1986 Neuromancer movie infomercial

Zero history cover art

Here's the first glimpse of the new William Gibson novel. According to the G. W. Putnam fall catalogue the book has 384 pages and will be published on 7th September 2010. Can't wait! Here's also some blurb for the book:

Whatever you do, because you are an artist, will bring you to the next thing of your own. . . .

When she sang for The Curfew, Hollis Henry's face was known worldwide. She still runs into people who remember the poster. Unfortunately, in the post-crash economy, cult memorabilia doesn't pay the rent, and right now she's a journalist in need of a job. The last person she wants to work for is Hubertus Bigend, twisted genius of global marketing; but there's no way to tell an entity like Bigend that you want nothing more to do with him. That simply brings you more firmly to his attention.

Milgrim is clean, drug-free for the first time in a decade. It took eight months in a clinic in Basel. Fifteen complete changes of his blood. Bigend paid for all that. Milgrim's idiomatic Russian is superb, and he notices things. Meanwhile no one notices Milgrim. That makes him worth every penny, though it cost Bigend more than his cartel-grade custom-armored truck.

The culture of the military has trickled down to the street--Bigend knows that, and he'll find a way to take a cut. What surprises him though is that someone else seems to be on top of that situation in a way that Bigend associates only with himself. Bigend loves staring into the abyss of the global market; he's just not used to it staring back.

Zero History

Writing a jacket into existence

I came upon this very interesting anecdote about the jacket one character in Gibson's book Pattern Recognition is wearing. Cayce, the protagonist in the novel, is "allergic" to fashion, brands and logos, so she is wearing a Japanese replica of an US Air Force flight jacket from WWII. Apparently the model she is wearing (a Buzz Rickson's MA-1) was not actually produced in the color black by the company, but as a writer you can make things come into existence:

Some time after the book was published, I recieved a very puzzled letter from the folks at Buzz Rickson's, who had been getting requests for black MA-1's. Once I had explained what was happening, they amazed and delighted me by asking my permission to make a repro of *Cayce's* jacket, to market as their Pattern Recognition model. Yes indeed, I said, and while you're at it, cut me one with an extra four inches in the back, please. Which they did, and it's over the back of a chair nearby as I write this. I love this jacket. (...)

People who complain about the very high cost don't understand the degree of sheer lunatic obsession that goes into these things. You are very unlikely to ever wear another piece of clothing this well-made. I know I never have. (They are actually better than the 1950s USAF originals, which were only finished to military contract standards.) They spent a million dollars, when the company started up, on machinery to reproduce 1950s USAF-spec Crown zippers. Nobody outside of Japan is very interested in paying for that, they told me, smiling. They have found their niche-market, bigtime.

WILLIAM GIBSON BLOG: BUZZ IN BLACK

These are really magnificent jackets. In fact, their whole line of clothes is amazing, and fortunately their is even some stores that sell the brand online.

Buzz Rickson Flight Jackets & Selvage Denim Jeans

Burning Chrome, 1986

William Gibson, Burning Chrome, published 1986. One of the classic 80ies science fiction short story collections, this was put out shortly after Gibson's successful first novel Neuromancer. Collecting his early work, some of it set in the same setting as his novels, such as Burning Chrome and Johnny Mnemonic, it also features a couple of stories written in a different style and setting.

It was hot, the night we burned Chrome. Out in the
malls and plazas, moths were batting themselves to
death against the neon, but in Bobby's loft the only light
came from a monitor screen and the green and red
LEDs on the face of the matrix simulator. I knew every
chip in Bobby's simulator by heart; it looked like your
workaday Ono-Sendai VII. the "Cyberspace Seven,"
but I'd rebuilt it so many time that you'd have had a
hard time finding a square millimeter of factory cir-
cuitry in all that silicon.

We waited side by side in front of the simulator
console, watching the time display in the screen's lower
left corner.

"Go for it," I said, when it was time, but Bobby
was already there, leaning forward to drive the Russian
program into its slot with the heel of his hand. He did it
with the tight grace of a kid slamming change into an ar-
cade game, sure of winning and ready to pull down a
string of free games.

William Gibson aleph - Sprawl series - Burning Chrome (1986)

Read William Gibson's Burning Chrome

The truth in lying

Quoting William Gibson from his blog:

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.

William Gibson Blog: Home Of The Whopper

Neuromancer movie

William Gibson's Neuromancer has been optioned to be made into a movie several times. During the last ten years, Robert Longo, Chris Cunningham and now Joseph Kahn have been rumoured to direct the long-awaited movie.

Gibson himself has uttered skepticism about all speculations and said on his blog that he'll believe it when he sees the movie shot. This was in response to posters on his forum discussing the proposed Kahn adaptation (of which the image at the beginning of this post is supposed to be the film poster artwork).

So it certainly comes as a surprise that Production Weekly posted the following on Twitter, yet failed to elaborate on it or quote a source:

Liv Tyler in talks to star in Joseph Kahn's adaptation of "Neuromancer," based on the seminal novel by William Gibson.

As before, don't hold your breath on this one. You're better off re-reading the book, and learning more about Gibson and his fictional universe at the link below.

William Gibson aleph - Neuromancer (1984)

Wall plug emoticons

Top row, fifth square from left, is simultaneous retail-lust and sticker-shock, on seeing something you really, really want, on eBay, while noting its Buy It Now price. Third row, fifth square from left, is the emotion you feel on dreaming you are Hitler (but somehow innocent, as though Hitler were an Etsy crafter who works, very tentatively, in felt).

William Gibson Blog: FOUND EMOTICONS OF THE FIRST TWO DECADES OF THE 21st CENTURY