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Comment by bradbeattie | Hacker News Reader

I understand your concern about Necromancer, but Gibson's essay In The Visegrips of Dr Satan provides some insights into his desire for a modern mythology, which is likely more what he was aiming for: http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/archive/2003_01_28_archive...

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I've read that and believe I understand what he's trying to accomplish, but I'm just saying the execution takes me out of it somewhat. Much like I read Greek myths (or Jules Verne, for that matter) and wonder sometimes how anyone could believe them (though I also understand that the word "belief" is perhaps not the right word when talking about the mindset of ancient Greeks when relating to their mythology), I read Gibson and just think: "This is how my Grandmother thinks about computers". I feel the world he creates would be better suited for straight up far future sci-fi where "believability" is couched in pseudo-technical terms we all know are fake but are able to accept within the context of the story or with less focus on the explicit technologies involved and more on how the characters interact in a world where this technology is simply a given.

Part of it is likely his maturity as a writer and the time he inhabited during Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. A time where, much like Verne, the technology was both new and alien, yet it was becoming increasingly clear it was important and soon to be omnipresent. A world where literature dealing with this technology was necessary, but where it was still mysterious enough to have creative license. It's not bad, but it doesn't age well.

We really disagree on this one. I think it ages superbly well. You just have to get out of the mode that sees SF as predictive. If you see SF as a prophesy then all SF older than a few years is going to age badly. The reason for that is that the 'science' part is outdated the moment the ink is dry, good SF uses the state-of-the-art in science, changes one thing and then extrapolates from there. Lots of Gibson's work is predicated on AI and from that point of view the major element that could cause it to age badly hasn't happened or hasn't quite happened in the way that he foresaw. So it still has some aging to do in that respect and then the remaining item (the story) still holds but you're going to have to view it relative to the state of the art of the time that it was written.

Otherwise you end up feeling that Da Vinci's writings and drawings have aged badly because helicopters don't use 'airscrews' the way he depicted them.

http://www.scienceandinventions.com/files/2011/04/da-vinci.j...

When the amazing thing is that he foresaw a vertical ascent airborne vehicle in the first place.

So it's not so much about the details, in your words 'how your grandmother things about computers', but how society would respond if computers had the capabilities that Gibson endows them with. That changes the picture quite a bit.

Where Da Vinci succeeds is where Gibson fails, I think. Da Vinci is so fantastical that you can accept it for the stylized ideas they are. Gibson, on the other hand, is close enough to reality that it seems off. I mean, there's fax machines in his world. It's not like Da Vinci where mechanical flying machines are so far off from reality that you can suspend disbelief, it's more like Verne where it's close enough to reality to make it feel silly now. After all, there are still submarines, just not like Verne's. Just like there's an Internet, but not Gibson's Internet.

The whole appeal of the cyberpunk genre is that weird mix of archaic and modern. Steam, computers, POTS (and faxes) as well as space residences, AI and human-AI relationships all in one mash up. That's what defines the genre!

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