Word: gibsonized
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...roots of cyberpunk, curiously, are as much literary as they are technological. The term was coined in the late 1980s to describe a group of science-fiction writers -- and in particular WILLIAM GIBSON, a 44-year-old American now living in Vancouver. Gibson's NEUROMANCER, the first novel to win SF's triple crown -- the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick awards -- quickly became a cyberpunk classic, attracting an audience beyond the world of SF. Critics were intrigued by a dense, technopoetic prose style that invites comparisons to Hammett, Burroughs and Pynchon. Computer-literate readers were drawn by Gibson...
...There he encounters Molly, a sharp-edged beauty with reflective lenses grafted to her eye sockets and retractable razor blades implanted in her fingers. They are hired by a mysterious employer who offers to fix Case's damaged nerves so he can once again enter cyberspace -- a term Gibson invented. Soon Case discovers that he is actually working for an AI (artificial intelligence) named Wintermute, who is trying to get around the restrictions placed on AIs by the TURING POLICE to keep the computers under control. "What's important to me," says Gibson, "is that Neuromancer is about the present...
More troubling, from a philosophic standpoint, is the theme of DYSTOPIA that runs like a bad trip through the cyberpunk world view. Gibson's fictional world is filled with glassy-eyed girls strung out on their Walkman-like SIMSTIM DECKS and young men who get their kicks from MICROSOFTS plugged into sockets behind their ears. His brooding, dehumanized vision conveys a strong sense that technology is changing civilization and the course of history in frightening ways. But many of his readers don't seem to care. "History is a funny thing for cyberpunks," says Christopher Meyer, a music-synthesizer designer...
Blood Poetry chronicles the effect of his poetic ambitions on those around him. He leaves his wife and children and neglects his lover, Mary Godwin (Catharine Gibson). Even when he receives the news of his first wife's suicide, the accidental rhyme "found drowned" in the letter affects him more than his loss. Byron taunts him, "You shred and tear lives around you as much as I, the cynic, the libertine." The older poet admits to his share of irresponsibility, leaving a child by Claire Clairemont (Kate Bennis) to die in a convent...
...Gibson has the most difficult task; the play positions Mary as a perpetual victim. At her best, Gibson achieves a bitter strenth, exposing the emptiness and self-indulgence of Bysshe's idealism. She is least successful when she allows Mary's helpless anger to deteriorate into petulent whining. Her complaints about "the endless, hopeless schemes and dreams" are rendered pathetic rather than biting...