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A review by bluestarfish
Burning Chrome by William Gibson
4.0
The cyberpunk aesthetic shook up the SF world at the time and I have really enjoyed reading this collection of short stories and exploring the origins. It still feels so fresh and exciting and relevant. And somehow quite familiar at the same time which shows how much this style has influenced other authors I like too.
Somehow, shamefully, I have never known that the sentiment/phrase "the street finds its own uses for things" comes from William Gibson's short story Burning Chrome (along with the first use of "cyberspace"). This collection takes its name from that Sprawl story but the stories themselves span several of Gibson's interests and styles and themes from his early days and are not all Sprawl stories. (This collection was first published in 1986.)
Lowlife and high-tech mix in a world that actually feels global. The future might not be even distributed through the world but at least it's not all in America! The stories were written before the Berlin Wall came down so there are some interesting echoes of the time reverberating through the action too.
Johnny Mnemonic - oh hello Molly Millions! Now I want to go read Neuromancer again. The image of the dance is incredible and disturbing.
The Gernsback Continuum - the future that didn't happened but left traces in architecture, echoes of something that never happened.
Fragments of a Hologram Rose - high tech and loss and melancholy.
The Belonging Kind, co-written with John Shirley - they took an idea, a kernel of truth (some people just belong in bars perfectly), and ran with it into dark fantasy and surrealism, I really like this one. And the fact that co-writing is something some people can do.
Hinterlands - it's the corps not the govs that have the money to meld psychology and alien encounters. The world is desperately seeking fragments of alien tech and sacrificing the humans to get it.
Red Star, Winter Orbit, co-written with Bruce Sterling - strikes in space! And then squatters in space! Amazing ideas.
New Rose Hotel - noir and corporate espionage in a world that is cut-throat. Again there's the jolt of familiarity of names from the Sprawl
The Winter Market - what is it to be human or seek after immortality, never easy questions and especially not when there might not be much that is human that is left in you? Or with the melding of humans and tech are you actually capturing something in your dreams that speaks more widely, like Lise does? Vending machine sandwiches though, not everything in this future is worth waiting for...
Dogfight, co-written with Michael Swanwick - bleak and twisted! It is a savage story of obsession.
Burning Chrome - wildly inventive and detailed, this is fiction carving up a new kind of space.
Somehow, shamefully, I have never known that the sentiment/phrase "the street finds its own uses for things" comes from William Gibson's short story Burning Chrome (along with the first use of "cyberspace"). This collection takes its name from that Sprawl story but the stories themselves span several of Gibson's interests and styles and themes from his early days and are not all Sprawl stories. (This collection was first published in 1986.)
Lowlife and high-tech mix in a world that actually feels global. The future might not be even distributed through the world but at least it's not all in America! The stories were written before the Berlin Wall came down so there are some interesting echoes of the time reverberating through the action too.
Johnny Mnemonic - oh hello Molly Millions! Now I want to go read Neuromancer again. The image of the dance is incredible and disturbing.
The Gernsback Continuum - the future that didn't happened but left traces in architecture, echoes of something that never happened.
Fragments of a Hologram Rose - high tech and loss and melancholy.
The Belonging Kind, co-written with John Shirley - they took an idea, a kernel of truth (some people just belong in bars perfectly), and ran with it into dark fantasy and surrealism, I really like this one. And the fact that co-writing is something some people can do.
Hinterlands - it's the corps not the govs that have the money to meld psychology and alien encounters. The world is desperately seeking fragments of alien tech and sacrificing the humans to get it.
Red Star, Winter Orbit, co-written with Bruce Sterling - strikes in space! And then squatters in space! Amazing ideas.
New Rose Hotel - noir and corporate espionage in a world that is cut-throat. Again there's the jolt of familiarity of names from the Sprawl
The Winter Market - what is it to be human or seek after immortality, never easy questions and especially not when there might not be much that is human that is left in you? Or with the melding of humans and tech are you actually capturing something in your dreams that speaks more widely, like Lise does? Vending machine sandwiches though, not everything in this future is worth waiting for...
Dogfight, co-written with Michael Swanwick - bleak and twisted! It is a savage story of obsession.
Burning Chrome - wildly inventive and detailed, this is fiction carving up a new kind of space.