William Gibson
The link
What it is
William
Gibson is a science fiction writer, most famous for writing “Neuromancer”, the
blueprint for all things cyberpunk, in the early eighties. He is also credited
with inventing the word “cyberspace”, and with getting Wired magazine banned in Singapore for years.
In the
early 2000’s, Gibson realized that the real world had caught up with science
fiction and was now considerably weirder, and decided to explore the present by
writing a trilogy of thrillers (now named the “blue ant” trilogy).
His latest
work, “The Peripheral”,
is far future science fiction again.
What it means to me
I hesitate
to use the term “visionary”, because it’s overused and because Mr. Gibson himself
doesn’t like it, but William Gibson gets so much stuff right it isn’t funny
anymore. “Neuromancer”, written in 1984 on a typewriter predicts the internet and its pervasiveness (while
including pay phones). “Idoru” (from 1996) features smartphones in all but name. “Pattern Recognition” features a subplot on a series of internet videos (it predates
YouTube by two years).
Gibson’s early
science fiction work is very definition of cyberpunk cool, blazing onto the
scene with its attitude. The biggest influence to
my thinking, however, has been the “modern” or “blue ant” trilogy (“Pattern Recognition”, “Spook Country”, “Zero History”), set in the modern day (or by now,
set 5-10 years ago). What I really like about it is Gibson taking the toolkit of
science fiction and setting it loose on the present world. Science Fiction is
the genre for asking big ‘what if…?’ questions and analyzing their consequences.
In “blue ant”, Gibson turn this around by asking “what is this strange world we
live in and where did that come from” ?
William Gibson
has an uncanny ability to look at what’s happening in the world, extrapolate a
bit and, for lack of a better term, put the results in the hands of the wrong
people. His books live and breathe the “used universe” style that Star Wars is
famous for (the original trilogy, at least), where even in the future things
are rusty, held together with duct tape, and used in ways their creators didn’t
intend. Or, as the man himself puts it: “The people who invented pagers, for instance, never
imagined that they would change the shape of urban drug dealing all over the
world”.
The result of
all this projection and taking apart is a much more thorough understanding. Between
the lines, the “blue ant” trilogy will teach you a lot about such diverse
topics as branding, terrorism, and location based video art. It helps you see what could be around the corner.
If you’re
interested in Science Fiction, read “Neuromancer” if you haven’t already. If not,
I recommend you start with either “Spook Country” or “Pattern Recognition” –
“Spook Country” has mystery containers and iPod information trading, while
“Pattern Recognition” has strange internet video and so much fashion cool it has accidentally started a clothing line.
All that,
and he’s also the man who turned me onto Iron Heart.
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