![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Went to a William Gibson reading and signing of his new novel Spook Country at the Brattle yesterday. I often attend readings at SF cons, but it's been a long time since I stood in line for a signing, since I usually don't go for that sort of thing. But what the heck. I bought a book and thanked him for his work, and he thanked me for thanking him.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dougo warned me that he's not the best reader and it's true; his reading-voice is oddly monotonous and I found myself overlaying an imaginary soundtrack of how I'd read it, though I'm sure he pronounced all the long Eastern European names and words better than I would. The Q&A was fun, and he ended on the anecdote (to back up his claim that prescience isn't his strong suit) that he's seen a 12-year-old read through the first 15 pages of 1981's Neuromancer and declare "Oh, I know what's happening; there's something wrong with the cell phones!"
To me, the main delight of observing Gibson's career in SF is that he started out by writing about a fantastic-scary digital age that was 20 or so years away, and subsequent novels tended to stay at that absolute position in the future, with their depicted technology gradually coming into synch with real life's developments. In his current series - whose settings are now the year before each book's publication year - the characters have adventures with Web forums and Final Cut software. It's nonetheless as much a Gibson novel as ever, because the characters' relationship with the online world is as important to them and to the story as it was to any goggle-wearing "decker" in his first books.
Not going to start the novel until I finish I am a Strange Loop, though.
Have heard nuthin from my one client for two weeks now, which is a little strange, even given my mail to them halfway through that I didn't mind the break because of a period of intense Volity work. Just mailed em to say that I was RW&A for more tasks, and to please tell me how they foresee deploying me as we move into autumn. If they're going to put me on hold, I'm going to have to look for another income source.
dougo warned me that he's not the best reader and it's true; his reading-voice is oddly monotonous and I found myself overlaying an imaginary soundtrack of how I'd read it, though I'm sure he pronounced all the long Eastern European names and words better than I would. The Q&A was fun, and he ended on the anecdote (to back up his claim that prescience isn't his strong suit) that he's seen a 12-year-old read through the first 15 pages of 1981's Neuromancer and declare "Oh, I know what's happening; there's something wrong with the cell phones!"To me, the main delight of observing Gibson's career in SF is that he started out by writing about a fantastic-scary digital age that was 20 or so years away, and subsequent novels tended to stay at that absolute position in the future, with their depicted technology gradually coming into synch with real life's developments. In his current series - whose settings are now the year before each book's publication year - the characters have adventures with Web forums and Final Cut software. It's nonetheless as much a Gibson novel as ever, because the characters' relationship with the online world is as important to them and to the story as it was to any goggle-wearing "decker" in his first books.
Not going to start the novel until I finish I am a Strange Loop, though.
Have heard nuthin from my one client for two weeks now, which is a little strange, even given my mail to them halfway through that I didn't mind the break because of a period of intense Volity work. Just mailed em to say that I was RW&A for more tasks, and to please tell me how they foresee deploying me as we move into autumn. If they're going to put me on hold, I'm going to have to look for another income source.