William Gibson: How I wrote Neuromancer

"The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel" -- That is one of the all-time classic opening lines. It is also something people will gradually lose since most people no longer have that grey static.

An interesting brief history of what is, if I was forced to pick one, (still!) the best among the thousands of novels I&#x27;ve read.<p>The whole Sprawl trilogy is fantastic, and while I agree with other commenters here that Gibson&#x27;s subsequent novels have become somewhat less awesome, it&#x27;s hard to complain too much about that if you believe, as I do, that the author in question&#x27;s first attempt resulted in <i>the best novel of all time</i>.<p>Still, Neuromancer is indisputably dated, as any such work would inevitably be, so I am glad to have originally read it in the 1980s.

This is very interesting to me from the &quot;performing under pressure&quot; point of view. I&#x27;ve been under the gun, so to speak, on more than one occasion and invariably I&#x27;ve delivered and learned most rapidly during those times.<p>Makes me wonder if people who &quot;get shit done&quot; operate on that sort of do-or-die mental state, or how long it&#x27;s possible to put yourself in that mental state without either burning out or breaking down. I&#x27;ve read similar anecdotes from people like John Carmack and Richard Feynman (again, pressurized during WWII).<p>It&#x27;s almost like we&#x27;re operating at 50% efficiency, maybe we go to 75% when we&#x27;re really focusing, but actually only when we&#x27;re in the self-preservation state, we go to 90+%

I find Gibson&#x27;s greatest gift is naming things and coming up with vernacular. Panther Moderns and ice are obvious standouts but I particularly liked &quot;funny&quot; as a term for pirated 3d printed objects in <i>The Peripheral.</i>

A great book. Unfortunately after Johnny Mnemonic , and the matrix(2+3) which were total garbage, I&#x27;m not sure I would want a movie based on that book.<p>It however influenced so much good stuff,like Ghost in the shell which is basically the same plot,Deus ex and others.<p>I enjoyed the audio-book read by Gibson itself,it was excellent.

Neuromancer was amazing. I realize now that Gibson&#x27;s books monotonically decreased in quality.<p>The books have gotten thicker, artier, more self-indulgent, and weaker.<p>I&#x27;m sure he&#x27;d like to recapture the magic he had at 34, but maybe it requires the fear he spoke of. And an absolute ignorance about computers and networks.<p>I think it shares more with The Maltese Falcon than with any SciFi.<p>Saw WG complaining about GamerGate recently and thought how much he&#x27;s aged, and how ungracefully, since GG and Operation Disrespectful Nod reminded me of the Panther Moderns.

Interesting to find that editor&#x2F;author Terry Carr was so instrumental. The first scifi I ever read was his <i>Cirque</i>. That was a deeply weird book for an 8yo in the early 1980s (and thinking back I&#x27;m not sure whose bookshelf I could have raided to find it) but I was hooked.

<p><pre><code> “Is it going to be OK?” I asked, my anxiety phrasing the question. He paused on the stair, gave me a brief, memorably odd look, then smiled. “Yes,” he said, “I definitely think it will,” </code></pre> Anxiety. Over the quality of the manuscript.

answer to title: <i>I would write, then, to the audience I imagined in the future of my discovery by friendly if unimaginable forces, and to them alone.</i>