Gibson Blog

MY POOR OLD BLOG'S JUST SITTING HERE...

2009-07-30T21:48:00.000-07:00

While I write this book.

Meanwhile, however, try this:

@GreatDismal

I really do find microblogging congenial (not to mention collegial) and most of what I was doing here, before, was exactly that.

DUNCAN JONES' MOON

2009-07-20T18:39:00.000-07:00

My favorite sf on film usually consists of brief luminous moments in what are generally rather low-budget and often actually very bad movies. The outstanding big-budget exceptions of course being Alien and Blade Runner. Duncan Jones' Moon challenges my aesthetic of brilliant pebbles, though, because it's so tightly and consistently excellent. It does everything I want an sf film to do, and none of the things I don't want an sf film to do. How did *that* ever happen?

OUR QUOTIDIAN ALEPH

2009-07-17T07:56:00.000-07:00

"Aleph" as in the Borges story: the spot under the basement stairs from which can simultaneously be seen all things ever.

Simultaneously profoundly amazing and definitively boring:
PingWire

Because you can't step in the same river twice.

GOOD THING I'M NOT AN ACADEMIC

2009-07-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

Had planned to sort through all the responses to my Orwell quote query and lay the result out here, but it turns out that I am a working novelist (among other things). So here's what I would tell you if you ran into me on the street and asked me about it: I doubt Orwell wrote it. It may have been cobbled together from a line in his essay on nationalism, and another, quoting Kipling, in his essay on Kipling. Weirdly, the very nearest thing to it is an authentic Churchill quote. As to how it became widely accepted as an Orwell quote, your guess is as good as mine. A great many of the people who most enjoy quoting it, I imagine, would actually be happier with it if it were a Churchill quote.

QUERY: RE THE AUTHORITARIAN'S FAVORITE ORWELL QUOTE

2009-07-12T15:06:00.000-07:00

"People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

Often this is given as "Good people..."

I have been unable to source this back to a specific piece of GO's prose. Have encountered the opinion that it is not an actual GO quotation.

Can anyone help? Thanks.

WHOLE THEORY OF BEAUTIFUL LANGUAGE

2009-06-23T09:46:00.000-07:00

'My whole theory of beautiful language holds that it comes from nameless, groups of people looking for a more expressive way to say something. I'm always thankful to get a note where someone praises a sentence I wrote. But what I really want is the kind of genius that takes "I'm leaving" and turns it into "I'm ghost" and then takes "I'm ghost" and turns it into "I'm Swayze." Seriously, what kid decided to pull "Ducat" out of obscurity (at least obscurity for us 80s city kids) and use it as easy as bread, or ends, or greenbacks? Who decided that a gun should be called a "heater" and then a "toaster" and then finally a "biscuit"?'

-- Ta-Nehisi Coates

"LAWFUL INTERCEPT FUNCTIONALITY"

2009-06-21T19:03:00.001-07:00

Nokia Siemens Networks on the job in Iran.

FRANZ KAFKA, MEN'S OUTERWEAR DESIGNER

2009-06-18T20:45:00.000-07:00

He was slim but firmly built, his clothes were black and close-fitting, with many folds and pockets, buckles and buttons and a belt, all of which gave the impression of being very practical but without making it very clear what they were actually for.

"Who are you?" asked K., sitting half upright in his bed.

--The Trial

FESTO AIR JELLY

2009-06-10T22:06:00.001-07:00

I have become a huge fan of all things Festo .

CIVILIZATION

2009-06-05T08:55:00.001-07:00

Video mural art for the elevator in New York's new branch of The Standard . Stuff's finally starting to look like the 21st Century. Next, your shower curtain.

TRADITIONAL

2009-06-02T09:48:00.001-07:00

The License

HOME OF THE WHOPPER

2009-05-31T08:44:00.000-07:00

The most common human act that writing a novel resembles is lying. We lie daily, very complexly, and at great length. If not for our excessive vanity and our over-active imaginations, we would be quite difficult to deceive.

YES, THAT'S STILL REALLY ME

2009-05-30T21:24:00.000-07:00

On Twitter, as GreatDismal.

I will get it hooked up here, eventually. Too busy in the gomi-strewn book-building hangar at present to sort that out.

TRANSFORMINATORS

2009-05-27T11:35:00.000-07:00

No problemo.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

2009-05-26T15:25:00.000-07:00

Zero History, a novel in progress, by William Gibson

image: Alan Nazarian, 2009

WHY MODERNISM WAS GOOD

2009-05-22T05:55:00.000-07:00

?????-?????

140 CHARACTERS

2009-05-15T00:09:00.000-07:00

MAQUETTE

2009-05-12T17:51:00.000-07:00

Bigend�s office, when Milgrim was finally ushered in, was windowless and surprisingly small. Perhaps it wasn�t that specifically his office, Milgrim thought. It didn�t look like an office anyone worked in.

The Swedish boy who�d brought Milgrim in put a gray folder on the teak desk and left silently. There was nothing else on the desk except for a stubby combat shotgun that appeared to have been made from solidified Pepto-Bismol.

TWITTER...

2009-05-03T07:42:00.000-07:00

Is one of those phenomena that don't easily yield to journalism. Its experiential nature is participatory. People tend to like things like that a lot, to the annoyance of journalists.

Random Twitter factoid: bbcbreaking has (this morning) 90023 followers, but is following only 1 (one).

TWITTERING

2009-05-01T21:34:00.000-07:00

I've been on Twitter for a little while now. Under the nom-de-twit GreatDismal (no space). I had not much of an idea what Twitter was, when I first went there, so signed in under a flag of convenience. Still have no idea what it is, or where it's going, but will hang on to GreatDismal for simplicity's sake. At some point I might figure out how to incorporate it here, but then again maybe not.

I feel a bit self-conscious, pausing in the course of my day to recommend a particular make and model (and color) of Swiss ballpoint, but it's how my mind works (and a great pen, for around $20). Browsing Twitter, I think it's how a lot of minds work. (Or recommending a brilliant Scientific Armerican piece on reverse-engineering the human penis. That's a good one. Deeper, as it were.)

Have never been attracted to "social networking" sites before. They all seemed too clunky, somehow.

THE REAL HISTORY OF SCIENCE FICTION

2009-04-30T16:44:00.001-07:00

Not the usual embarrassing small town boosterism, but the
true quill , as extracted from the shelves of the Womack Library. Ongoing. And sorely needed.

STAND BY ME

2009-04-29T08:08:00.000-07:00

Yes indeed.

DEEP THOUGHT

2009-04-28T19:16:00.000-07:00

"If you live in Scotland and you get swine flu, your life expectancy actually goes up."

--Warren Ellis, on Twitter

CAPTAIN TRIPS AND THE YEAR OF THE COUGHING PIG DEATH

2009-04-28T11:45:00.000-07:00

...and all that other exciting we-got-your-'pocalypse-right-here shit aside, Stephen Hume makes a case that reminds me strongly of how believing you can win the lottery and believing you'll be killed by terrorists have so very much in common.

THE DETAINEE...

2009-04-24T21:27:00.001-07:00

Song #109