Followup to that quote

[drwex]

In the previous entry I asked if folk knew the origin of a quote, which began the novel Neuromancer.

The reason I posted it was that I was over at taura_g's place and she was having problems getting her PC to show proper images on her television. The result was just about that sort of gray (though less staticky) that Gibson was talking about and it prompted me to utter the line. She didn't recognize the quote I made so I wanted to see how many of my friends would get it.

Once upon a long ago I was extolling the imagery of that line to Bruce Sterling who replied that he though it was "crap." I asked why and he said it was crap because in the future people wouldn't watch television, things wouldn't have channels, and the people in the novel wouldn't make that sort of metaphor. It was an image uniquely of its time. In fact, Sterling asserted, people would read the novel in the future and have no idea what that color was, thus rendering it meaningless.

I was curious to see how many of my friends would know the line, and know what it refers to.

As dr_memory pointed out, and Bruce Sterling got me to believe, Neuromancer isn't really the right messenger for the meme that was cyberpunk. The short story "The Gernsback Continuum" is a far better representative, carrying as it does the distilled acidic essence of the idea that science fiction could be something so wrenchingly different. But far fewer people have read that story than have read Neuromancer and it was the novel and its imagery that captured the public imagination. Even if the opening line is crap.

Comments

[dcltdw]

I dunno how valid those criticisms are. If they were made when the book came out, then sure. Now? Now it's 20/20 hindsight. I read an interview with Gibson where he was asked about what he got right and wrong. He said the most glaring thing he got wrong were cellphones: nobody in the book has one. Oops! But while that's a "duh!" thing now, it wasn't back then.

Also, I think that while it's true that future readers may not understand the reference, it's not merely just a description of the sky: it's also setting the tone, which I think it does incredibly well.

The genre had to start somewhere, and I'd expect there to be fits and missteps in the beginning. The fact that people remember that opening line all these years later is pretty telling, I think, and expecting a line to be remembered 28 years later and be otherwise perfect... I dunno, that makes me go "hmm". :)

[drwex]

The conversation with Sterling took place in '87 or '88, about four years after the book came out. He was in the midst of writing The Difference Engine with Gibson at the time, iirc.

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

I used to consider it the best opening line to a book that I'd ever read.

But, like most of Gibson, it hasn't aged well.

[drwex]

dgnde I guess. I think his stuff remains good, though not as mind-blowing as when I first read it.

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

Once upon a long ago I was extolling the imagery of that line to Bruce Sterling who replied that he though it was "crap."

Even though I obvious agree with his assessment about how well it was going to age, that's strictly professional jealousy speaking. You write for the audience you have: if the subsequent ages take to it as well, that's little more than luck. And it's an awesome opening line.

[cos]

It's a great opening line. Like many great lines in many great books, it's of its time. So what? While we can know certain things will change, we can't assume anything else won't change. Will there be roads in the future? Will they be made of asphalt or anything like it? Will they have painted white lines? Should writers of today just avoid mentioning roads, or their lines, or their material, in their metaphor, just in case?

If you write with a focus on being understood by the society of the future, I don't think that'd turn out nearly so well. If you write really well, people in the future will strive to understand what you meant, as we do with Shakespeare today.

P.S. I love the stories in Burning Chrome and think it's Gibson's best work, but that may be because I like short story as a format more than novel. I've always seen Neuromancer as the morph of Burning Chrome (the title story) + Johnny Mnemonic.