Notes
1
"Kumiko stared as Sally drew her past arrays of of Coronation plate and jowled Churchill teapots. "This is gomi," Kumiko ventured, when they paused at an intersection. Rubbish. In Tokyo, worn and useless things were landfill. Sally grinned wolfishly. "This is England. Gomi's a major natural resource. Gomi and talent." -William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive. (p.30)
Gibson's writing is testament to what talent can do with gomi.
2
Sol Yurick, Behold Metatron, the Recording Angel. New York: Semiotext(e), 1985, 6. The Semiotext(e) series is published at Columbia University, and, despite some embarrassing editing problems, is a valuable source of texts by influential Postmodern theorists like Baudrillard, Lyotard, and Deleuze and Guattari.
3
Sol Yurick again: page 9.
4
One of the few really good studies that has been done to date on Gibson's merits and faults as a writer is Lucy Sussex's "Falling Off the Fence: Reviewing William Gibson's Neuromancer and Count Zero," The Metaphysical Review, November 1987. If you can't find it (The Metaphysical Review is an Australian journal), send me a SASE c/o this magazine, and I'll mail you a copy.
5
I have to admit a vested interest here. A discussion of the space the body occupies in Gibson's writing will form the core of my Master's thesis.
6
A sorta-kinda performance art group from California (where else) that builds big machines that destroy each other. SRL was one of Gibson's major influences in the writing of Mona Lisa Overdrive (see the article elsewhere in this magazine).
7
A quotation from Tom Maddox's short story "Snake-Eyes," which can be found in Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, ed. Bruce Sterling. New York: Arbor House, 1986. At the risk of bowdlerizing the piece, I'll just mention that it's about this guy whose higher thought processes become involved in a conflict of interest with his brainstem. And you thought hangovers were bad...
8
The Difference Engine is an alternate world novel Gibson is writing with Bruce Sterling. It is set in a nineteenth century England where Charles Babbage's steam-driven computer actually gets built, and all sorts of weird shit happens as a result (including Lord Byron becoming Prime Minister). Gibson read excerpts from the manuscript at several points during ConText 89.
9
Another product of The Whole Earth Review, the Cyberpunk 101 reading list can be found in the Summer 89 issue, or, in an earlier form, in Signal: Communication Tools for the Information Age. New York: Harmony Books, 1988. (Signal is a whole Earth catalog). It makes for some interesting reading, but it should come with a warning sticker that reads WARNING! CANON FORMATION IN PROGRESS!"
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