Caltrops - Dead Trees





	[quote name="Zsenicorpse"][quote name="Mischief Maker"]A rather frustrating book that sets up a zillion potentially interesting themes, like the increasingly intrusive and predatory nature of marketing or the little betrayals that begin the inevitable commodification of underground subcultures, then throws them all aside to focus on the least interesting part of the book: the whodunit of some anonymous person releasing tiny movie clips on the internet. The only thing I can recommend it for is its familiar description of what it's like being part of an internet forum community. I'm a little shocked that the guy who made his name writing violent novels about cyber-samurai suddenly turns around and writes the most aggressively Metrosexual book I've ever read.[/quote] It's tough being an ideas man. It's even worse if your aesthetic progenitor is Stanislaw Lem. "...A pig saddled with a conscience..." Man, that's an act you don't need to be following. I think Gibson's problem is that he's a great observer and a great ideas guy, but not a great <i>author</i>. All that cool-ass shit, and he keeps muffing it on pat situations, plots, characters - bright young kids, murder mysteries without the murders, standard potboiler fare. Someone else should have taken his ideas and written his book for him, kind of a singers/songwriters affair. I wish that was done more often, because sometimes the idea guys aren't good novelists and the good novelists aren't good idea guys. Instead we're stuck with Alan Dean Foster writing <u>Total Recall</u> and <i>not much else.</i> Oh wait, I almost forgot my favorite example of exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about: Steven Brust's <u>The Phoenix Guards</u> and <u>Five Hundred Years After</u>. These are two books which took the basic plot structure and characters from the Alexandre Dumas (pere) books <u>The Three Musketeers</u> and <u>Twenty Years After</u> They trim off all the fat from the originals: royalist prejudice, retarded lionization of the most retarded facets of youth, hackneyed visions of love and sexuality, religious tripe. In its place they substitute actual villains (instead of incredibly good administrators), genuinely even-handed political intrigue, and robust, likeable, and unbiased male and female characterization, while losing none of the swashes buckled or adventures enjoyed. A very good rewrite. [/quote]