Author Archives: Enoc

Gibson in New York Times..

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Todays NY Times had an interesting Q&A session with William Gibson.

“Do you feel that you’ve transcended the science-fiction genre in your work? My roots are in a genre. That is the funny thing. Novels are called novels because, ideally, they provide a novel experience. But in genre, you’re sort of buying a guarantee that you are going to have essentially the same experience again and again. It’s a novel. It won’t be too novel. Don’t worry.”

See the full William Gibson Interview… (you will need to click an ad to see the interview)

thanks to Noemi for the heads up – Enoc

Series Review Round Up – Alec Effinger’s Marid Audran

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Well I finally finished Alec Effinger’s series about Marid Audran. Moving onto Spook Country but not before I give you all a quick review and my recommendations. I will try not to include any spoilers. First of all the series consists of 3 books. Make sure to read them in order: When Gravity Fails, A Fire in the Sun and The Exile Kiss. A new book of Marid Audran Short Stories was just released called “Budayeen Nights”. It is important to note that Effinger passed away in 2002 so unless someone discovers more short stories or decides to takes up the mantle of writing about Marid Audran this most excellent “Shaykh” will reveal no more of his story.

Setting:

The setting is all important here. Sometime in the future in an Islamic ruled city somewhere in North Africa in a quarter of the city called the Budayeen. The world’s countries have fractured into smaller nation states. Islam has a much larger hold on the world’s population.

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Another Punk… Steampunk

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Out of the world of Cyberpunk came the concept of Steampunk… ” Steampunk is a subgenre of fantasy and speculative fiction which came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often set in Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date. ” (from wikipedia).

Of course I credit William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s book “The Difference Engine” (I think I need to re-read it) with mainstreaming the concept…

Anyway here is a great link to steampunk like items that people have created.

Enoc

A night with William Gibson in Spook Country

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William Gibson Cody’s As mentioned in my last post – Ling and I attended a signing and reading of William Gibson’s Spook Country last night. About 50 + people attended (full house) the event at Cody’s (last remaining) Bookstore on 4th St in Berkeley. Ling and I have attended these kind of events before ( for Neil Gaiman and William Gibson ) and it follows a usual pattern of the author reading a chapter, answering some questions from the crowd and then the book signing. This was indeed how the night went. Gibson read chapter 42 of the book ( perhaps an homage to Douglas Adams someone in line suggested ).

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Spook Country…

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Tonight Ling and I are heading to Spook Country …. actually we are heading to Cody’s bookstore in Berkeley to see/hear William Gibson talk about and I am sure read from his new book Spook Country… Clearly Gibson is one of the pioneers of Cyberpunk and either Ling or I will have a report back to you on the experience.

Shadowrun the series Part 2

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So what makes the Shadowrun Novels so special? Glad you asked. As I said in my previous post I was really a fantasy book reader prior to reading the first book in the Shadowrun series Never Deal with a Dragon. What made Shadowrun so unique was that it combined Science Fiction with Magic. The premise here is that its 2070 the world has undergone some serious changes. First thing is that corporations have taken over as the major powers in the world. Secondly magic has be reawakened in the world and a process of goblinization has happened with new races being expressed genetically, so now the world has dwarves, orcs, trolls, elves and all sorts of nasties. The American Indians have regained parts of the US as their Shamans regain their strength and the Elves also have taken territory for their own. So the United States is now gone as we know it and really the only thing that spans these new nation states are these huge Multinational Corporations. Each Corporation has its own Security Force (which are basically armies) and their own Archologies in these nation states. In addition to magic technology has reached a point where machine and man are married as well. Cyberware for both computer interaction and for augmentation is rampant and I truly believe that the concept of the Matrix ( 9 years before the Movie ) was invented in these Novels (certainly the more original and well thought out interpretation).

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Shadowrun the series Part 1

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I mentioned earlier that this site’s name is an homage to the Shadowrun Novels and thought I would expand on the series a little bit and tell you why I enjoy it so much. First of all Shadowrun started out as a RPG ( role playing game ). I have to admit I have never really played the RPG though I was definitely raised on Role Playing Games like Dungeons and Dragons, Arduin Grimore, Car Wars, Boothill and the like. I think up until I started reading the Shadowrun books my interest in Science Fiction was fairly low. Up until that time I spent most of my reading hours on Fantasy. William Gibson’s Neuromancer had been out for 5 years or so and I am sure I read it previously ( and his other books ) but really the Shadowrun Novels kicked off my interest in Cyberpunk.

More to come…

Bloggers start your Engines..

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Just a note that I will be joined by Ling in blogging on shadowrunning.com. Ling and I go way back (30 years or so) and have to say that of the two of us he is better “read” than I and far more articulate. While I stumble along with my posts, Ling will be churning well thought out and well written  posts, hopefully on a frequent basis ( I hope ). He is also quite the writer so I am hoping that he will post some short stories as well. Just an FYI both Ling and I have 60 + years of science fiction reading under our belts (now much bigger than they were when we were kids) so hopefully we will have something me to say on this blog. We be going to a signing of William Gibson for his new book Spook Country shortly and will report to you on how that went.

iPhone? You Phone?

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iPhoneWell along with my interest in Cyberpunk is an unhealthy interest in “gadgets” (just an extension of cyberpunk lust). In particular I am a appleophile ( all you MS lovers run for the hills ) and I guess in gadgets in general. I was not one of those people that ran out and bought an iPod ( ok everyone in my family has one ) but I did wait in line for an hour with my 7 year old son to get an iPhone when it was released to the world last month. Up until that time I had been using a Treo 650 and fairly happy with it. I will have to say that the iPhone really is a huge leap from my Treo in what it does and how it functions. At this point the only thing that is frustrating to me, is that they need to release more iPhone based applications and open up the iPhone to developers. The concept of having all iPhone applications delivered via the Web is too limiting. There are plenty of times when I would like to play a game for instance and I am either out of wifi/cell range (like on BART). If I had to say what do I miss from my Treo I would say scrabble and yahtzee. Nothing else 😀