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Neuromancer

1/19/2017

Hello out there readers, and thanks for sticking with me as I wrap-up the final few books of My Year of Living (Actually Reading) Fiction. The last fiction work on my list was the epic cyberpunk novel Neuromancer by William Gibson. While I gained some major writing lessons from this epic volume, I wanted to first state emphatically that this was the best Science Fiction book I have ever read. Gibson’s monumental work was a phenomenal mix of futuristic vision and cyber-dread. The fact that he could so clearly see where we were headed as a species, even with the technology available in the mid-Eighties, is astronomical and a great example of how to use the genre to speak about the world. To that end, let’s delve into two important writing lessons I gained from this book.

Use of description. This is paramount to a story like this, since the author is literally making things up as he’s writing. As is well known by now, Gibson coined the terms “cyberspace” and “the matrix” during his writing career, both which are in wide use today. Beyond that, I was rapt with attention as he described the various settings and technologies the characters use in the story - from the gigantic metropolitan “sprawl” making up most of the planet to the incredible space station Freeside - both for how detailed he gets but also in imagining how these things may be shaping up in our own lifetimes. And that brings me to arguably the more important aspect of this book…
Use of the novel to speak about the future of technology. Of the many crucial elements of this novel, I’d say this tops the list. Gibson was miles ahead of his contemporaries in envisioning the future as a dark world inhabited by faceless, endless corporations that use the wiles of cyberspace to exist forever. But that’s just one part of it: Gibson also conceived of what we now know as the Internet as a place that would be interacted with on the level of consciousness. Case, the main character and hacker, “jacks into” the world of cyberspace and literally sees the information within as made up of buildings and systems. Gibson was also way ahead of the curb when it comes to thinking about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how that type of technology could become dangerous. The AIs the characters are hunting within the story prove themselves to be merciless in several ways, including outright murder and the use of personalities from the characters’ lives (some of whom are dead) to speak to them through the web. I couldn’t help but think about the prevalence of warnings about AI in the media over the last few years as I read this book. I took away a lot of similar lessons reading Bradbury last year, but I would say that Gibson’s view of our future is equally as dark, if in different ways.

You will probably notice that I haven’t given much away in terms of the plot of this novel. That’s because I hope those of you out there interested in the genre will give this one a read. It’s that essential of a book, and even if you’re not into Sci Fi I would highly recommend this book as it has much to teach about the nature of writing, not only about the future but of who or what might exist in that future.

And with that, there’s just one more book to go from my previous list: Bird by Bird, Anne Lamont’s well-regarded work on writing fiction. I hope to post an essay on it by the end of this month, and then it’s onto Another Year of Fiction (AYOF?!). Stay tuned, and thanks for reading!

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Another Year of Fiction

1/11/2017

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Hello out there, readers. Happy 2017, and welcome to our Brave New World!

As you are aware, most of my writing for this blog last year concerned a year-long experiment I conducted reading only fictional works, then crafting essays about the writing lessons that I drew from each book. While I learned a ton from this experiment, I also learned about my own ability to set expectations as a reader and a writer. I want to delve quickly into the positive and negative aspects of this experiment, and then outline my plans for Another Year of Fiction (AYOF?!).

In terms of writing lessons, without a doubt I encountered more of those last year than any other of my career. Hemingway taught me how to keep things simple; Oscar Wilde showed me how to use a novel to speak truth about your society; and Vonnegut basically schooled me in almost every way possible for a master author. Even the books I wasn’t sure I would enjoy taught me a lot about keeping reader interest. I also read a phenomenal book about the practice and nature of reading, which I would highly recommend to anyone interested in writing.

The biggest lesson learned for me in 2016 was: read fiction. There is simply no better path to understanding the work of others and how it might contribute to your own. The writer Austin Kleon has described the importance of how to “steal like an artist,” and the only way to accomplish this is to read all kinds of stuff, then artfully repurpose what you like about them for your own work. As a voracious consumer of all things nonfiction for years leading up to this experiment, I can make this conclusion with full confidence. Despite my wife’s protestations, I will get back to reading nonfiction at some point in my life (I’m going to need it for novel #4, for one reason). But that is not going to be 2017, as I plan on extending this experiment for at least one more year.

Which leads me to what I didn’t get quite right about this experiment. I’d have to say the biggest takeaway was: don’t over-promise and then under-deliver. I posted two lists of books to read during the year, but did not make it through the second half by the end of the year. Chiefly this was due to the nature of the final book I read and my underestimating of the slog it took me to finish it. But this also gave me a good idea of how long it really will take me to accomplish a task like this, and of how much I can read in a given year. Obviously people have been able to cram in many more works in a given year, and I can always do better. But for now, I’m not going to put out an “official” list of my upcoming fiction titles. Rather, I’m going to take it one book at a time and see how many I can complete in a year. Last year I was able to get through eleven books. Let’s see how many I can get through this year. And for those of you who have given me recommendations: they are still on my list, I just can’t promise I will get to all of them in 2017. Given how much I have learned already, I have a feeling I may be doing a variation of this exercise for the conceivable future...

To that end, I plan blasting through both Neuromancer and Bird by Bird and writing essays on each (hopefully) within a month. Gibson’s epic cyberpunk novel is already blowing me away in countless ways, and I can’t wait to see how Anne Lamont’s recommendations stack up next to Francine Prose. After that, I’ll announce the first “official” title for AYOF 2017!

Thanks to all of you who read and commented on my essays last year. I hope my advice has been helpful for those of you who want to give this writing thing a go in your own lives. Let’s enjoy another year of fiction together.

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Neuromancer

Another Year of Fiction

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