        "9 1/2 Weeks?. They should have got 9 1/2 years!"


[This review has been slightly edited for clarity and to add a spoiler
warning. --AW]

%A Gibson, William
%A Sterling, Bruce
%T The Difference Engine
%I Bantam Books
%C New York
%D April 1991
%G ISBN 0-553-07028-2
%P 429 pp.
%O hardback, US$19.95

This book explores the world of England in 1855 assuming that
Babbage had produced a successful "Difference Engine." Babbage and
his followers rule England and Engines are an everyday part of life.
Engines are used by the police, credit card companies and artists to
drive kinotropes, a mechanical cross between a TV and a scoreboard.
"Clackers" are striving to write the ultimate program, the "Modus."
This world is also populated by criminals, spies and politicians, all at
odds with one another. The novel explores pollution, love, spying,
invasion of privacy, anarchy, sex, science, art and programming.

The book is very good at exploring this interesting world. Yet I was
dissatisfied.  There does not seem to be a clear narrative voice, no
driving plot to move the action forward. Characters and events come
and go, concepts are introduced and dropped, ideas explored and then
abandoned. There is a metaphysical? ending that does not satisfy.
Maybe I am old-fashioned and just like a nice direct story line, but I
could not see where this book was going.

[small spoiler warning]

At the close of the book Lady Ada (of the ADA language fame)
discusses the "Modus." This was most facinating and I wish that this
aspect had been more fully explored in the novel.

All in all a good but ultimately unsatisfying exploration of a world that
came very close to being. I recommend the book with some reservation.

James T. Stover

--

        A Review of _Mona Lisa Overdrive_, by William Gibson
         by J. Eric Townsend ([e-mail])
         (NO PLOT SPOILERS; SOME CONSTRUCTION/STYLE/-
FORMAT SPOILERS)
         Hit /Summary: at the more prompt to skip to the summary
         and miss the few minor spoilers.




         With _Mona Lisa Overdrive_, Gibson has finished the "sprawl"
    series in fine style.  _Mona Lisa Overdrive_ has its weaknesses as
    well, but as a whole it equals both _Neuromancer_ and _Count
Zero_.

         _Mona Lisa Overdrive_ is less hardware oriented than its
    predecessors while more people-oriented.  Character development
    is relatively strong (compared to _Neuromancer_ and _Count Zero_);
    and the characters Gibson uses are much more diverse: a prostitute,
    a hardware hacker, an artist, the daughter of a yakuza lord, etc.
    Hardware isn't as important (and isn't needed as much) because
    of the relative abundance of characters and their intrinsic
    intrest value to the reader.

         The hardware that exists is more "realistic" -- I didn't
    notice any major contradictions, at least -- than the earlier
    books.  A couple of minor plot devices, while seemingly original,
    are based on current-day usages of technology.  (A somewhat
    oblique reference to Survival Research Laboratories comes
    immediately to mind.)

          Enjoyability.  A great part of my infatuation with
    _Neuromancer_ was related to the style and subject of the book.
    Whether or not Gibson knew what a modem was for was irrelevant
    while I was reading _Neuromancer_.  _Count Zero_ was slower paced
    than _Neuromancer_, because it depended on a different subject and
    style -- one that did not lend itself to the slick, glossy sleaze
    and speed of _Neuromancer_.  It was still as good, however, and it
    still dealt with the same basic subject, but from a different angle.
    _Mona Lisa Overdrive_, likewise, deals with the Sprawl, AI's, and
    the natural progression of intelligence (among other things), but from
    a different angle.

         Gibson should have reached a bit farther, I feel, as the
    difference between _Mona Lisa Overdrive_ and _Count Zero_ is not
near
    the difference between _Count Zero_ and _Neuromancer_.  Gibson
has
    shown drastic improvement in his work before -- compare "The
Gernsback
    Continuum" with "New Rose Hotel".  I think he sloughed off by
    not going the extra step with _Mona Lisa Overdrive_.  Maybe he was
    distracted with the Alien III script, the "New Rose Hotel" script,
    and his work with Shirley.  If that *is* the case, I wish he'd work
    on one project at a time, putting everything he had into the one
product,
    rather than spread his energy over several projects.




         Summary:  If you liked _Neuromancer_, _Count Zero_ or
_Burning
    Chrome_, odds are you'll like _Mona Lisa Overdrive_.  If you're
    not a Gibson fan, wait for the paperback or borrow a hardback
    -- you may like still like _Mona Lisa Overdrive_ because of its
    moderate divergence from Gibson's earlier work.

         I hate trying to write reviews without giving out spoilers.
         They always end up rather bland.... :-)
--
J. Eric Townsend ->uunet!nuchat!flatline!erict smail:511Par


Neuromancer and Count Zero, by William Gibson
                            A Book Review


                            by Eiji Hirai
                     Copyright 1987 by Eiji Hirai


     Cyberspace.  Jacking-in.  Black Ice.  These and other words are
     used as if they were part of the everyday language of the people.
     However, the people are living very different lives, not so far
     into the extrapolative future.  This is the world of Cyberpunk.

     What is Cyberpunk?

     Readers and writers alike disagree as to what Cyberpunk really
     is.  However, there seems to be a general vague consensus among
     most people that it deals with an extrapolation into the near
     future, where computer-human interfacing technology is in wide-
     spread use.  People with chips implanted in their bodies to
     enhance their abilities are not unusual.  There is also a vague
     agreement among readers that writers in the genre take special
     care in exploring the social dynamics of their new worlds.  So
     exploration of computer-human interface technology and social
     dynamics may be said to comprise a loose definition of Cyberpunk.

     Now, people are bound to quibble with this definition, as with
     all other attempts at defining this genre.  Well, the next best
     thing to listening to what other people say is to actually read
     some of the major authors in the genre.

     William Gibson is considered a very major author in the field and
     his two novels are considered landmark works of Cyberpunk.  His
     first novel, Neuromancer, was awarded most of the science fiction
     awards you can name off the top of your head.

     So What is Neuromancer and Count Zero About?

     The story of both Neuromancer and Count Zero take place in the
     same world, and the events of Count Zero take place only seven
     years after the events of Neuromancer.  In Neuromancer the
     story centers around the exploits of a interface cowboy, a person
     who makes a living by jacking-in to interface computers and
     entering the world of cyberspace.  Cyberspace is the electronic
     network which links up almost every computerized site in the
     world.  Being able to maneuver in cyberspace and doing it well is
     what makes a cowboy.  A 3-D world of of a videogame is the
     closest way I can come to describing what cyberspace looks like.

     Naturally, companies don't like having their valuable data free
     to be searched by cowboys.  The solution is a type of elaborate
     security block called Black Ice.  Ice is a term coined by Tom
     Maddox (a friend of Gibson), for Intrusion Countermeasures Elec-
     tronics.  Coming into contact with one may sending you reeling
     back with a fatal headache.  Cowboys are hired to so that they
     can overcome these blocks and steal or sabotage information for
     the companies that hire them.  Virus programs (a term originating
     back to John Brunner's Shockwave Rider) are the tools of the
     trade:  they slowly make a path through an ice without the ice
     knowing about it.  High-tech stealth and thievery is the name of
     the game.  Count Zero centers around three different people but
     the premises and the world are the same.

     The two books explore this world very well.  There are numerous
     fascinating ideas about how this world is constructed.  Corpora-
     tions are the most powerful organizations, stealing and sabotage
     is business as usual, street smarts are basic survival skills,
     the Turing police make sure that no AI becomes too intelligent,
     and jacking-in is the equivalent of hacking in today's world.

     In addition to constructing this world and presenting it well,
     Gibson gives us a view of what a cowoboy's everyday life is like,
     what he feels, what he wants and what he lives for.  The cowboy
     and the other characters in the book are unique individuals.  You
     can believe in them and see why they feel the way they do, though
     you may not sympathize with them.  There are no heroes and no
     villains, but that's the real world.

     If you've seen Ridley Scott's movie called Blade Runner, you
     might have an idea of how the world is explored.  There are many
     ideas about the world that are begging to be looked at in detail.
     Fully fleshed people live in the harsh reality of life.  For a
     while, you live in that world.  It's not a gung-ho adventure
     story with lots of action and no depth.  The depth of this world
     is thick as black ice.

     However, the action and plot are dismally absent in his books.
     The story plods along without focus and no definite climax in
     sight.  The book ends by resolving some of the conflicts in the
     story as if in afterthought.  The ending of Count Zero is espe-
     cially obscure.  It is hard to understand how the ending came
     about unless you read each sentence bery bery carefully and
     closely.  These books are not light reading.  It is good that
     Gibson's sentences are loaded, and that each sentence is essen-
     tial and not superfluous.  However, sentences and nice imagery
     does not make a good story.  If story telling is the aim of a
     book, then Gibson fails in that area.

     Moreover, the story in Count Zero revolves around three dif-
     ferent characters who are totally unrelated to each other.  The
     book then jumps back and forth between the stories of these char-
     acters without much coherent link between them.  A single tenuous
     link becomes apparent only in the latter parts of the book, and
     obscure way at that.  The climax is almost as if it were hastily
     constructed to tie up the three different stories together so the
     book could come to an end.  Furthermore, the climax is achieved
     without the direct involvement of the characters.

     Summary

     Gibson may have been attempting to show how individual lives in
     the world are insignificant and none can stop the flow of events.
     However, this is no excuse to let the plot wander without focus
     and to append an ending not worth striving for.  The ending could
     have been cut out of the book, and the point of individual lives
     being insignificant would have made better.

     Despite these criticism of the plot, the book was worth reading
     for the world that was explored.  The characters were real too.
     If only Gibson had a tigter grip on the plot, the book would have
     been exhilarating.  Frank Herbert's Dune was a masterpiece for
     both the presentation of the world and a tight, exciting  plot.
     Gibson achieves only half of this.

     I've bought Gibson's short story collection called Burning
     Chrome, and it's in my priority reading list (if I have time,
     hah!).  Perhaps his short stories are better than his novels.
     I'll try my best to read them without preconceptions I might have
     from reading his novels.

     This is just one person's opinion and you may disagree.  Well,
     that's what life is like isn't it?


William Gibson, Virtual Light, Bantam, 1993.
Reviewed by Bluejack

     It is a big day for cyberpunks everywhere. A big day, but not
necessarily a happy day. William Gibson's new novel Virtual Light has
just hit the stores, and it thoroughly disappoints. It may be true: Gibson
has lost his edge.
     In his first books, William Gibson founded 'cyberpunk,' a new style
of science fiction that blends cutting edge technology with a bleak social
and ecological future. Gibson's Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona
Lisa Overdrive, took technologies currently under development to their
probable conclusions and set them in a world in which national
boundaries have been replaced by corporate boundaries, and political
structures have become vestigial features of the landscape of infor-
mation. In the cyberspace, cyberpunk world, human flesh and human
technology merge, and the desparate struggle for survival and success
take place in the intersection of a dying planet and a blossoming
computer-generated artificial world. This vision caught the imagination
of a new generation of science fiction readers not just because of the
range and maturity of his ideas, but also because of the sheer beauty of
Gibson's writing.
     Following the success of this trilogy, cyberpunk took on a life of its
own, peopled by the creations of uncountable imitators, fueled by both
the alternative and mainstream media. It has determined the direction
of new technologies from computer networks to multimedia; it has
sparked thousands of real-world applications of virtual reality tech-
nology. So, when William Gibson releases a novel, it is cause for great
stirring in the world of science fiction.
     Think of him as a prophet. He has a personal mythology: when he
first began to write Neuromancer, he didn't know a bit from a byte, a
modem from a motherboard. He did a little reading in the popular
science press, and combined it with an incisive vision of the future of
urban America. He introduced characters that science fiction wasn't
used to: small time crooks, underdogs, and pathetic heros, most
blissfully and adolescently unaware of the dangers they were putting
themselves into. He plunked it out on a manual typerwriter.
     Gibson claims he wasn't trying to do anything original. He saw
himself in the tradition of Robert Silverberg, Ursula LeGuin, Philip K.
Dick, or Stanislaw Lem: writing science fiction that was about society,
about real people, and about the world we live in now. But he was also
writing exciting sci-fi in a voice no one had heard before -- the gravel
throated drawl of the downtrodden.
     But recently there has been reason to doubt. Gibson's last work, The
Difference Engine, co-authored by Bruce Sterling, was a great
disappointment to many fans. It had neither the depth, the intricacy,
nor the style of his previous works. One could blame it on Sterling, who,
while a heavyweight in the cyberpunk mythos, just doesn't have the
talent that Gibson has. Thus it was with a sense of great anticipation
and dark foreboding that we awaited Virtual Light.
     The story: Berry Rydell has failed as a cop & now he has blown his
job with IntenSecure, world's largest private security corporation.
Rydell, it seems, can take his work a little too seriously, throwing
everything he has at a situation that calls for delicacy. It's not his fault
that he steers his Hotspur Hussar (affectionately nicknamed Gunhead)
through the high-power security gate and into the living room of a
wealthy couple, only to find the wife cavorting with a gardener: some
hacker got into his onboard computer and sent a kidnap in progress
warning, children in mortal danger.
Nonetheless, IntenSecure couldn't keep him on. They did, however,
place him with a freelancer up in San Fran who was on a particularly
important mission for the corporation.
     Meanwhile Chevette, a quick but naive young bike courier in San
Francisco finds herself in a bit of trouble. It was the last run of her day
and she found herself in the midst of a very high class party. Not a nice
party. When an obnoxious, creepy man, who also turns out to be a
courier of a different sort, feels her up, Chevette retaliates by quietly
relieving him of his parcel. Only later, when all the weight of the
Columbian information cartel comes down on her courier company
does she realize quite how big a mistake she has made.
     Virtual Light finds a new setting: San Francisco in a near future that
has suffered a major earthquake. It is the same world of urban decay
and environmental degradation that Gibson's other work has been in,
but we see less of it, the picture is less detailed, the presence of a massive
tangle of corporate interests and intrigues is missing. There are,
however, some beautiful ideas, most notably the Bridge:
     "Its steel bones, its stranded tendons, were lost within an accretion
of dreams: tattoo parlors, gaming arcades, dimly lit stalls stacked with
decaying magazines, sellers of fireworks, of cut bait, betting shops, sushi
bars, unlicensed pawnbrokers, herbalists, barbers, bars. Dreams of
commerce, their locations generally corresponding with the decks that
had once carried vehicular traffic; while above them, rising to the very
peaks of the cable towers, lifted the intricately suspended barrio, with
its unnumbered population and its zones of more private fantasy."
     This is the Bay Bridge, damaged beyond repair in the great quake,
but still sturdy enough to be haphazardly constructed upon by the
outcasts of an unforgiving world of all-powerful corporations. These are
the outcasts that Gibson brought into science fiction, this is vision that
gave birth to cyberpunk.
     So what's wrong with it? It's a good story, told with more style than
most of his imitators. The language is still hip, the technology is still
speculative, the characters are still real.
     Problem is, it's the same characters but with different names. It's
the same misfits and underdogs trying to outwit the pros, the same small
time folks that have wandered through all Gibson's other novels. They
are losing their grit, they have become formulae.
     Problem is, it's the same hip language, the same too-cool style. Now
that everyone is talking it, there's not much to lift Gibson above the
crowd of his followers except the historical point that he did it first.
It's nothing new, now.
     Problem is, he's lost his ability to articulate speculative technology
in a convincing way -- the only new technologies in Virtual Light are a
collection of ambiguous quasi-organic sciences referred to variously as
German Nanotech, nanospore, and nanomech. But the workings are
opaque and uninspiring; it ends up a simple fantasy of impossible,
magical technology.
     But most of all, the problem is that Gibson's vision has grown stale.
One gets the feeling that somewhere in his success Gibson has lost touch
with the outcasts of our own world and has gone looking for inspiration
not in the ghettos, not among the burnt-out factories or the junkyards
or the deserted rail yards, but rather in the glossy pages of Mondo 2000
or in the books of his own followers. In Neuromancer one felt that
Gibson knew what it was like to hungry for a couple of weeks, that he
himself had tasted this desperate craving for victory that his characters
sought. The story of failure, despair, and improbable victory became
real. In Virtual Light one feels that Gibson has spent to much time
playtesting Virtual Reality headgear and eating at good restaurants.
     Indeed, in comparison with works by some of his recent imitators,
Virtual Light seems very light indeed. Of particular note are two recent
additions to the Cyberpunk canon. Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash has
neither the smooth voice nor the tight plot of any Gibson novel, but it
has a cast of fun characters and a love of new technological ideas that
is missing in Gibson's new work. Most interesting of all, published in
early '92, Snow Crash also features a cute young woman who is a
skateboard courier. Of more serious intent and of more challenging
substance is Norman Spinrad's Little Heroes. Spinrad, a longtime sci-fi
author with lifelong subversive intent uses the cyberpunk milieu to
explore the possibility of music/software as a drug with which to incite
revolution. Has Gibson been reading this stuff?
Both books do have Gibson-quotes on the cover...
     With as much acclaim as he has received in recent years, perhaps it
is inevitable that his work should suffer. There are few instances where
an author's work was improved by the unabashed admiration and
imitation of others. No longer a prophet in the wilderness transcribing
the visions of his genius, Gibson is a celebrated patriarch. He is part of
the phenomenon.
He is linked into Internet, he makes regular appearances in Mondo 2000
surrounded by the flattering voices of the faithful, he is an idol to a
whole new generation of would-be hackers. The ancients were known
for exiling or destroying their prophets, perhaps we eliminate ours
through process of assimilation.

Philadelphia
1993



%T   Virtual Light
%A   William Gibson
%D   1993
%G   ISBN 0-55307-499-7
%I   Bantam
%O   Cloth, $US 23.95