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Comment by wintermutestwin | Hacker News Reader

Nice article, but I would have liked it to include a catalog of all of Gibson's prescient details in his masterpiece trilogy. Beyond Cyberspace, the one that seems to resonate the most as we look into our future with today's lens is the coming Methuselah uber-wealth elites that Yuval Noah Harari details in his books.

Although Stephenson has his moments, I don't think we have seen any writer that has come close to either Phillip K. Dick or Gibson - and that includes post-trilogy Gibson.

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+1 I agree with everything that you just said.

I really like Gibson's prose and also, in my imagination, his almost-no-government, corporate enclave centered world is (probably unfortunately) the pattern for future life. Corporations and elites have won class warfare (control of media and political parties - game over), nothing is going to change that, so accepting life as is, I am very curious what our transition into the future will look like.

>Corporations and elites have won class warfare (control of media and political parties - game over)

Yes, and I would add that mass surveillance is the checkmate...

I agree. We should talk on the phone sometime - I recognize your HN user name from prior comments.

The primacy of the infosphere (in the sense of the shadow cloud of information that exists behind all of us now) is a pretty huge hit too.

Not sure many others saw that coming in the mid-90s.

I’d like to see a list of this stuff but it seems like Stephenson has more “predict the future” items:

- crypto - oculus - metaverse - vagina defense systems - sovereign sea states - burbclaves - kindle / tablets

Have you read Bruce Sterling?

I read 'Islands in the net' a few years ago and thought it was contemporary before I saw it's from 1988 (!!!)...

I find it interesting that write realistic near-future sci-fi with social commentary — the kind we had so much of during the 1960s and 1970s, with John Brunner, Philip K. Dick, Thomas Disch, and so on — is so rare these days. Off the top of my head, I can't think of many: Margaret Atwood, William Gibson, Omar El Akkad, any others?

I recently read an NPR article [1] about the best sci-fi and fantasy of the past decade. With one exception (El Akkad's American War), it's pretty much all space opera or similar. I guess Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven isn't, but I haven't read it.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/08/18/1027159166/best-books-science...

I’ve thought about that as well. The only addition I can think of to your short list is Ada Palmer, I highly recommend her Terra Ignota series for social commentary and some refreshing optimism - and flying cars.

Ted Chiang should be on your list.

He's nowhere near as visible, but maybe Jeff Noon? Bit more psychadelia than Gibson.

Rudy Rucker fits into that same "Bit more psychadelia than Gibson" bin, I think.

Lem

Egan

All these name drops makes me think we should have another "Best Sci-Fi" post/thread. I recall a past HN discussion based on top sci-fi according to reddit, which led me to Greg Egan's Permutation City - one of the best recommendations I've gotten in a while.

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