February 24, 2005
William Gibson Blog
A lot of what the digital future might look like is the brainchild of William Gibson. Books like Neuromancer and short story compilations like Burning Chrome opened the inner world of computers and the Internet to our fantasies and are largely responsible for inspiring movies like TRON (1982), The Lawnmower Man (1987), and Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days (1995). In Gibson, the computer geek was instantly transformed into a future-hero. These books announced a whole new ballgame in which code writers would go head to head. Only the demented imagination of these hi-tech brainiacs could navigate the new cryptic networks. Neuromancer was an archetypal battle for global dominance where the hacker was the good guy, up against evil corporate interests. In the years since Gibson has shown no intention of resting on his laurels. The author continues to play up the practically indistinguishable difference between literary fiction and virtual reality. Among Gibson’s more accessible side projects is a blog. After a year of no posts, it started up again last autumn. Most of the initial entries, as one might expect, were concerned with the election. Gibson uses the blog very much like a notepad, jotting down idea fragments and noting references. The effect is a bit like reading an updated version of traditionally published letters. One can follow the author as he works through a problem. Take, as example, the post for Thursday October 21st:
“E. M. Forster maintained that didactic novels were, invariably, inherently less good -- as novels. If an author's politico-religio-social agenda is what directly drives the work, I take that to mean, no genuinely valuable interrogation of reality can take place, and the result will be a literary virtuality built as exclusively from the author's expressed political philosophy as that author can manage. This is best understood, an excellent teacher of mine said, by asking ourselves whether or not a fascist can write a good novel.
“I took this idea of Forster's immediately to heart, upon first discovering it. I likewise took to heart his idea that authors fully or even predominately in control of their characters just aren't doing their job. Indeed, the two are really the same: A fascist can't write a good novel because writing a good novel, in the end, is about relinquishing control of the text.”