Burning Chrome
By William Gibson
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Back in 1982, William Gibson coined the term “cyberspace,” and his first
novel, Neuromancer, published two years later, explored a virtual reality
landscape with a vividness of detail and intensity of conception that
proved remarkably prescient. As a result, Gibson is now heralded as the
great prognosticator. But his accuracy in predicting the future has led
many to forget just how well Gibson writes.
Of course, the received wisdom on genre writers is that they are
sometimes clever in their plots or in their raw ideas, but their prose is
invariably banal and plodding. Certainly, any number of famous science
fiction writers deserve this criticism. Most of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation
trilogy is built out of cardboard prose, but his blazing imagination
redeems the work. Philip K. Dick is the classic case of a writer who
dazzles on a conceptual level, but rarely produces a really good sentence.
Many, many other examples could be cited. But Gibson defies the
conventional wisdom. His writing is breathtakingly good, and if it fails to
match the brilliance of his insights, it is only because the latter are even
more flamboyant.
Burning Chrome, a collection of short stories from the early 1980s, shows
Gibson at his best. The difficult of depicting a realistic future landscape
in any degree of detail forces many otherwise talented writers to fall back
on small-scale effects – isolated vignettes or one-trick pony tales which
seem flat even when they work their magic. Gibson’s landscapes, in
contrast, have depth. We get a flavor of social groups and demographics,
but never in a heavy-handed way. We sense the sprawling cities – and
almost all of Gibson’s story-telling is situated in densely populated urban
areas -- and even grok what may lie on its outskirts or its hidden
recesses. We feel the pulse of society, its nightlife, its compromises, its
vices and blind spots. And all of these elements feel both familiar and
strange -- it is a future that we can recognize as an outgrowth of our
dysfunctional present.
But we also have the heroes of the stories. They hardly qualify as heroes,
even if we root for them, cheer on their successes, and lament their
failures. The human element in a Gibson story can be summed up
succinctly in a phrase – his protagonists are almost always lowlifes with
totally rad technology. Gibson fetishizes technology, especially
dangerous cutting-edge gadgets that his dissipated characters covet.
Often the device plugs into their brain, or some other part of their body.
Or they swallow it hole, or get it surgically implanted. If necessary, they
lug it around in a suitcase. But it is always hot stuff, three years ahead of
what everybody else on the street is using.
I have little patience when Gibson gets into his laundry list of gadgets, but
for him this is foreplay in a highly erotic game. Here is a dose from “New
Rose Hotel” in Burning Chrome: “A freezer. A fermenter. An incubator.
An electrophoresis system with integrated agarose cell and
transilluminator. A tissue embedder. A high-performance liquid
chromatograph. A flow cytometer . . .” You get the idea. These are the
mementos that the narrator's ex-girlfriend left behind – like the old pop
song, “these foolish things remind me of you,” only instead of the
“cigarette that bears the lipstick traces” we get “four gross of borosilicate
scintillation vials.”
But don’t let the jargon and gadgets dissuade you from dipping into
Gibson. Although his stories appear, on a superficial level, to focus on
technology, they are really about the ways that waves of change, the fast-
forward ethos of modern-day life, simultaneously empower and cripple
people and societies. As such, he is neither overly utopian or dystopian.
Indeed, more than any science fiction writer of his generation, Gibson is
comfortable with the equivocal and sometimes even paradoxical nature
of our love affair with the gizmos. The characters in a Gibson story are
like Michael Jackson and plastic surgery – they can’t get enough of it,
even when they sense its destructive toll. By comparison the apocalyptic
writers of yesteryear – or even last year, if one considers Cormac
McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Road – seem heavy handed
by comparison. The future, Gibson seems to tell us, will never be that
simple.
And this is the reason, I suspect, that Gibson has been so successful as a
fortune teller, as a futurist charting our rapidly changing social
landscape. Other writers have tried to simplify the story, trace the broad
outlines of a purely linear progression into the future. But Gibson knows
that reality is much more multi-layered, full of unintended consequences
and second-order effects. And this is a sensibility that is rare in any
writer, whether they are looking into the future, or probing past and
present.
By William Gibson
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Back in 1982, William Gibson coined the term “cyberspace,” and his first
novel, Neuromancer, published two years later, explored a virtual reality
landscape with a vividness of detail and intensity of conception that
proved remarkably prescient. As a result, Gibson is now heralded as the
great prognosticator. But his accuracy in predicting the future has led
many to forget just how well Gibson writes.
Of course, the received wisdom on genre writers is that they are
sometimes clever in their plots or in their raw ideas, but their prose is
invariably banal and plodding. Certainly, any number of famous science
fiction writers deserve this criticism. Most of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation
trilogy is built out of cardboard prose, but his blazing imagination
redeems the work. Philip K. Dick is the classic case of a writer who
dazzles on a conceptual level, but rarely produces a really good sentence.
Many, many other examples could be cited. But Gibson defies the
conventional wisdom. His writing is breathtakingly good, and if it fails to
match the brilliance of his insights, it is only because the latter are even
more flamboyant.
Burning Chrome, a collection of short stories from the early 1980s, shows
Gibson at his best. The difficult of depicting a realistic future landscape
in any degree of detail forces many otherwise talented writers to fall back
on small-scale effects – isolated vignettes or one-trick pony tales which
seem flat even when they work their magic. Gibson’s landscapes, in
contrast, have depth. We get a flavor of social groups and demographics,
but never in a heavy-handed way. We sense the sprawling cities – and
almost all of Gibson’s story-telling is situated in densely populated urban
areas -- and even grok what may lie on its outskirts or its hidden
recesses. We feel the pulse of society, its nightlife, its compromises, its
vices and blind spots. And all of these elements feel both familiar and
strange -- it is a future that we can recognize as an outgrowth of our
dysfunctional present.
But we also have the heroes of the stories. They hardly qualify as heroes,
even if we root for them, cheer on their successes, and lament their
failures. The human element in a Gibson story can be summed up
succinctly in a phrase – his protagonists are almost always lowlifes with
totally rad technology. Gibson fetishizes technology, especially
dangerous cutting-edge gadgets that his dissipated characters covet.
Often the device plugs into their brain, or some other part of their body.
Or they swallow it hole, or get it surgically implanted. If necessary, they
lug it around in a suitcase. But it is always hot stuff, three years ahead of
what everybody else on the street is using.
I have little patience when Gibson gets into his laundry list of gadgets, but
for him this is foreplay in a highly erotic game. Here is a dose from “New
Rose Hotel” in Burning Chrome: “A freezer. A fermenter. An incubator.
An electrophoresis system with integrated agarose cell and
transilluminator. A tissue embedder. A high-performance liquid
chromatograph. A flow cytometer . . .” You get the idea. These are the
mementos that the narrator's ex-girlfriend left behind – like the old pop
song, “these foolish things remind me of you,” only instead of the
“cigarette that bears the lipstick traces” we get “four gross of borosilicate
scintillation vials.”
But don’t let the jargon and gadgets dissuade you from dipping into
Gibson. Although his stories appear, on a superficial level, to focus on
technology, they are really about the ways that waves of change, the fast-
forward ethos of modern-day life, simultaneously empower and cripple
people and societies. As such, he is neither overly utopian or dystopian.
Indeed, more than any science fiction writer of his generation, Gibson is
comfortable with the equivocal and sometimes even paradoxical nature
of our love affair with the gizmos. The characters in a Gibson story are
like Michael Jackson and plastic surgery – they can’t get enough of it,
even when they sense its destructive toll. By comparison the apocalyptic
writers of yesteryear – or even last year, if one considers Cormac
McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Road – seem heavy handed
by comparison. The future, Gibson seems to tell us, will never be that
simple.
And this is the reason, I suspect, that Gibson has been so successful as a
fortune teller, as a futurist charting our rapidly changing social
landscape. Other writers have tried to simplify the story, trace the broad
outlines of a purely linear progression into the future. But Gibson knows
that reality is much more multi-layered, full of unintended consequences
and second-order effects. And this is a sensibility that is rare in any
writer, whether they are looking into the future, or probing past and
present.
| conceptual fiction |
Conceptual Fiction:
A Reading List
(with links to reviews)
Home Page
Abbott, Edwin A.
Flatland
Asimov, Isaac
The Foundation Trilogy
Asimov, Isaac
I, Robot
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale
Banks, Iain M.
The State of the Art
Ballard, J.G.
Crash
Ballard, J.G.
The Crystal World
Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
The Illustrated Man
Bradbury, Ray
The Martian Chronicles
Bradbury, Ray
Something Wicked This Way
Comes
Burgess, Anthony
A Clockwork Orange
Chabon, Michael
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Clarke, Arthur C.
Childhood's End
Clarke, Arthur C.
A Fall of Moondust
Clarke, Arthur C.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Danielewski, Mark Z.
House of Leaves
Dick, Philip K.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Dick, Philip K.
The Man in the High Castle
Dick, Philip K.
Ubik
Gaiman, Neil
American Gods
Gibson, William
Burning Chrome
Gibson, William
Neuromancer
Haldeman, Joe
The Forever War
Hall, Steven
The Raw Shark Texts
Heinlein, Robert
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Heinlein, Robert:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlein, Robert
Time Enough for Love
Herbert, Frank
Dune
Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Lathe of Heaven
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Leiber, Fritz
Conjure Wife
Lem, Stanislaw
His Master's Voice
Lem, Stanislaw
Solaris
Lethem, Jonathan
The Fortress of Solitude
Lewis, C. S.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Márquez, Gabriel García
100 Years of Solitude
McCarthy, Cormac
The Road
Miller, Jr., Walter M.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Mitchell, David
Cloud Atlas
Niffenegger, Audrey
The Time Traveler's Wife
Niven, Larry
Ringworld
Noon, Jeff
Vurt
Okri, Ben
The Famished Road
Pohl, Frederik
Gateway
Rowling, J.K.
Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's
Stone
Saramago, José
Blindness
Silverberg, Robert
Dying Inside
Silverberg, Robert
Nightwings
Simak, Clifford
City
Simak, Clifford
The Trouble with Tycho
Sturgeon, Theodore
More Than Human
Sturgeon, Theodore
Some of Your Blood
Verne, Jules:
Around the Moon
Verne, Jules:
From the Earth to the Moon
Verne, Jules:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Wallace, David Foster
Infinite Jest
Wells, H.G.
The First Men in the Moon
Wells, H.G.
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Wells, H.G.
The Time Machine
Zelazny, Roger
Lord of Light
Special Features
Notes on Conceptual Fiction
Curse You, Neil Armstrong!
Links to related sites
The New Canon
Great Books Guide
Ted Gioia's personal web site
SF Site
Jospeh Peschel
The Misread City
Disclosure: Conceptual Fiction and
its sister sites may receive review
copies and promotional materials
from publishers, authors,
publicists or other parties.
A Reading List
(with links to reviews)
Home Page
Abbott, Edwin A.
Flatland
Asimov, Isaac
The Foundation Trilogy
Asimov, Isaac
I, Robot
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale
Banks, Iain M.
The State of the Art
Ballard, J.G.
Crash
Ballard, J.G.
The Crystal World
Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
The Illustrated Man
Bradbury, Ray
The Martian Chronicles
Bradbury, Ray
Something Wicked This Way
Comes
Burgess, Anthony
A Clockwork Orange
Chabon, Michael
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Clarke, Arthur C.
Childhood's End
Clarke, Arthur C.
A Fall of Moondust
Clarke, Arthur C.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Danielewski, Mark Z.
House of Leaves
Dick, Philip K.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Dick, Philip K.
The Man in the High Castle
Dick, Philip K.
Ubik
Gaiman, Neil
American Gods
Gibson, William
Burning Chrome
Gibson, William
Neuromancer
Haldeman, Joe
The Forever War
Hall, Steven
The Raw Shark Texts
Heinlein, Robert
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Heinlein, Robert:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlein, Robert
Time Enough for Love
Herbert, Frank
Dune
Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Lathe of Heaven
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Leiber, Fritz
Conjure Wife
Lem, Stanislaw
His Master's Voice
Lem, Stanislaw
Solaris
Lethem, Jonathan
The Fortress of Solitude
Lewis, C. S.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Márquez, Gabriel García
100 Years of Solitude
McCarthy, Cormac
The Road
Miller, Jr., Walter M.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Mitchell, David
Cloud Atlas
Niffenegger, Audrey
The Time Traveler's Wife
Niven, Larry
Ringworld
Noon, Jeff
Vurt
Okri, Ben
The Famished Road
Pohl, Frederik
Gateway
Rowling, J.K.
Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's
Stone
Saramago, José
Blindness
Silverberg, Robert
Dying Inside
Silverberg, Robert
Nightwings
Simak, Clifford
City
Simak, Clifford
The Trouble with Tycho
Sturgeon, Theodore
More Than Human
Sturgeon, Theodore
Some of Your Blood
Verne, Jules:
Around the Moon
Verne, Jules:
From the Earth to the Moon
Verne, Jules:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Wallace, David Foster
Infinite Jest
Wells, H.G.
The First Men in the Moon
Wells, H.G.
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Wells, H.G.
The Time Machine
Zelazny, Roger
Lord of Light
Special Features
Notes on Conceptual Fiction
Curse You, Neil Armstrong!
Links to related sites
The New Canon
Great Books Guide
Ted Gioia's personal web site
SF Site
Jospeh Peschel
The Misread City
Disclosure: Conceptual Fiction and
its sister sites may receive review
copies and promotional materials
from publishers, authors,
publicists or other parties.