I never finished Neuromancer. I slogged about half-way through the book, then realized I didn't really care what happened to the characters, or even if I found out what happened on the next page of the book. So, I put it back on the shelf and never picked it up again.
I just finished Pattern Recognition. It's a great book. I couldn't put it down (I read the last half of the book today, after getting home from visiting my son). It's some strange combination of Lost in Translation, Minority Report (the movie, not the original), a Robert Ludlum novel (pick any one), and my life, and it really works.
Not sure about the ending. It still feels a bit funny. But I won't say more to avoid spoilers.
So, why the difference? Usually, if I dislike a book enough to shove it aside, I never like any of the author's work. <shrug>
I don’t know why either. But with regard to Gibson I can relate. I did read Neuromancer and liked it, but it was a difficult read. At various stretches, I had to force myself to keep reading (particularly at first), while at other times when all the parts came together, it was a first-grade page turner. And then suddenly there’d be another slow patch in the middle of it. On the whole I liked it, though. So I tried to read the rest of the trilogy, but I couldn’t manage – there were page turner stretches in there, but they were just too few and too incoherently bound together. Same with a bunch of his short stories, which I couldn’t stay interested in for the most part.
I found another author who has the fractal, interwoven-threads kind of story telling down to an art, though: John Brunner. There too you occasionally need to slog through some parts, particularly when new characters come into play, because he suddenly drops you into the middle of an entirely new side plot without any introduction, and it’s disorienting. But the wider the web he weaves, the more easily you can fit the new parts into it and the sooner and sooner you regain your orientation. Eventually the threads all coalesce into a coherent plot. It’s fascinating – almost like some kind of progressive experimental literarture, except it’s actually readable.
John Brunner
Allison on 2005-06-20T02:49:35
I've never read John Brunner, I try him.Jack Chalker's Wonderland Gambit series had a similar feel to Neuromancer, but I enjoyed it. It's part of why I picked up Neuromancer.
Re:John Brunner
Aristotle on 2005-06-20T04:00:45
Try the Shockwave Rider first then. Quoting Wikipedia on Brunner:
Brunner’s best-known work is perhaps 1975’s proto-Cyberpunk The Shockwave Rider, in which he coined the term “worm”, used to describe software which reproduces itself across a computer network.
He also managed a fairly impressive extrapolation of the way a virtually omnipresent computer network would affect people’s lives, in that book.
You may want to plan on reading this book at least twice (eventually, anyway), because a lot of peripheral details make more sense on subsequent passes, so you get more out of it. The main plot is always clear, though.
Sheep Look Up is the other of his works that I’ve read so far. To say that I enjoyed it would be just wrong. This book is not enjoyable. What I can say is I do not regret reading it. It’s a really depressing piece of near-future fiction, featuring a seriously wrecked environment, corruption on all levels, and a confused and derailed Western society. It’s deeply unsettling because it’s extrapolated fairly accurately, even though exaggeratedly, from today’s point of view. From the perspective of the ’60s when it was written, it was quite plausible. It’s harder to read than the Rider – the same kind of narrative spider web, but there is no hero and no main plot, just a number of recurring characters and interconnected stories developing towards an inconclusive end.
Next on my list is Stand on Zanzibar, which a friend said is great, and is also one of Brunner’s critically acclaimed works.
Re:John Brunner
ziggy on 2005-06-20T14:34:52
I liked John Brunner, but I read a couple of his novels back-to-back, and now I can't tell them apart.Some of his novels, like Shockwave Rider and The Tides of Time are sui generis. Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up are two of his better works, somewhat similar (yet totally unrelated stories), and remain forever entwined in my mind.
;-)
I may be biased (I like the early Gibson just as much as his more recent work) but maybe you should try reading his books in reverse order of publication
To my eyes there has been a pretty linear progression in style from Neuromancer to Pattern Recognition, so you may also like his later books like "All Tomorrow's Parties".
try it, you'll like it
Allison on 2005-06-20T01:51:49
I'll add him to my list. It may take me a while to get to his books. I don't get much time to read these days, so familiar enjoyable authors and new authors get a higher priority than familiar authors with a 50% chance of disappointing me.If what you say about a linear progression in his style is true, maybe I'll only read what he writes in the future.
:)
