Comments on Today The Stranger Suggests

I will so fucking be there.

"In the 1980s, William Gibson allegedly coined the term "cyberspace," which nobody besides your parents has used in conversation for at least five years."

You know what is so funny about Slog? I keep forgetting, in the words of Bob Dylan (famous folk/rock singer from the 1960s) that "I didn't realize how young you were."

I read passages about "your parents" with a start as I realize that my parents have been dead for decades and that many of the readers and writers here could be my grandchildren.

"This is it. Go for it. Be here now."

Btw, that's "funny" in a good way.

David, I was born in 1986.

Is it going to be crowded?

Gibson's great and all, but Charlie Stross and Neal Stephenson would like to have a word with you about hyperbole.

Hyperbole is what you get when there's an infection in the Cybernetic World Tree.

The bole just keeps growing, extending into hyperspace, and the dimensional branches frequently result in flowering shrubs you can almost see out of the corner of your eye, if you're not looking.

Stross is a pretty good writer, but he's not at Gibson's usual level. Neal Stephenson is a self-indulgent hack.

Any truth to the rumor that Kim Gordon will be there, singing an acapella version of "Pattern Recognition"?

First, as much as I love "Spook Country", "Pattern Recognition" is far superior. And as much as I have enjoyed the joyride that is Charles Stross, Gibson's achievement is that in Pattern Recognition he wrote through the genre and back into literature. Gibson's oeuvre starts futuristic and techno, and he gradually works his way back, in these last two novels, to today.

His best line ever: "The future is here. Its just not evenly distributed yet."

And I must unfortunately agree with Cascadian that, Cryptonimicon aside, Stephenson needs a serious dose of perspective.

Mr. Poe, how I loathe your youth, coupled with your verve. Just as I feel I am hitting my stride, I look up to see you sprinting away.

And based on the vapid "Star Wars" reading I took my son to last week at the U book store, it will be pretty full. Even though the book has been out for . . . a year? 18 months?

The term cyberspace seems a bit dated now, but it's worth noting that the concept is not. We talk about going to and visiting web sites, seeing people online, talking with people *in* chat spaces, etc. It now seems natural and normal to think of these as places where things happen, when they are actually nothing of the kind. The idea has become our model of reality. Gibson was way ahead of that wave and helped steer our thinking in that direction.

Good times!
Gibson is an interesting guy. He seems a little confounded by his position in the world, the status he has attained, but he takes it all in and rolls with it.

William Gibson is a hack, but a useful one.