Distrust that particular flavor

Distrust that particular flavor

William Gibson, 1948-

Book - 2012

Known primarily as a novelist, Gibson has, over thirty years, been approached by different publication to share his insights into contemporary culture. The resulting essays are collected here for the first time.

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814.54/Gibson
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Subjects
Popular culture.
Technological innovations.
Published
New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons c2012.
Language
English
Main Author
William Gibson, 1948- (-)
Physical Description
259 p. ; 22 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
9780399158438
  • African thumb piano
  • Rocket radio
  • Since 1948
  • Any 'mount of world
  • The baddest dude on Earth
  • Talk for Book Expo, New York
  • Dead man sings
  • Up the line
  • Disneyland with the death penalty
  • Mr. Buk's window
  • Shiny balls of mud : Hikaru Dorodango and Tokyu hands
  • An invitation
  • Metrophagy : the art and science of digesting great cities
  • Modern boys and mobile girls
  • My obsession
  • My own private Tokyo
  • The road to Oceania
  • Skip Spence's jeans
  • Terminal city
  • Introduction : "The body"
  • The Net is a waste of time
  • Time machine Cuba
  • Will we have computer chips in our heads?
  • William Gibson's filmless festival
  • Johnny : notes on a process
  • Googling the cyborg.
Review by Booklist Review

One cannot argue that Gibson's visionary fiction (Neuromancer, 1984; Pattern Recognition, 2003) is not prescient. In this collection of essays, one from 1989, Rocket Radio, repeatedly mentions the Net. In his introductory comments, Gibson admits he knew not Net, when I wrote this, other than as the mass culture and the mechanisms of Information. And this is from the man who coined the word cyberspace in 1981. Gibson famously was a latecomer to e-mail and the web and didn't spend time online until his brief eBay addiction, bidding on mechanical watches. He may be modest and self-effacing, but he is always sharp and entertaining. Included here one will find terms like meme, viral, cognitive dissonance, nodal event, temporal dislocation, and liminal. All cultural change is essentially technologically driven, he writes, addressing how Japan was booted down the timeline by the arrival of Commodore Perry in 1852 and later the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945 to become the Blade Runner-like setting of his novels. Gibson dislikes being called a futurist. His nonfiction, like his novels (and the best science fiction), are really about the postindustrial present.--Segedin, Ben Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review

Sf/cyberpunk trailblazer Gibson, whose Neuromancer gave us the term cyberspace, gathers more than 20 nonfiction essays, speeches, and other works together in this collection. Published between 1989 and 2008, these works offer insight into a writer whose dark humor and speculative style provides a glimpse into his thoughts and perspectives as he reflects on the past and projects into the future. VERDICT Actor and award-nominated narrator Roberston Dean brings a clear, well-paced reading to this compilation, which will catch the ears of Gibson fans. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 8/1/11.-Ed.]-Denise A. Garofalo, Mount Saint Mary Coll. Lib., Newburgh, NY (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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