Hail William Gibson
Nine books. More if you include short
story collections and collaborations. Nine on his own. They tend to
live on the science fiction shelves, but everyone should read them.
The nine break down into three sets of three.
The Sprawl: set in a future Tokyo where
the city and suburbs have expanded beyond belief, these feature
computer hackers breaking corporations security ice in cyberspace,
while chemically and surgically minders look after them in the real
world. I think it was in one of these that Gibson coined
'cyberspace'. The idea that people would hook up to their machines
and drive them around their own vast interconnected universe dates
back to when most computers sat and worked in isolation, before
anyone would dream of sticking the phone line into them.
The Bridge: containers and large wooden
crates form a ramshackle and anarchic pueblo hanging onto (I think)
Golden Gate Bridge. These books predicted the global crash, and
rather than a post-apocalyptic setting they have a post-high-income
world where a new poverty means people have to relearn initiative and
recycle for survival. There are now Mexican container cities, I have
picked up work at a children's centre in Brent constructed from them,
and there's a container shopping centre here:
http://mallsecrets.co.uk/boxpark-shopping-centre-shoreditch-london-index/
Boxpark, it's called, in Shoreditch.
The Recent Past books: these are here
and now: guerilla art installations, moving hologram projections,
tablet computers, smartphones, underground fashion sales. Less
science fiction than the previous books and probably the best three
for a new reader to start with.
They are all intelligent, full of wit
and ideas, they all move at a furious pace, and, a very rare thing,
they all stand reading again every so often. It's two years since
Zero History and I'm getting withdrawal. Why they haven't been filmed
mystifies me.
And Brian Eno
For the Ambient Albums 1 to 4.
Soothing.
More about Boxpark
The first retailers on the list are:
Abuze (?) The Amnesty Shop and Art Against Knives (that's the A's the
B's are: Boxfresh and Bukowski.
A shop called Bukowski. This is him
here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bukowski
I want to have a look at this place.
The restaurant is Vietnamese. Gets
better.
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