Well. William Gibson has a 'blog'.
I'd link it, but I'm sure Mr. Gibson has plenty of hits already.
www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/blog.asp
I've read the 'blog', and I have some comments for young William. They are as follows:
Dear Mr. Gibson,
Once upon a time I read several books by you that I thought were really great. Since that time I've read several books from you that weren't really that great.
I've read your 'blog'. I'm sorry to say this, but there's really no way to candy coat this:
Shut up.
On to specific reasons why you should shut up.
1) Your 'blog' seems to largely consist of subtle hype for your new book. Weak.
2)
The Difference Engine was the worst book I have ever read. Seriously. I enjoyed dental drilling more.
3) Your 'blog' makes no sense. I understand that as a writer you are expected to use big words all the time. The problem? You are throwing big words out at random, creating sentences that lack something I like to call MEANING.
4) You said, "In spite of (or perhaps because of) my reputation as a reclusive quasi- Pynchonian luddite shunning the net (or word-processors, depending on what you Google) I hope to be here on a more or less daily basis." Translation: "Everyone on the Internet is an idiot except me and I'm really special and nobody understands me. Watch me name drop."
So. Are you a goth in your spare time?
5) You said, "Someone posts to complain of the wealth of grammatical errors in my fiction… I would have to say that some are errata, some are nonstandard grammatical choices on the part of a character (and these can be part of the text, as interior monologue or an aspect of “POV”) and the rest are, for the most part, conscious and deliberate stylistic choices involving nonstandard usage." Translation: "My readers are all big dumb heads who don't understand my really greatness! I are so smart!"
Quit whining.
Look, Mr. Gibson, don't feel that bad if an unintentional error or two slipped through. I understand that you are a human being and not some higher lifeform. It is okay to make mistakes. You really do not need to pretend you've never made any or defend yourself from this. I was reading Philip K. Dick a few days ago and I noticed about four grammatical errors and several spelling errors over the course of the fifty or so short stories I read. It's okay. Really.
Now deflate your fucking head.
6) Oh yeah. Don't call your mistakes "errata". That just makes you look like a pompous asshole.
7) You said, "Actually I had hoped to have the final corrected galley sheets independently proofread by my friend John Berry, but, to my disappointment, scheduling did not allow." Wow. Get crazy when them commas, huh? You missed a spot. And I think you're missing part of that sentence. Scheduling did not allow IT or something to that nature might be more correct. I only comment on this because you were writing about how the bootleg copies of your new book were still full of errors because they weren't proofread yet. Irony is tasty and filled with sodium!
Do you proofread your 'blog'?
8) You also said, "One day I will manage to do that, and then there will be no errata, and no non-deliberate grammatical errors whatever, but he won’t mess with my sentence fragments at all." No non-deliberate grammatical errors? Do you think you could possibly write something more bizarre and obtuse? I am in awe of your mighty 7331 skillz.
(Oh yeah, and way to constantly plug your book by pretending to respond to your readers.)
9) You said this, too, "You could have sex relatively comfortably on a platform of books, but not on a platform of PDA’s. Hardcover books. Paperbacks might start sliding around." Oh, bravo. Excellent observation, Sherlock fucking Holmes. Who the fuck ever suggested having sex on books OR a PDA?
Wait. Wait. I know. You were secretly replaced by an alien. Yeah. That's the ticket.
10) You said, "Alberto, who was once Jorge Luis Borges' personal secretary, is among other things a great anthologist, and, by virtue of that, a sort of meta-librarian, which is a very Borgesian thing to be." Quit dropping names, you whore. Me = not impressed.
11) Quit talking about fucking Neuromancer. We've all read it. Every man, woman, and child on the Internet who isn't looking for porn, Dragon Ball Z fanfic, or pornographic Dragon Ball Z fanfic has already read it. You do not need to sell more copies. You are not fooling anyone. This is shameless advertising stealthed in barely decipherable ranting.
12) Your stories about doin' drugs and rollin' with your thugs do not make me think you are cool. I've seen your picture on the covers of your books. You are an even bigger nerd than me.
13) I can't be bothered to quote you on any more of your 8 million name dropping escapades, but for the love of Orban, cut it the fuck out! Yes, you're a writer. Yes, people have bought and continue to buy your books. And yes, you know famous people. Ask me if I'm impressed.
14) You said, "And as no portion of its perhaps largely theoretical and entirely indie-prod cash-flow heads this way, ever, I feel my hands are clean in recommending it to you: http://www.nomaps.com/indexmain.html Aside, I mean, from the fact that it’s about me, which, being me, I find sort of embarrassing in the first place." *Cough* Liar *Cough*. For the folks at home keeping track, this equates to, "Well, I can't stick in a plug for my new book in this paragraph without being painfully obvious, so I'll just plug this project that is lovingly stroking my pulsating and inflated ego."
William Gibson's ego is the hentacle of cyberpunk, trying desperately to invade my orifices. Dear Orban, man, do you have ANY respect for human beings who have names that don't rhyme with Milliam Ribson?
15) I can't be bothered to read any more in the archives of your blog, Mr. Gibson. I'm sorry, but I can only have a barbed hentacle rammed up my ass so many times before I figure out that maybe it'd be a good time to avoid it.
Even so, I'll make a token effort and comment on your most recent entry.
Here we go. You said this about the movie everyone and their parapalegic kitten has seen 80 times,
The Matrix: "I thought it was more like Dick’s work than mine, though more coherent, saner, than I generally take Dick to have been. A Dickian universe with fewer moving parts (for Dick, I suspect, all of the parts were, always, moving parts). A Dickian universe with a solid bottom (or for the one film at least, as there’s no way of knowing yet where the franchise is headed). It’s thematically gnostic, something NEUROMANCER isn’t." Dude, I give up. You're a cock. You're just a whiney bitch who is upset that
The Matrix has annihilated any chances of a movie being made based on Neuromancer that isn't a total joke. And I bet you get wet dreams about being Philip K. Dick. I'm sorry, but you just aren't him.
P.S. The
Johnny Mnemonic movie sucked SO much cock. You must be ashamed.
