Is William Gibson still SF?

[Gramm838]

His more recent books have been set in the present but due to his take on technology and our relationship with it seems to me that he's still an SF writer.

I've just re-read Neuromancer and started Count Zero again and am remembering just how good, and how advanced, they were for the time they came out

Any thoughts?

 

[hitmouse]

His recent books are not really SF. Still terrific fun, though the last one was a bit of a stretch plotwise in places.

 

[Grunkins]

His most recent three books were dubbed "present day SF." One of his big current ideas is that the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed. The only of the three recent books I've read was Pattern Recognition, taking place in very early 2002. To me, it didn't read as SF, so much as technological fiction. I thought it was an excellent book (better than Neuromancer in fact), with some of the best close third person limited POV writing I've read.

One problem that pops up with writing these books is that they are almost immediately out of date. The plot of Pattern Recognition ceases to work the instant Youtube came about, for example.

 

[j d worthington]

Such a classification only becomes a problem when one looks at sf as predictive... which is, at best, the most minor aspect of the field. Sf set in contemporary times is as old as the field itself, and hundreds of such examples exist, from Wells' War of the Worlds to a vast amount of the New Wave (Moorcock's Cornelius books or Disch's 334, for example), as well as more "classic" sf (Flowers for Algernon is quite obviously set in a contemporary milieu; the only technological advance is the surgical technique, which is left undescribed). Sf isn't about the technology, but about the interaction of some aspect of science (or pseudoscience) and society (or humanity at large). This allows for speculation, yes, but very few sf writers have ever consciously attempted to genuinely predict such things -- it's a fool's game, as totally unexpected changes in what we know throws such things out the window -- frequently.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I think he's still SF. All SF ultimately will become out of date. It's a question of how, when, and how embarrassingly.

 

[JoanDrake]

I don't remember who said it but I've heard that the defining characteristic of SF is that it's about change (and that means generally technical change or change in the world not individual and internal character change which is in all good fiction). If it's about that, it's SF.

 

[Connavar]

I don't remember who said it but I've heard that the defining characteristic of SF is that it's about change (and that means generally technical change or change in the world not individual and internal character change which is in all good fiction). If it's about that, it's SF.

Then that means like 60% of SF classic books by PKD,Moorcock,Vance,Bester,Dish,Orwell and many others are not SF.

You cant oversimplify like that. SF books usually are like than other fiction it can be about anything but in some sort of SF setting or element. PKD best books are social character studies. Orwell classic book is about political story like many others classics by Heinlein and co. No technical change in social realism story.

Technical change is a must only for some SF books and not social,political,character SF books.

 

[hitmouse]

His most recent three books were dubbed "present day SF." One of his big current ideas is that the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed.

yeah OK I'll buy that.

 

[zaltys13]

I recently read Spook Country, this struck me as "Near Future SF" but to be honest with you I find this kind of labeling quite laughable.

For example, I lent this novel to my father who likes to read novels by Clive Cussler, Frederick Forsyth, and on a bad day Matthew Reilly. He also loves the alternative history of Harry Turtledove, the Space Opera of Peter F. Hamilton. And blah blah blah.

Spook Country is a novel that anyone can read. My father read it as a thriller, I read it as an interesting near future novel, with SciFi elements.
Who is right, who is wrong? No one.

He should be applauded for writing novels that appeal to different kinds of people.

SF? not SF? I say yes, Dad says no. He liked it, I liked it. Who cares?

 

[Grimward]

Coincidentally, I am reading Spook Country (almost finished) right now, and I agree with you on both points (it being sci fi, and genre not mattering if it's good), zaltys. Was initially put off by the fact that the chapters in that book are minuscule (some are all of 2 or 3 pages!), but the practice grew on me.