Author | William Gibson |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Non-fiction anthology |
Publisher | Putnam Adult |
Publication date | January 3, 2012 |
Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback), audiobook |
Pages | 272 |
ISBN | 978-0-399-15843-8 |
OCLC | 765968892 |
Distrust That Particular Flavor is a collection of non-fiction essays by American author William Gibson, better known for his speculative and science fiction novels.
Distrust consists of twenty-six pieces written over a period of more than twenty years. The anthology includes a range of formats, including essays, magazine pieces, album reviews, and forewords from other published works. [1]
Since making a name for himself as a leading figure in the cyberpunk genre with his Sprawl trilogy of novels, Gibson has been primarily known as a writer of science or speculative fiction. However, beginning in the late eighties, he has regularly penned non-fiction pieces for various publications. Gibson credits his agent for the idea of a collection; according to the writer, the book was intended to bridge the gap between Zero History (2010), his then-most recent novel, and his next work of fiction. [1]
The pieces in Distrust That Particular Flavor were written between the late 1980s and 2010. Some were originally published as magazine articles in Time , Rolling Stone , and Wired . [2] Some appeared as forewords to books by other authors. Several speeches appear in written form for the first time.
In "Disneyland with the Death Penalty", which originally appeared in a 1993 issue of Wired, Gibson reflects on the state of Singapore. Criticisms in the article resulted in the Singapore government banning Wired from the country. [3] The essay "Rocket Radio", which appeared in Rolling Stone, covers the evolution of communications from the crystal radio to the Internet. Written in the late 1980s, it features Gibson theorizing on the future of the then-nascent Net. [4] "Dead Man Sings" takes a more autobiographical note; memories of his childhood are interspersed with an exploration of visual and audio media, and their effect on time. [4] The writer delves into psychogeography in his review of Peter Ackroyd's London: The Biography , entitled "Metrophagy: the Art and Science of Digesting Cities". [3] Several pieces cover music and fine arts. "Any 'Mount of World" is a review of a Steely Dan live album. [3] Gibson is a fan of the group. [1] "Introduction: The Body" looks at the Australian-Cypriot performance artist Stelarc. [5] The collection features Gibson's writings on three of his favourite authors, Jorge Luis Borges, George Orwell and H.G. Wells. [6] The writer's various obsessions feature in other pieces, such as vintage watches (pursued through eBay) [7] and his interest in classic denim.
Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting said to focus on a combination of "low-life and high tech". It features futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberware, juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay. Much of cyberpunk is rooted in the New Wave science fiction movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when writers like Philip K. Dick, Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, John Brunner, J. G. Ballard, Philip José Farmer and Harlan Ellison examined the impact of drug culture, technology, and the sexual revolution while avoiding the utopian tendencies of earlier science fiction.
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William Ford Gibson is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his early works were noir, near-future stories that explored the effects of technology, cybernetics, and computer networks on humans, a "combination of lowlife and high tech"—and helped to create an iconography for the Information Age before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" for "widespread, interconnected digital technology" in his short story "Burning Chrome" (1982), and later popularized the concept in his acclaimed debut novel Neuromancer (1984). These early works of Gibson's have been credited with "renovating" science fiction literature in the 1980s.
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