A Window, A Light...

Major chunk of writing done today, putting me at 35 pages complete. Clearly not gonna get done by the end of October. I guess it could, if I let things get really desperate. Like, if I absolutely needed two more sections done, it could probably get done. Or like, "done," definitely in quotes. I'm pushing things as hard as I reasonably can, and there's a lot of effort on the wrong side of the reasonable curve to tap into that I don't really have to do, but notwithstanding, I'm probably going to start pushing even further in that direction. I'm not doing further planning tonight because I've got a Marvel game session, though. Tomorrow's probably an all day planning on the next section's structure, getting my probably notes together, going over theory - section two is the heart of the essay, and the thing I've been trying to get to this entire time.

Chapter one is kind of... it has to me more than describing the history of science fiction, and it has to be more than determine William Gibson's probable intentions. It's the chapter where I have to make the case that there's a real perception in the science-fiction community of a "white, Western, male" core demographic that's what science-fiction is. Note that I said "perception." Also consider that I said "a." "A perception." That doesn't mean it's a consensus or that it's accurate, but that enough people share it to influence writing and culture, and not just that it's a perception in the body literate, but that it's kind of a major perception in the general public. So, I mean, I tapped the Hugo Awards nomination fiasco of the last few years, some solid academics, and Gibson's interviews themselves for the sci-fi angle.

There's more to it, but that's the gist. My overall thesis is that Gibson's Blue Ant trilogy - if it's not about the anxiety specifically - contains symptoms of a white, Western, nationalistic anxiety that surrounds the deterioration of the post-Cold War superpower identity and how its been superceded by a kind of new-ish version of this - a technocratic, post-national oligarchy that doesn't care about the old white Western identity, except in so far as the oligarchs are willing to auction off or aquire elements of these establishments to create the foundations of their empires. I say "white" and "Western" fears because if you're not white, not Western, and generally speaking, not male (though that's surprisingly not the major theme, though I'd argue it's still present), you've already experienced this. You're not a central or generic narrative focus, you're diasporic, borderless or post-border, living in the past and future simultaniously, colonialized and post-colonial, already existing withing a dual conciousness, and so on. The fears that we see now have already come to pass - in many ways, white people are living in the past, while people of color, people of non-Western origins (and these are cultural constructions, mind you, but functionally exist), they live in the present. They've experienced the things white dudes are anxious about having happen to them. So, chapter two is examining how these things are present in the text and how Gibson treats them.

Doing any work besides what needs to be done around here is still difficult, but I was checking my notes against my reading of Pattern Recognition and started to compile some writing that demonstrated something I'd suspected but hadn't really gotten around to putting my finger on yet. I was reading an interview from the Paris Review, I think, and Gibson stated that he doesn't really plan his novels out in advance. He's also a guy who gets asked a lot of the same questions, over and over again, and has done a good number of interviews - especially in the last ten or fifteen years. He never really seems to get tired of answering the same questions, but over time, his answers change in subtle ways; I think that because he's asked the same questions so often, he's had a lot of time to think about them. So, when I see an interview with a similar question answered with a similar answer, it's easy to conflate it was a previous interview he's done. Specifically, he ends up talking a lot about the nature of the cyberpunk designation, marketing, the future, dystopian fiction and the nature of dystopia, and the nature of technology and its uses.

What I see in his writing - especially in the Blue Ant novels - is that the stuff he says in the interviews personally is often mirrored in what his characters say. He'll quote characters and characters will occasionally come dangerously close to simply quoting him. While I'm a firm believer in the concept of death of the author, in terms of overt themes, I think the stuff that Gibson says specifically are good indicators of themes in his books, and that those themes are intentional. I mean, intentional in that Gibson is often writing a book about dealing with certain themes where the plot is just an overt mechanism to display those themes at its most realized and almost something of an afterthought in others. 

I have a stack of notebooks on my desk, one book, several uncounted note cards, and 9 tabs in my browser baring the name of one William Gibson as I look for a very specific quote that I never seem to have added to my every increasing list of notes on the man and the subject of dystopian cyberpunk. 

Having re-read old notes and accidently stumbled upon ever newer things that should have been there in the first place, I took a look at what was currently in progress vis a vis my blog and realized that the post is going to take longer then I thought it probably would. My state of affairs is bordering on the ridiculous, but it's a situation I take seriously, so it needs to be remedied. 

In the mean time, let me assure you that my presence here is not mandatory. I genuinely kind of want to talk to you. I am aware that I am freeloading, but there is also time for this kind of business - especially when this kind of business frames my struggles with an amusing feeling of purpose. 

Did you know I specifically cleaned my desk so that I could mess it up with literature notes? It's true. That is a long way of saying, "Obviously, I am a nerd."

The quote I was looking for was when Gibson said that his writings were not really intended to by dystopian, but what I did find came close. The interview was with Scientific American*, and he was asked, "Your fiction has depicted wide class gulfs in which "lowlifes" co-exist with the rich and feudallike corporations that concentrate mind-boggling amounts of wealth... do you think that this disparity will continue to greater extremes as they develop further, and could they potentially restructure the current social order somehow?"

The printed answer, "I depict those socioeconomic gulfs because they exist and because most of the imagined futures I grew up with tended not to depict them. Migration to cities is now so powerful, so universal, that people will create cities, of sorts, simply through migration—cities that literally consist mainly of the people who inhabit them on a given day." is similar to what I assumed the reason had been, or what I remember saying, I forget which is which. Basically that this wide gulf already exists, and when you write it, it looks like a dystopia. 

What I'm writing doesn't hinge on that, but it's certainly part of it. There are lots of times, because Gibson repeats himself, where he says that most fiction, and especially his fiction, is about when it was written. 1984 is about 1948, The Sprawl trilogy is about the 80's, and The Bridge trilogy is about the 90's - regardless of original intentions. This is all in the writing, by the way, so you'll see it again with proper sourcing. If you want to ask about the relevance of cyberpunk, the thing to remember is that it almost can't help being social commentary no matter what the tropes are. Perhaps especially because of the tropes, but probably not.

I really had to take a break and write on this because my writing of this isn't done yet and I wanted to have something up, at the very least. We're still fucking around trying to get a 'yes' or 'no' out of the insurance company about the crawlspace, and when one's as good as another, it's time to fuck off and just find another way of dealing with it since there's very little chance that it's going to be over the deductible in the first place. I also know that I slipped the whole 'I'm getting married.' in kind of under the radar, like some kind of shitty test to see if you're paying attention. There's so much ridiculous shit going around at the moment that something simultaneously good and fun a year away seems akin to fiction and, even if it's on the level, is probably happening either to or for somebody else. 

Like I said before, I'm not sure on the details, so I guess you're likely to know whenever we do for sure if you're the type of person to whom these details are or become relevant and generally speaking, you know who you are. 



* http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gibson-interview-cities-in-fact-and-fiction

Very short, since I'm doing other things, but this occured to me so I'm writing it down.
Hunter S. Thompson and William Gibson have one large element of their writing in common, and it's that both are very precise on brand names and the physicality of objects. I was going to suggest that they diverge on drug and substance names, but even this isn't true. Both are very specific about the types, origin, and effects of controlled (and uncontrolled) substances. What happens in the story is as important as what it happens with, make, model, origin of manufacture, and what happens when you press the red button.