The Three Waves of William Gibson
I finished Spook Country, but I never did a follow up post. A friend of mine said she thinks that William Gibson only has two books to write. That kind of stuck in my head. It might be true. Yet there is something to be learned in the three waves of William Gibson.
First I confess that this wonderful theory is partially cribbed from a friend who excells in the creation of startling literary theories.
There are three waves of William Gibson. In the first wave, he wrote of a dystopian fantastical future where losers alienated from the world and themselves by technology find a way to fight back and come to terms with what they've become. It's set solidly in the 1960's sci-fi aesthetic where technology is potentially monstrous and certainly not to be trusted.
In the second wave, technology is fun and inspires something akin to awe. We call this the "Microsoft wave". It's where we forget that technology can't be trusted.
In the third wave, we return to the dystopian world, but we retain our sense of awe at technology. The world is our present day.
Now that I've written it out, I'm not as satisfied by this theory as I was.
So in conclusion, Spook Country is very good; quite possibly Gibson's best yet. It approaches not only technology, but our current social political situation with a mix of suspicion and awe at this amazing thing that apparently we've made, but do not fully understand.
First I confess that this wonderful theory is partially cribbed from a friend who excells in the creation of startling literary theories.
There are three waves of William Gibson. In the first wave, he wrote of a dystopian fantastical future where losers alienated from the world and themselves by technology find a way to fight back and come to terms with what they've become. It's set solidly in the 1960's sci-fi aesthetic where technology is potentially monstrous and certainly not to be trusted.
In the second wave, technology is fun and inspires something akin to awe. We call this the "Microsoft wave". It's where we forget that technology can't be trusted.
In the third wave, we return to the dystopian world, but we retain our sense of awe at technology. The world is our present day.
Now that I've written it out, I'm not as satisfied by this theory as I was.
So in conclusion, Spook Country is very good; quite possibly Gibson's best yet. It approaches not only technology, but our current social political situation with a mix of suspicion and awe at this amazing thing that apparently we've made, but do not fully understand.
Labels: books
posted by Tony - 8:44 AM
1 Comments:
That "cold civil war" phrase in your earlier post struck a serious chord in me, so I tried to read Sppok Country but couldn't get a copy at first. I read Pattern Recognition and enjoyed it. My library just got a copy of Spook Country and I read it and liked it, too. The "cold civil war" that I think we really have, though, is not the bushies v. liberals that he seems to be writing about. It is the old white male haves v. the have nots of a changing national demographic. It seems like the powers that be have things set up so that success rests on being part of a system that a soon-to-be-majority of the country has no real interest in being part of...and they aren't going to change their minds. meanwhile, we cling to a dead system.A cold civil war.
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