Kami Harbinger

William Gibson visited Second Life recently:

"It was quite a thrill to give William Gibson himself a short tour of Second Life at the end of last year. And while I am not sure what he expected, I don’t think he expected that his avatar would be publicly mocked for its lack of aesthetic qualities.

"We visited one of the hardcore dystopian cyberpunk sims and had a wander around. A group of cosplayers were sitting chatting on benches and when they saw William Gibson (obviously not appearing under his own name) a few catcalls rang out. He was, I think, both surprised and disturbed by this – I think surprised by the mocking and disturbed that in a virtual world where anonymity is prized and the usual laws of physics do not apply, appearance still seemed to be an issue for residents."

Ha ha! There is nothing funnier than the self-proclaimed "coiner of the word cyberspace" getting mocked by real cyberpunk virtual world inhabitants for not being cool enough.

But he should expect that. He's the archetype of one of his own stock characters: the washed-up old has-been who's out of style, out of touch, and clinging onto the spotlight only through inertia and money... Totally last year, maybe just last season.

Admittedly, I'm not Gibson's biggest fan anymore. I was for a few years; reading "Johnny Mnemonic" in OMNI Magazine was one of the most formative influences of my life, and I read Neuromancer over and over and over. But as I read more of his works, and found out why they had their flaws, the shine came off.

Back in the '80s, he was a poseur who didn't use the Internet or BBS's or computers, didn't have a computer, wrote on a typewriter, and based his "Matrix" on arcade games. I liked his gritty urban settings and the cybernetics, but the second he started talking about computers, my eyes rolled out of my head. The Matrix never made any sense, but that's because it was written by someone with no idea what he was writing.

Most of his '80s short stories were awesome. Neuromancer was still really good as long as you ignored Case's work, and Count Zero was okay, but Mona Lisa Overdrive was weak. Then he started his new, unrelated stories. His artsy things like Agrippa and his movie are not good. Virtual Light was a bad ripoff of Snow Crash (similar characters, similar writing style), and the rest of his books have been worse. I stopped reading halfway through Idoru because it had been done better in REAL LIFE a year or two before, and stopped reading Gibson. So that's, what, 20 years since he wrote anything good?

He's sort of tried to catch up to at least the late 20th century in the last few years, but his blog is hideous and unusable and rarely contains anything but him linking to stuff days, months, or years behind the rest of the Internet, and I sure don't expect anything good from his new book.

...

So, wait, I'm Cyberpunk Boy #1, and I don't like Gibson? What cyberpunk do I read, you ask?

I've always been much more partial to the books of Pat Cadigan; Mindplayers, Fools, and Synners ("Change for the machines! We must all change for the machines!" "If you can't dance with it, fuck it, or eat it, throw it out!") were fantastic, and she continues to write good cyberpunk books; Tea From an Empty Cup and Dervish is Digital use the mechanics of MMO VWs in good murder mysteries, stories that actually make sense and aren't just travelogues. Or

Bruce Sterling writes weird stories about uncomfortable people in unpleasant futures (or near-presents, in some cases), and I recommend them all. Schismatrix, Crystal Express, Islands in the Net (if you didn't like it the first time, try re-reading it now, and you'll see why it's brilliant), Globalhead, A Good Old-Fashioned Future, The Difference Engine (half Gibson, still good), even more recently Zeitgeist. Well, okay, Heavy Weather was pretty bad. No excuse for that.

Lance Olsen's Tonguing the Zeitgeist is very amusing.

Greg Egan is mind-damagingly good. Seriously, read Axiomatic, and you will be broken/fixed for life. All of his books are just as good, but few are that concentrated a dose of life-changing weirdness.

John Barnes ranges from heroic Heinlein homage to nightmarish, often in the course of a series. The Century Next Door series and Mother of Storms especially.

Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is pretty nifty, and you can get a free download and avoid cutting down trees; but toss him some whuffie, okay?

Right now I'm halfway through Charles Stross's Glasshouse, enjoying it immensely, but apparently in the future, everyone will be a sociopath (or Charlie just hates people, which is more likely, as he's a recovering bastard sysadmin from hell).