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Old 11-01-2018, 05:11 AM   #6271 (permalink)
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So you’re saying that I lacked the reading comprehension skills to understand the setting?

How do you think Gibson stacks up to writers like Don DeLillo or Saul Bellow or even Faulkner? Because I don’t think Virtual Light is the Unit Structures of fiction. I know you’re a talented writer yourself, something I certainly am not, but I’m a pretty damn good reader.
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Old 11-01-2018, 05:13 AM   #6272 (permalink)
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I find the acid prose beautiful, and feel like you maybe focused on the honestly pretty basic and accessible descriptions of people (compared to how much time and effort he spends elaborating on locations and circumstances) because they were what you could understand, and thus what you could criticize
ftr - this is what I’m taking issue with
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Old 11-01-2018, 05:16 AM   #6273 (permalink)
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I have to wonder if the people who worship On The Road have read Heart of Darkness.
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Old 11-01-2018, 05:24 AM   #6274 (permalink)
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Understand, as in making an effort to entertain his word-based spasms as more than just skippable edgery

Has less to do with reading comprehension and experience and more to do with a willingness to just dive in and hallucinate along with him, and find horribly beautiful parallels to current life and society in the haze (which I firmly believe even a first time reader can do, and does, even if just on a basic level, and even if they don't realize it)

Even someone who very rarely reads can get a lot out of Gibson. They don't need to know how to read rul gud, they just need to have been to a city at least once in their life

Can you dig the rebop, pops?
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Old 11-01-2018, 05:58 AM   #6275 (permalink)
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Good sci-fi doesn’t have to be intuitive but it often helps. So let’s say I’m stacking up science fiction authors and I’m considering this quote

Quote:
hallucinatory Sci-Fi, a psychosomatic autopsy of the inevitable conclusion of Capitalism, crack addicts and captains of industry both reaching for warmth with equal anathema
so what I’m thinking is in Virtual Light Gibson didn’t shine light on a possible conclusion of capitalism beyond a simple amplification of the present (a present that’s becoming more distant everyday)

compared to say Ursula K. Le Guin‘s The Dispossessed

Gibson’s universe is a three page digression by Le Guin. That’s how deep the disparity runs.
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Old 11-01-2018, 06:06 AM   #6276 (permalink)
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Maybe

Multiple books can approach the same theme with varying intensity and differing approaches, without one necessarily being made obsolete or a simple digression

Gibson's work is so much more about the raw experience than the themes that comparing him to other "better" Sci-Fi writers kinda comes off as that pretentious guy that mockingly compares the output of snotty punk bands to a bunch of extensive anarcho-socialist treatises
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Old 11-01-2018, 06:26 AM   #6277 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Oriphiel View Post
Maybe

Multiple books can approach the same theme with varying intensity and differing approaches, without one necessarily being made obsolete or a simple digression

Gibson's work is so much more about the raw experience than the themes that comparing him to other "better" Sci-Fi writers kinda comes off as that pretentious guy that mockingly compares the output of snotty punk bands to a bunch of extensive anarcho-socialist treatises
We can circle around but it just didn’t make my balls tingle. I expected my balls to tingle so it was pretty upsetting. I called the book a failure which was overstated you said I probably just didn’t really get it which stung as being at least partly true so I dropped a bunch of names for which you mercifully didn’t call me out for being a Chula. I don’t think it stacks up with my favorite sci-fi but that just really means my balls didn’t tingle so I’m going to accept your olive branch and walk my dog.

PS **** that hack.
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Old 11-01-2018, 06:37 AM   #6278 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by OccultHawk View Post
Virtual Light will be my first and last. I never read anything that tried so hard and failed so badly.
I liked it, but I liked his Sprawl Trilogy books more.

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so what I’m thinking is in Virtual Light Gibson didn’t shine light on a possible conclusion of capitalism beyond a simple amplification of the present (a present that’s becoming more distant everyday)

compared to say Ursula K. Le Guin‘s The Dispossessed

Gibson’s universe is a three page digression by Le Guin. That’s how deep the disparity runs.
I’ve never read The Dispossessed (I do own it though so I’m sure I’ll read it in the near future) but I’ve found Le Guin pretty hit or miss. The Lathe of Heaven is one of my favorite sci-fi books, but The Left Hand of Darkness and The Word for World Is Forest are pretty meh.
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Old 11-01-2018, 06:38 AM   #6279 (permalink)
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What's your favorite Sci-Fi novel, Hawk?

Gimme recs. Make my balls tingle.
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Old 11-01-2018, 06:53 AM   #6280 (permalink)
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2312 is bad ass imo
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