The Peripheral is a science fiction novel from William Gibson set in an awfully recognizable near future and a slightly less recognizable but still palpable further future—there’s kind-of-time-travel, but not quite. It’s been so long since I last read Gibson. I’d forgotten how wild and weird his books can feel, while also feeling so grounded in our own reality. I wrote a little about this last week. I have more observations now.
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Reading Gibson Again
It’s been a long time since I last read anything by William Gibson. Too long, probably. I’d forgotten his talent for sentence fragments. I suspect I’ve unconsciously emulated him in my fiction.
I’m reading The Peripheral now. I’m nearly halfway through and enjoying it. He doesn’t constantly work in metaphor, but when he does…
Continue readingWho Did it Better: Elysium vs Johnny Mnemonic
I just saw Elysium, and in discussing it with a coworker we determined that it was indeed a cyberpunk film. Our fellow coworkers weren’t familiar with the genre, and in introducing them to it we remembered the 1995 film Johnny Mnemonic. We then realized that Elysium shares many aspects of the classic William Gibson story. From this point on there will be spoilers, and unlike previous posts I won’t be whiting them out, so if you don’t want either film’s secrets to be revealed, you should stop reading.
Fistful of Wits 