This is the fist time I have read anything by William Gibson and I have to say since I have already purchased each book in the Sprawl Trilogy I am rea This is the fist time I have read anything by William Gibson and I have to say since I have already purchased each book in the Sprawl Trilogy I am really excited to read some more by him, especially Neuromancer; being next on the William Gibson list!
"Source Code" "Johnny Mnemonic" "The Gernsback Continuum" "Fragments of a Hologram Rose" *** "The Belonging Kind," with John Shirley "Hinterlands" **** "Red Star, Winter Orbit," with Bruce Sterling "New Rose Hotel" "The Winter Market" *** "Dogfight," with Michael Swanwick "Burning Chrome"
Johnny Mnemonic being by my favorite of the lot....more
This is story about a drug dealing rat. A drug dealing "Stuart Little" as James Kelly likes to put it. The Rat is my favourite anti-hero as of yet. Th This is story about a drug dealing rat. A drug dealing "Stuart Little" as James Kelly likes to put it. The Rat is my favourite anti-hero as of yet. The drug he sells however is one nasty substance! This drug is in a dust form called "Algerian Yellow." It is the most horrible drug, but with the most euphoric feeling there could possibly be, along with an hallucinatory joy ride. And all it takes is one single dose! And then there you go; heading down that dirty dusty road. JPK put's it best when he writes:
"The dead were his customers. People who had chosen the dust road. Twelve to eighteen months of glorious addiction: synthetic orgasms, recursive hallucinations leading to a total sensory overload and an ecstatic death experience. One dose was all it took to start down the dust road. The feds were trying to cut off the supply—with dire consequences for the dead. They could live a few months longer without dust, but their joyride down the dusty road was transformed into a grueling marathon of withdrawal pangs and madness. Either way, they were dead."
Jim Kelly said he had sleep deprivation and hardly even remembers writing it on his
Then thought it was a dream, except that in the next morning there was a manuscript
coming out of his
A pretty sweet setup I must say :) Didn't the 80's just ROCK!
"I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If the
"I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude. I'm a very technical boy. So I decided to get as crude as possible. These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to crudeness. I'd had to turn both those twelve-gauge shells from brass stock, on the lathe, and then load then myself; I'd had to dig up an old microfiche with instructions for hand-loading cartridges; I'd had to build a lever-action press to seat the primers―all very tricky. But I knew they'd work."
This is 1981 William Gibson cyberpunk! This short story even predates his Sprawl trilogy of novels and it has so much of what is to come of his writing's just packed into a single short story, called "Johnny Mnemonic". It has tech—action and Johnny; who just so happen to be junkies (in the technical scene) and just as crazy or crazier as he his. Johnny eventually has to go to his friend Jones who is a very intelligent retired "navy dolphin" (yeah, an-actual dolphin), that is called a "SQUID". Jones is hooked on some hardcore drugs; which he developed more than just a habit for during a war that he was used in while he was in the navy. This story also introduces the character Molly, who plays a prominent role in Gibson's Sprawl trilogy of novels. Johnny Mnemonic the protagonist is a data trafficker. He has had cybernetic surgery to have a data storage system implanted in his head and allows him to store digital data too sensitive to risk transmission on computer networks. This is an amazing idea especially knowing that it was written in 1981, before they even had these micro memory chips!
"With Jones to help me figure things out, I'm getting to be the most technical boy in town."
In 1955 Ace Books published Philip K. Dick’s novel Solar Lottery; which was his first published novel and the beginning of a career that changed his lIn 1955 Ace Books published Philip K. Dick’s novel Solar Lottery; which was his first published novel and the beginning of a career that changed his life and thousands more - decades and decades later... a brilliant novel that gives one a glimpse through an imaginative eyes; before the pupils dilated to become psychedelically wild to become the master of speculative-reality bent literature.
Solar Lottery is clever and exciting with a lot of action. It’s a novel that shows that government can get too big too quick, with your only role being the pawn. You are a tool and will be used in anyway for a leader to come out on top. People sacrifice their freedoms because that is what everyone else does. Everyone has a sheepish role, except one in particular. He disobeys his oath because it is wrong and he was tricked. How do you know what is wrong though, especially when the six billion other people are obeying the laws and being good little serfs? Could a law possibly be wrong when more than 99% or the people are following it? How does one tell when it is time to disobey a bad law? Would you break your oath if you find out later that your oath against all your morals? All of these questions and more are brought up in this amazing piece of literature. It brings up several thought provoking questions about are own government and our own laws� and who I am as a person or who we are as people (collectively) and what would we do when our own moral compass was tested....more
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