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.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2012-04-06 02:50 am (UTC)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.