cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/13thFloor/t/520364
It rains a lot, up here; there are winter days when it doesn’t really get light at all, only a bright, indeterminate gray. But then there are days when it’s like they whip aside a curtain to flash you three minutes of sunlit, suspended mountain, the trademark at the start of God’s own movie. It was like that the day her agents phoned, from deep in the heart of their mirrored pyramid on Beverly Boulevard, to tell me she’d merged with the net, crossed over for good, that Kings of Sleep was going triple-platinum. I’d edited most of Kings, done the brain-map work and gone over it all with the fast-wipe module, so I was in line for a share of royalties.
No, I said, no. Then yes, yes, and hung up on them. Got my jacket and took the stairs three at a time, straight out to the nearest bar and an eight-hour blackout that ended on a concrete ledge two meters above midnight. False Creek water. City lights, that same gray bowl of sky smaller now, illuminated by neon and mercury-vapor arcs. And it was snowing, big flakes but not many, and when they touched black water, they were gone, no trace at all. I looked down at my feet and saw my toes clear of the edge of concrete, the water between them. I was wearing Japanese shoes, new and expensive, glove-leather Ginza monkey boots with rubber-capped toes. I stood there for a long time before I took that first step back.
Because she was dead, and I’d let her go. Because, now, she was immortal, and I’d helped her get that way. And because I knew she’d phone me, in the morning.
- William Gibson, The Winter Market
Alternative links and file formats available from Anna’s pirate cantina
Just had a realization.
I read Neuromancer so long ago that I no longer remember anything but the faintest broad strokes and colors, so Gibson’s work isn’t exactly fresh in my mind. But when I read this, I kept hearing it in Keanu Reeves’ voice.
I wonder if his lines in Cyberpunk 2077 were done in an homage to William Gibson’s style here.
And unrelated to that, looking at Gibson’s prose here, I realize I could jam a lot of “flavor” into my own work in a smaller space if I took some notes on how he does it. Never too late to learn from a master, eh?
That means it’s the perfect time to add those books to your backlog and reread them.
I’ve started rereading books I haven’t cracked since the 90s and it’s fantastic. I got to re-experience Snowcrash again from almost zero, same deal with KSR’s Mars trilogy and all of DUNE. Gibson is coming up sometime soon, along with his more recent books that I haven’t read yet.
Read Bruce Sterling, particularly Schismatrix Plus, he does crammed prose really well.