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'Set in February 2006, “Spook Country” centers on the activities of three very different individuals. Hollis Henry, former lead singer of punk band The Curfew, is now a music journalist assigned to cover the elusive technical genius Bobby Chombo, a pioneer of creating virtual reality artwork. Tito, a musician and member of a Cuban criminal family, is contracted to deliver coded iPods to an old man with intelligence background. And Milgrim, a drug addict with a penchant for stolen coats, is abducted by a government official and forced to translate Russian code in exchange for continual drug doses.'
Gibson discusses novel and such
Sci-Fi London interview of Gibson
'The Cyberpunk Project (TCP) is a remotely avaliable data-well net of files about cyberpunk subculture, cyberpunk science-fiction and general cyberculture in the form of collected information. It is the result of years of gathering data and sorting it, to compile a host of cyberpunk-ifnormation related documents and work. 'The TCP started in 1996 and was actively supported until late 2002.'
'. . . the Walled City left its mark, vexing the Muscles from Brussels in Bloodsport, inspiring Christopher Nolan’s depiction of Gotham’s slums and is rebuilt in cyberspace in William Gibson’s Bridge Trilogy. 'Every observer seems to have taken a different lesson. Some extolled it as the “rarest of things, a working model of an anarchist society,” while U.S. News and World Report (never big on the whole nonconformity thing in the first place), sputtering in its disgust, dubbed it “a fetid conglomeration” of tenements, piling on words like “festering” for good measure.'
'Technolalia is a term coined by William Gibson to denote technological addiction or obsession. What would you do if you couldn't have access to your cell phone, computer, iPhone, or beeper? If you couldn't get your telex messages, would you absolutely shit yourself?' (Who is William Ford Gibson? '. . . often referred to as the father of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction, partly due to coining the term "cyberspace" and partly because of the success of his first novel, Neuromancer, which has sold more than 6.5 million copies worldwide since its publication in 1984. William Gibson coined the term "technolalia" in a heretofore lost article that only seven diehard Gibson fans still recall.')
'Peculiar because the thread of routine news is occasionally interrupted by some deeply strange dispatch from Warchalker himself -- as, for instance, his first-person account of the looting of the Baghdad museum, involving any number of international art-mercenaries and at least two supposedly extraterrestrial artifacts.'
'First, the disappearance of the virtual, of cyberspace itself, because it’s not “there” anymore, viewed from “here.” It’s everywhere, and we’re inside it most of the time now.' 'Spook Country is William Gibson’s first comic novel, an acidly satirical broadside against the “war on terror.” Set in the political present (2006, in fact; Tower Records is still in business), it’s a thriller about a geo-strategic “prank,” to disrupt or at least embarrass the Pentagon’s cash offensive in Iraq, the real-life inundation of Baghdad in 2003 with pallet-loads of millions of $100 bills.'
a random occurence concering despondency, druthers, and disgrace 'This is Science Fiction at it’s most attainable. Most of the devices in this book are things we have right now. Technology we know. The catch is the way people are using these devices, sometimes in conjuction with several others. It’s crazy to think what’s around the corner even with already existing Technology.'
A few ideas for augmented reality 'Use of augmented reality + head-mounted display/webcam + geotagging + wireless internet = William Gibson’s Spook Country The composited output fed into a head-mounted display/’VR goggles’, with a lightweight webcam mounted on it pointing outward. When combined with GPS tagging, “locative art” a la Spook Country. (Actually, the GPS tagging wouldn’t even be necessary, just nice to have). Ie: Users view 3d sculpures and whatnot (pushed via wireless) associated with AR squares (made to various scales) that are ‘tagged’ around the (real-world) landscape by other users.'
Bryant: 'Definitely better than Pattern Recognition, but in reading it, I realized that Gibson is getting a bit formulaic. There are 3 threads that may seem unrelated, but come together at the end. The main character in one thread is most often a female(often with a double-letter name, like Hollis or Molly or Sally) in her 20s-30s who was involved with some counter-culture group, be it bike messenger, punk rock, existential art, etc. This woman is hired by a rich, reclusive, strange man, who is reluctant to share his thoughts and plans. The second thread usually has a military or para-military person, and the third usually has a druggie and/or computer hacker. 'The stories almost always take place in a big city, be it New York, LA, Tokyo, Chiba, or in the Sprawl trilogy, the BAMA sprawl.(Boston Atlantic Metropolitan Area) rural or suburban areas usually get glossed over, and don't get the attention of the big city. 'All that said, I still enjoyed this book. It was well written, and I liked the characters, which was more than could be said for Pattern Recognition. I did get Milgrim and Tito mixed up a couple of times, but that was more my problem than his. The story lines were engaging, and there was a lot less hokey dialog in this, and a LOT less in the way of 9/11 references in this than Pattern Recognition.'
'I cannot conceive Infinity, and am convinced that no human being can.' 'IT is with humility really unassumed -- it is with a sentiment even of awe -- that I pen the opening sentence of this work: for of all conceivable subjects I approach the reader with the most solemn -- the most comprehensive -- the most difficult -- the most august. What terms shall I find sufficiently simple in their sublimity -- sufficiently sublime in their simplicity -- for the mere enunciation of my theme? 'I design to speak of the Physical, Metaphysical and Mathematical -- of the Material and Spiritual Universe:- of its Essence, its Origin, its Creation, its Present Condition and its Destiny. I shall be so rash, moreover, as to challenge the conclusions, and thus, in effect, to question the sagacity, of many of the greatest and most justly reverenced of men. 'In the beginning, let me as distinctly as possible announce -- not the theorem which I hope to demonstrate -- for, whatever the mathematicians may assert, there is, in this world at least, no such thing as demonstration -- but the ruling idea which, throughout this volume, I shall be continually endeavoring to suggest. 'My general proposition, then, is this: -- In the Original Unity of the First Thing lies the Secondary Cause of All Things, with the Germ of their Inevitable Annihilation.'
'To date, Gibson has written two dozens short stories, nine critically acclaimed novels (one in collaboration), a nonfiction artist's book, and has contributed articles to several major publications and collaborated extensively with performance artists, filmmakers and musicians. His work has been cited as an influence on science fiction authors, academia, cyberculture, and technology.'
...in the basement of the Trades Union Congress
...the most personal Gibson novel "Spook Country feels like it is about today, not tomorrow, and yet from the opening it still felt as wonderful and foreign and fresh as the Sprawl books. The trick is that Gibson still writes about the fringes of society, about cool obscure movements and ex-rockstars and mysterious people, and writes about them with such intriguing simmering passion that I want to know more. So when he describes a virtual Locative art movement empowered by GPS I wanted to Google it and find some blogs and learn about it. The foreigness not only comes from the obscure sides of society but also the way he never writes down to the reader, he uses colloquial cultural references and expects you to know about them, or at least figure it out. The names of US hotel chains and corner shops and the geography of Hollywood were completely foreign to me, and added an extra level of suction at the start."
"Somewhere, nearby, Oliver Sleight, the fit of whose clothes bothered Milgrim, was watching. On a website, hence on the screen of Sleight’s iPhone, was a Milgrim-cursor, generated by the funny battery they’d put in his own new phone, back in Florence. The circuitry reduced the talk time considerably, but Milgrim made, and received, very few calls."
...spannende Geschichte rund um "Locative Art" 'The subject matter is one previously untouched by Gibson, creating a whole new landscape in "present time". The characters are all in search of a special cargo container, and the intelligence and counter-intelligence surrounding its location. The description of the smallest crime family in the world, and their detailed system of operation is fascinating. No move is made unplanned or in reaction to their emotions, even those that are seemingly random to those watching have been carefully orchestrated to invoke this non-pattern appearance.'
...sentimental enough to want a twenty something to witness their latest escapade? "The female character didn’t really feel or sound or read like a female. She didn’t really seem like much more than the incarnation of a narrator/protagonist. The villains if you can call them that didn’t seem terribly realistic towards the end either. There was this super spy mastermind type from the old school that all of a sudden gets sentimental and wants the main character to witness what they will do for posterity."
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Thoughts on Spook Country
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