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up:: Authors, 800 - Literature, 900 - History, Biography, Geography
type:: #π
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tags:: #on/authors
topics:: Science Fiction
links:: π Bookshelf
William Gibson
Legendary sci-fi author of Neuromancer
- info about Gibson and his work: http://www.antonraubenweiss.com/gibson/index.html
Burning Chrome
- The Hologram Rose - This is William Gibson's first published story and is about a simstim technology called 'Apparent Sensory Perception' (ASP). The narrator, whose girlfriend Angela has just left him, finds two of her possessions in his room: a postcard with a hologram rose and an ASP tape. He shreds the postcard into a thousand fragments and watches the tape, which has been erased except for a short sequence of Angela's holiday in Greece. Afterwards, he muses about what it was like before being able to record and play back the full range of sensory perception of another person. He compares people with the fragments of the hologram, since every fragment shows the whole image from a different angle.
- My introduction to Gibson. New technology, unique concepts, and beautiful prose.
- The Gernsback Continuum - This story is about a photographer who is assigned by London artists to take pictures of 1930s and '40s style buildings in America. On his travels through America he starts seeing things from an imaginary future in that style. He also sees people inhabiting this world whom he is afraid of, because they look like the Nazi idea of a Γbermensch. After finishing his job, he is glad that our world is not that perfect.
- The Belonging Kind - Coretti frequently goes to bars but doesn't know how to dress and how to contact people. One day, he meets a beautiful woman in a bar and notices her ability to adapt to other people's style. He follows her to another place and sees her transform into another woman. She meets with a man, and they continue going to different bars while changing their look. He realizes that they are some kind advanced species who can transform into whatever form and create matter out of nothing. After a while, he quits his job and finally turns into one of the 'belonging kind'.
- Oh my god this is such a good story. I would love to adapt this into a short film.
- Hinterlands - This story takes place in the not-so-distant future where humankind has gotten into contact with an alien civilisation. But the only way to reach them is to drop a single astronaut in a spaceship at specified coordinates in space and wait if he is taken away by their superior power. Returning spacemen usually carry some advanced knowledge, like the cure for cancer with them, but they always go insane and commit suicide. Toby Halpert works in a space station called Heaven where arriving spaceships are taken to. Toby meets arriving astronauts and tries to cure their insanity, but so far it never works out. When he finds the latest arrival inside of her spaceship, he realizes that she already killed herself with a surgical machine. She left some ballpoint paintings which reveal new molecular structures. In the end we learn that Toby had been on such a mission but was refused by the aliens, which is why he still feels connected to the whole thing.
- This one is awesome, a crazy unique and very dark alien story.
- Red Star, Winter Orbit - This story takes places on a Soviet space station in the middle of the 21st century. The Soviets are the only power in space since the Americans have given up their space program. As the space station Kosmograd is about to be shut down, the remaining astronauts decide to flee in escape pods and publish what the Russians plan. As all but the old Korolev have left, he is joined by American families who decided to live on the space station and came up with their sun balloons.
- Really liked this one, sort of comedic and the ending was great. Some interesting commentary on politics.
- New Rose Hotel - The anonymous narrator tells about the corporate defection of Hiroshi, a very talented genetic engineer who works for Maas Biolabs GmbH in Frankfurt. The protagonist and his partner Fox cut a deal with Hosaka corporation to deliver them Hiroshi. They contact Hiroshi via Sandii, the narrator's latest affair, who prepares the defection in Vienna. Hiroshi disappears in Berlin and is flown to a Hosaka lab in Marrakech. During the next few days, Hosaka's leading engineers are flown to Marrakech to learn from Hiroshi, but then they all die from a virus that was created by a DNA sequencer modified by Sandii. In Vienna, she defected to Maas Biolabs and programmed their virus. Hosaka kills Fox and hunts the protagonist, who hides in 'New Rose Hotel' near Narita International Airport and reflects about his lost love Sandii.
- beautiful prose but god damn itβs a convoluted story thatβs difficult to follow.
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