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>> No. 6686 Anonymous
13th October 2017
Friday 1:47 pm
6686 Cyberpunk
I just finished reading most of William Gibson's work. I love his creativity and scene building, but most of his stories are quite horribly written, and he obviously has issues with women.

Are there any cyberpunk novels with a somewhat more realistic view of human nature? The only other author I know is Neal Stephenson, and his stuff is fedora tier.
Expand all images.
>> No. 6688 Anonymous
13th October 2017
Friday 6:01 pm
6688 spacer
>Are there any cyberpunk novels with a somewhat more realistic view of human nature?

I feel like this is an oxymoron by the nature of the genre being quite a simplistic struggle of good vs evil.
>> No. 6689 Anonymous
13th October 2017
Friday 6:02 pm
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>>6686
Problems with women? How?
>> No. 6690 Anonymous
13th October 2017
Friday 6:14 pm
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>>6689

>issues with women
>fedora tier

Probably didn't pass the Bechamel test or whatever that daft shite is called.

Don't worry about him lad, he still wouldn't be happy if every single female character was Ellen Uhura Scully.
>> No. 6691 Anonymous
13th October 2017
Friday 6:53 pm
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>>6688
>I feel like this is an oxymoron by the nature of the genre being quite a simplistic struggle of good vs evil.

You can have a simplistic struggle between good and evil which is full of Mary-Sues, and various other forms of two-dimensional characters.
Or you can have a simplistic struggle between good and evil, which has characters who actually have consistent and believably human personalities.
>> No. 6692 Anonymous
13th October 2017
Friday 6:57 pm
6692 spacer
>>6691
You can, but being able to understand people as complex human beings tends to go along with also being able to see morality as being complex.
>> No. 6693 Anonymous
13th October 2017
Friday 7:32 pm
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>>6688
I don't know what shite you have been reading, but most of what I have read have the film noir feel to it with the constant "everybody is shite, and the good people die early or don't care."
>> No. 6694 Anonymous
13th October 2017
Friday 7:36 pm
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>>6690
Why is he being a cunt? I haven't read all of Gibson's books, but the handful I read were fucking good.

Fuck you OP. Go write your own book.
>> No. 6698 Anonymous
21st October 2017
Saturday 6:32 am
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>>6688
I disagree - there is a lot of potential for moral ambiguity in a grungy cyberpunk megacity. Maybe more than most genres.

>>6689
There's always a mouthy, butt-kicking babe that plays a major role, probably because Gibson is a schlub who is uncomfortable with his masculinity and wants a woman to take initiative in everything. Speaking from experience here TBH.

>>6694
"Fucking good" and "horribly written" aren't mutually exclusive. Gibson made me fall in love with cyberpunk, and I want to read more of the genre by someone who's a better writer. I think it's odd that so much of it is defined by just this one guy.
>> No. 6699 Anonymous
21st October 2017
Saturday 11:04 am
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>>6698
>I think it's odd that so much of it is defined by just this one guy.
Was it, though? I'm not sure why everyone like to suck Gibson's dick for Neuromancer (1984), considering Blade Runner and Tron (1982). Is it because it's a book, literature's what counts? Maybe they forgot that BR was based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1986), plus basically everything coherent that Dick ever wrote has some aspect of cyberpunk to it. Admittedly none of these have quite that 'High-tech, low-life' aesthetic that practically defines cyberpunk. That sort of urban sprawl, a mega-city barely kept from descending into barbarity by a strong-armed justice system... Did you know that Judge Dredd pre-dates Neuromancer by seven years? Both 2000 AD (a British venture) and Heavy Metal (an ostensibly American venture which began as a photocopy scanlation of European comics) were around doing similar things long before that. These are hardly unique examples either, there are plenty of lesser-known writers and artists doing similar things I can't even list all of now.
Anyway I'm getting carried away. Gibson didn't innovate anything in particular, he just got lucky and was made into a symbol.
>> No. 6700 Anonymous
21st October 2017
Saturday 11:05 am
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*Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
sorry.
>> No. 6701 Anonymous
21st October 2017
Saturday 12:56 pm
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I've never really managed to figure out cyberpunk fiction. It fits everything I should like, but when I dipped into it as a teenager I didn't get on with it, and when I came back to Neuromancer and Snowcrash a couple of years ago I thought they were just simply bad. Terrible pacing, trite characterisation... just badly written in general. I appreciate that in the 80s/early 90s this stuff must have seemed ground-breaking and visionary, but now it merely feels dated and all that's left is the style of writing, which I don't like.

Are there any cyberpunk novels that don't read like they've been written by a speedfreak, or does that just go with the territory?
>> No. 6702 Anonymous
21st October 2017
Saturday 1:55 pm
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>>6701
Schismatrix? Try to get a version that has the short stories as well, they do tie up some loose ends from the main story.
>> No. 6703 Anonymous
21st October 2017
Saturday 7:18 pm
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>>6702
Thank you for the recommendation. The first brief chapter on Amazon doesn't have the affect of being written under the heavy influence of stimulants, at least.
>> No. 6705 Anonymous
27th October 2017
Friday 3:23 am
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>>6699

> I'm not sure why everyone like to suck Gibson's dick for Neuromancer (1984), considering Blade Runner and Tron (1982).
> Gibson didn't innovate anything in particular, he just got lucky and was made into a symbol.

What Gibson really achieved with the sprawl trilogy, far beyond his unrealistic imaginings of cyberspace or his prediction of the Internet of Things was capturing the hearts and minds of an entire subculture of teenage hackers and phreaks. Gibson was able to capture both the thrill of hacking and drive and desire to hack incredibly well, while also fueling the fires of many a teenage fantasy that they could one day be a "cyberspace cowboy" or a "digital samurai" selling their hacking talents to the highest bidder (which, to be fair, most of us actually are).

Essentially the "cyberpunk dystopia" setting was entirely arbitrary and interchangable; other than the silly bit where the AIs merge and become the matrix, Case and Bobby's stories could have been transplanted into any setting with technology advanced enough for Gibson's mumbo jumbo to pass muster and the trilogy would still have had the same success.

>>6701
> Snowcrash a couple of years ago I thought they were just simply bad. Terrible pacing, trite characterisation... just badly written in general.

Did Stephenson ever really write any sincere cyberpunk fiction? Snowcrash was an on-point lampoon of cyberpunk for the most part, with every character, idea and scenario stereotyped and turned up to 11 for (admittedly negligible) comedic effect (Hiro Protagonist? Come on).
>> No. 6722 Anonymous
23rd December 2017
Saturday 7:53 am
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>>6699
I liked those movies, although the Sprawl novels are much longer and have a lot more details. I might check out Judge Dredd again, it was very similar to Gibson's world but didn't take itself as seriously IIRC.

The '60s novels are not bad. One I enjoyed was "Player Piano" by Kurt Vonnegut. He is not as imaginative as William Gibson, but his characters are a lot better, except for the poor people. You can tell that he was a little too bourgeois to let his imagination run wild, or get into the heads of real poor people. I also enjoyed seeing a novel from over 50 years ago deal with the "robots will steal our jobs" nonsense.
>> No. 6723 Anonymous
23rd December 2017
Saturday 2:54 pm
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>>6701
I enjoyed the first half of Snow Crash. Neuromancer, Altered Carbon, most of the cyberpunk canon just seem a bit gay. I'm interested in Seveneves by Stephenson, if anybody has an opinion to provide.

My favourite sci-fi novel is Ender's Game. I've tried two other Orson Scott Card books from the "Enderverse" and they're utter shite.
>> No. 6724 Anonymous
23rd December 2017
Saturday 5:23 pm
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>>6723
> I enjoyed the first half of Snow Crash. Neuromancer, Altered Carbon

What stopped you from reading the second halves, or were the second halves magically universally shit?
>> No. 6725 Anonymous
24th December 2017
Sunday 8:20 pm
6725 spacer
>>6724

He wouldn't know, would he?

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