[HN Gopher] The Gernsback Continuum by William Gibson (1981)
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The Gernsback Continuum by William Gibson (1981)
Author : pmoriarty
Score : 73 points
Date : 2020-11-30 16:34 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (web.archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (web.archive.org)
| steve_gh wrote:
| A brilliant bit of writing. My favourite WG short story
| lasagnaphil wrote:
| This reminds me of the concept of hauntology [1] [2] - the return
| of elements of the past as symbolic ghosts, haunting our current
| world. It's strange since this concept was introduced in
| philosophy by Derrida in the 90s, and further studied by cultural
| theorists such as Simon Reynolds and Mark Fisher - but Gibson
| seems to nail this phenomenon in his short story a decade
| earlier.
|
| And this phenomenon is perhaps most exacerbated today, as we are
| experiencing a gradual but terminal decline of former capitalist
| empires, but nobody can imagine a new revolutionary path out (as
| Mark Fisher would say, "the slow cancellation of the future")
| Ghostly ideologies from the past (communism, fascism) are quickly
| recycled on the Internet for their nostalgic sign value, but as
| it is quickly consumed and commoditized it fails to offer a
| solution for the problems of our current world. And more people
| are listening to music [3] that admittedly makes them feel
| "nostalgic for a past that does not exist".
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauntology [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauntology_(music) [3]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporwave
| Stierlitz wrote:
| @lasagnaphil ..
|
| Some very interesting points there. I wonder the reason for
| down-voting the text into a faded shade of grey?
| lasagnaphil wrote:
| Ah, thank you for the unfading. Sometimes comments that seem
| to be vaguely political gets downvoted kinda fast in this
| site. But nevertheless, I was just trying to connect the
| theme of this short story to a well-known phenomenon of
| "retrograde nostalgia" that is not just a symptom of
| political right but also to the political left. In that
| regard I view Gibson and this story as quite a visionary,
| predicting the cultural sentiments that would define the
| neoliberal era, before Derrida and Fisher.
|
| And also, there are many literature papers on the connection
| between the Gernsback Continuum and hauntology on the
| Internet - I've read a good piece before but the PDF link is
| kinda broken at the moment and cannot find it anymore.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I bet there's almost as many who would reflexively downvote
| a mention of Derrida as who downvote lefty politics:)
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "The Thirties had seen the first generation of American
| industrial designers; until the Thirties, all pencil sharpeners
| had looked like pencil sharpeners--your basic Victorian
| mechanism, perhaps with a curlicue of decorative trim. After the
| advent of the designers, some pencil sharpeners looked as though
| they'd been put together in wind tunnels."_
|
| A leading figure of this design movement was French-born Raymond
| Loewy:
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/meet-product-desig...
|
| Gibson writes that "most successful American designers had been
| recruited from the ranks of Broadway theater designers", but this
| is not the case with Loewy.
|
| He had an interesting life and career, and his autobiography
| "Never Leave Well Enough Alone" is a great read. Sadly it seems
| to be out of print in English.
| egypturnash wrote:
| When this came out, it was a repudiation of the caricatured
| ideals of the early SF of the 1930s - stuff that was fifty-one
| years old at the time. This was the dream of the future everyone
| had, once.
|
| This story is thirty-nine years old now. Gibson's _Neuromancer_
| is only three years younger, and it feels as laughably innocent
| to our future-dwelling eyes as anything he was making fun of in
| this story.
|
| Time makes fools of us all.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| It's particularly funny seeing how enamored Gibson was with
| Japan. Very much an artifact of the 80's. Even though, truth be
| told, he's never been that good at writing Asian characters. I
| love his work but dammit for someone who stole so much from
| Asian aesthetic, he always relegates his Asian characters to
| stereotypes or the weak and ineffectual^[1].
|
| That said, I think the bones of Neuromancer could make a great
| modern story. Particularly the concept of the Tessier-Ashpools
| being these incestuous, almost pseudo-deities due to their
| wealth. The wasps' nest metaphor and all. I'd also love to see
| Wintermute/Neuromancer connected with surveillance capitalism
| and our mass collecting of data.
|
| [1]: I haven't read all of Gibson's novels so please correct me
| if there's a novel out there with better Asian characters.
| csours wrote:
| I've just re-read Jurassic Park and I'm reminded of
| Crichton's portrayal of Japanese characters as well. The rise
| of Japan in the 80s was certainly on a lot of people's minds.
| fl0wenol wrote:
| I mean, he literally followed it up with Rising Sun.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| Gibson's schtick was always to trade on stereotypes.
| Charitably, his books were "idea novels" about social forces.
| None of his characters were ever human.
| Neputys wrote:
| I like your to the point dryness. A bit cynical, but to the
| point. What would you say was the reason for him being so
| popular then? This is a normal question. I agree with what
| you wrote.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think that's ideal for works that are primarily about the
| environment that characters inhabit. If the characters or
| also fluid and deep it's difficult to understand how the
| environment is affecting them. Since you know how those
| stereotypes would react in the contemporary environment, a
| lot of the interest in science fiction is to examine the
| contrast in behavior between now and this future.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Gibson's novels are full of stereotypes, particularly ones
| that seem like they stepped out of a Noir or hardboiled
| detective novel, such as his assassins, mercenaries,
| corporate execs, crime bosses, and an assortment of street
| life. But it's too harsh to say _every_ character is a
| stereotype or that _none_ of his characters were ever
| human.
|
| Take one of the protagonists of _Count Zero_ , Marly
| Krushkhova, _" the disgraced former operator of a tiny
| Paris gallery"_, who hunts down the maker of the Joseph
| Cornell-like boxes. She's completely human, and I can't
| think of any stereotype she would fit in to.
| varjag wrote:
| I dunno, it was grim then and it still is. We did end up in
| substantially better future, all things considered.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| '80s cyberpunk is still grim, but I think what they failed to
| capture is the dissonant tone of our modern dystopia. Classic
| cyberpunk was all dark sprawling streets and neon-lit seedy
| underbellies, led by shadowy faceless corporate execs of
| austere zaibatsu.
|
| Whereas the malefactors of great wealth in our present did
| not forget the average consumer and instead manipulates our
| emotions with cutting-edge marketing, algorithmic analysis of
| our deepest desires, and use of primary colors and comfy
| fonts. The copy is nonthreatening or hip language. The
| reality is grim, but the appearance isn't. More _Brave New
| World_ and less _1984_. More Disney, filtered through Banksy.
|
| I think most Gibson cyberpunk failed to capture the banality
| of the future, because they were fixated on the romantic
| cowboy-gangster hackers outlaws who lived on the fringes.
| Among the big names, Neal Stephenson did a great job of it
| with _Snow Crash_ and _The Diamond Age_ because he remembered
| that the megacorps had to sell to someone at the end of the
| day, and had to have shiny customer-facing dross.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| _> I think most Gibson cyberpunk failed to capture the
| banality of the future, because they were fixated on the
| romantic cowboy-gangster hackers outlaws who lived on the
| fringes._
|
| This is both an excellent encapsulation of where cyberpunk
| missed the mark, _and_ why its appeal is so enduring today.
|
| The real-life cyberpunks of the 2020s aren't staging
| dramatic data heists or getting in firefights with
| megacorp-employed super-soldiers; they're selling fake
| social media accounts for pennies or hanging phones in
| trees to game Amazon's gig delivery system. Gibson was
| right on the money that "the street finds its own uses" for
| technology; his mistake was underestimating just how
| pedestrian both the tech and those uses would be.
|
| In its original milieu, cyberpunk was an escape from the
| technological unknown. Today, its' an escape from the
| technological all-too-well-known.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" what they failed to capture is the dissonant tone of our
| modern dystopia"_
|
| I just reread _Neuromancer_ and _Count Zero_ , and the main
| thing I was struck by that Gibson didn't predict was
| today's omnipresent surveillance.
|
| The people in his novels don't voluntarily carry around
| tracking devices and recoring devices. What they read and
| watch isn't tracked, and neither are their preferences or
| the opinions they express. They tend to have much more
| privacy than most people do today.
|
| In this respect, I find today's society closer to _1984_
| than to _Brave New World_. It 's _1984_ , complete with
| _Newspeak_ , _doublethink_ and _Two Minutes of Hate_ for
| the boogeyman of the day, telescreens that combine
| televisions with security cameras and microphones what
| monitor what you do.
|
| It's interesting that Gibson chose not to incorporate such
| dystopian themes in his books, and opted for what is in
| many ways a more optimistic dystopia.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| You make a good point about surveillance, but I'd argue
| it's still more _Brave New World_ , a dystopia built on
| consumerism, hedonism, and the compliance of the
| willingly oppressed over _1984_ 's brutal, spartan, war
| economy. The citizens of Oceania may choose to buy into
| propaganda and nationalism, but they're also forced to by
| an all-powerful police state. The inhabitants of Huxley's
| World State certainly are subject to an oppressive state
| and brainwashing, but they also do so under far more
| comfortable circumstances. _1984_ is motivated by pain,
| _Brave New World_ is motivated by pleasure- I 'd consider
| the latter to be closer to modern consumerist society.
|
| I would assume Gibson simply didn't consider the
| technological ramifications of ubiquitous surveillance,
| or it's just his setup of a decentralized oppressive
| world of feuding megacorps and criminal super-gangs would
| have less thematic use for it than _1984_ 's setup of one
| (or three) totalitarian governments able to monitor
| everyone.
| pessimizer wrote:
| That perspective is a bit Eloi; plenty of people are not
| doing well.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| It isn't; a society can be dominated by emphasizing
| values of consumer-driven hedonism or social jockeying
| within castes (as in Brave New World) over totalitarian
| war and hatred (as in 1984), and still fall short of its
| aspirations.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Why not .. _all of the above_?
|
| If this sort of thing scratches an itch you have, try
| Lawrence Sander's _The Tomorrow File_ , from 1975. The
| author rather gleefully throws as many dystopian tropes
| into the mix as is feasible (and then a few more for good
| measure), and makes it work, oddly enough.
| ajxs wrote:
| I had the same thought regarding surveillance. At the
| risk of sounding like devil's advocate, had Gibson
| accurately predicted the high-tech panopticon of the
| modern day, he could create a much better thematic
| environment by ignoring or downplaying it. Much of the
| "high-tech, low-life" that characterises the sprawl would
| become near-impossible in the high-surveillance climate
| of a country like modern China. I feel like you'd have to
| expend so much literary energy constantly explaining how
| they shake the basic, ubiquitous surveillance we're used
| to,'excusing' the characters from overexposure. Then
| again, explaining the mechanics of anti-surveillance
| might provide the kind of cyberpunk brain food that we
| all love.
|
| That being said, there's plenty of ubiquitous
| surveillance happening in the Sprawl Trilogy. Marly's
| pursuit by Virek in Count Zero springs to mind here.
| Pamar wrote:
| I think he missed wifi/cell phones, mostly. Had he
| thought of that, he would probably have explored these
| themes a bit more.
|
| In Neuromancer there is an episode (second half, when
| they have already moved away from Earth surface) where a
| character is targeted by a sort of drone/service droid.
|
| But I also sorta remember that in a subsequent story (I
| think it was Count Zero? Not sure anymore) one of the
| characters... cuts a videocall or something similar by
| actually yanking the cord out of the wall.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| It was easy to learn from the failures and successes
| predicted in dystopian scifi. Take the Brave New World
| dystopian marketing and mix it with a touch of societal
| enforced wrong speak and lack of education from 1984, with
| the genetic manipulation and corporate domination and
| rampant manipulation from cyberpunk noir, voila! You have
| the perfect cocktail of a zombified workforce in a neo
| gentrification with an underclass that thinks they're
| educated, when they are really craftsmen to maintain
| software, power grids, electronics, consumerism and
| surveilance. (sorry... I didn't mean to get so dark)
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| IMO cyberpunk was maybe just too early. I think brain
| implants, gene editing, AI and other technologies are going
| to happen, and these technologies will redefine what it
| means to be human. We will be at risk of losing our
| humanity, of losing meaning, just as cyberpunk predicted.
| It's just... It's already been 40 years since cyberpunk
| started, and it might be another 40 years until those
| technological and human challenges really materialize. In
| the meantime, other important societal challenges are
| surfacing due to increased computerization and networking.
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| > _IMO cyberpunk was maybe just too early. I think brain
| implants, gene editing, AI and other technologies are
| going to happen_
|
| I had a discussion with someone - "if the 21th century is
| the century of biotech" (the cliche in the Silicon Valley
| since the late 90s) is true, why are we seeing little
| progress? My reply was: perhaps biotech history will be
| similar to electronics history, and it's just too early
| for now. Spark-gap transmitters were put into service in
| the 1900 and started the electronic age. In the
| 1910-1920, vacuum tubes were invented (the entire radio
| industry started before we even had an RF amplifier). In
| the 1940s, the first generation of electronic computers
| came into existence. Transistors were invented in the
| 1950s and practical ones didn't exist until the 1960s.
| VLSI started in the early 70s, and it's only in the 1980
| that the microcomputer revolution was finally here.
|
| Although Moore's Law arguably is much older than VLSI,
| but it still took 40 years before the new science of
| electronics invented the computers, and another 40 years
| before VLSI's exponential growth. Thus, I wonder, is the
| Human Genome Project the spark-gap transmitters of our
| era? Then CRISPR-Cas9 is the vacuum tube? And today we
| see a Hacker News headline _" AlphaFold: a solution to a
| 50-year-old grand challenge in biology"_ [0], a
| breakthrough of protein folding using deep learning.
| Well, we are probably reaching the biotech equivalent of
| electromechanical computers right now. This "electronics-
| biotech" analogy seems right, if it's the case, brain-
| computer interface will be invented in the 2070s, like
| 1970s VLSI.
|
| On the other hand, classic cyberpunk is always about the
| near-future. Its plots were usually based on a quick
| interpolation of the extreme growth of computing power we
| were seeing in the 80s, combined with the caricature of
| post-capitalism, it is only from this assumption that
| leads to radical social changes. If the story took place
| in the 22th century instead of 40 years later, it would
| be very "uncyberpunk". Cyberpunk's predictions has failed
| to materialize from this perspective. But it may still
| have a chance - if the singularitarianism are correct,
| the singularity will be there by 2050...
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25253488
| helios_invictus wrote:
| Did we?
| varjag wrote:
| I mean, one major character there is a World War 3 veteran
| who had been turned into a computer drone.
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| Cyberpunk is already here, it's just not very evenly
| distributed, yet.
| bigbubba wrote:
| Unless you figure you'd be privileged enough to live in
| Freeside, I'd say so.
| jerf wrote:
| I'd say give us another 5-20 years before saying we
| dodged it.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" This was the dream of the future everyone had, once."_
|
| In a 2014 interview[1], William Gibson said:
|
| _" It hasn't ever really been a monolithic thing. The gleaming
| kitchens and the monorail and the flying cars, and all of that,
| in the 1950's coexisted with a strain of left-leaning American
| sociopolitically aware prose science fiction, which was being
| published in contrast to its political opposite -- the
| political opposite was called _Astounding Stories _and the
| liberal scifi magazine was called_ Galaxy _, and the writers..
| there was a little bit of crossover and they would drink
| together when they went to science fiction conventions but
| otherwise they didn 't have much to do with one another."_
|
| _" If you look at the stories that were being published in
| _Galaxy _, they were quite dystopian and grittier and more
| naturalistic, and to my mind altogether more intelligent, but
| that 's sort of a matter of taste, so it's never all one
| scenario, though we tend to remember it that way."_
|
| [1] - at around 18 minutes in to
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dlvle5YBv4
| Neputys wrote:
| You are right on the money in a way. Neuromancer was the dream
| of the future everyone had, once. But it's just a "what" a
| manipulation if you will. Gernsback Continuum shows the depth
| of his insight it's a "why" and "how" something way more
| timeless. No surprise it becomes more relevant than his other
| work as time goes by. It's kind of sad, to me at least it shows
| he could have written something way more serious but chose fame
| and glory during his lifetime instead of shot at immortality so
| to speak. Really really effing sad...
| tannerbrockwell wrote:
| In the same vein, the possibilities of the Sonora Aero Club:
|
| "One hundred years later, a house in Houston, Texas, caught on
| fire. In the aftermath, a fire inspector instructed the family to
| get rid of some of the old, miraculously unscathed junk in the
| attic. The family complied, and everything was soon landfill-
| bound.
|
| Among that debris: the 12 illustrated scrapbooks of one Charles
| August Albert Dellschau, German immigrant, supposed former Sonora
| Aero Club member. Created between 1908 and 1921, during
| Dellschau's retirement, the pages document his recollections of
| the machines, meetings, and men of the erstwhile Club."[1]
|
| [1]:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/charl...
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Or like a particular Texas gun club, in _Planetary_.
|
| https://artbyarion.blogspot.com/2017/07/planetary-18-warren-...
| karaterobot wrote:
| Thanks for the link, that was interesting!
| jgon wrote:
| It was turned into a pretty good short film as well if anyone is
| interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh5QHtGmXn4
| robocat wrote:
| Interesting - starts at 0:55 if you want to skip classification
| etc.
|
| Very appropriate given this para in the story: "There's a
| British obsession with the more baroque elements of American
| pop culture, something like the weird cowboys-and-Indians
| fetish of the West Germans or the aberrant French hunger for
| old Jerry Lewis films. In Dialta Downes this manifested itself
| in a mania for a uniquely American form of architecture that
| most Americans are scarcely aware of. At first I wasn't sure
| what she was talking about, but gradually it began to dawn on
| me. I found myself remembering Sunday morning television in the
| Fifties."
| ghaff wrote:
| Although Gibson's Sprawl stories and novels are probably better
| known, this is actually my favorite Gibson short.
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