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Mar. 26th, 2004 09:40 pmAccording to the psychosurgeons, we act more in keeping with our true selves in a dream than in any other situation, including the throes of orgasm and the moment of our deaths. Maybe that explains why so much of what we do in the real world makes so little sense.
-- Takeshi Kovacs (Richard K. Morgan)
Have you ever read Neuromancer? That book coined the term cyberspace and was a SF masterpiece by William Gibson that grabbed a stagnating genre and thrashed it into wakefulness with an injection of Reagan-fueled modernism. In an indirect way, my internet nickname Marcus was generated by that book (after a spaceship named after the Rastafarian prophet, Marcus Garvey).
After a brief, kinetic flash of brilliance, SF has mostly devolved again into Star Trek knock-offs and novelizations of popular video games. Which isn't necessarily bad as a form of literary entertainment, as mindless as bubblegum...but originality has been sorely lacking in a genre that, by definition, should be something that no one has seen before.
Last year, I read the book Altered Carbon, by Richard K. Morgan. This book was the most original, gripping, exciting, world-shaking thing I have read since Neuromancer. I'm not just talking plot or technology or characterization, though all are excellent. On top of all that, Morgan can write. Gibson comes close in the SF world, but I think Morgan's writing is more of a modern synthesis of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.
Morgan's second book, Broken Angels, has just been released, and I just finished it tonight. I am very, very happy. I think (hopehopehope) this guy is going to be around for a while. After the brilliance of Neuromancer, I was supremely, tragically unimpressed with Gibson's later books, but not so with this second one of Morgan's. Damn, damn good.
-- Takeshi Kovacs (Richard K. Morgan)
Have you ever read Neuromancer? That book coined the term cyberspace and was a SF masterpiece by William Gibson that grabbed a stagnating genre and thrashed it into wakefulness with an injection of Reagan-fueled modernism. In an indirect way, my internet nickname Marcus was generated by that book (after a spaceship named after the Rastafarian prophet, Marcus Garvey).
After a brief, kinetic flash of brilliance, SF has mostly devolved again into Star Trek knock-offs and novelizations of popular video games. Which isn't necessarily bad as a form of literary entertainment, as mindless as bubblegum...but originality has been sorely lacking in a genre that, by definition, should be something that no one has seen before.
Last year, I read the book Altered Carbon, by Richard K. Morgan. This book was the most original, gripping, exciting, world-shaking thing I have read since Neuromancer. I'm not just talking plot or technology or characterization, though all are excellent. On top of all that, Morgan can write. Gibson comes close in the SF world, but I think Morgan's writing is more of a modern synthesis of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.
Morgan's second book, Broken Angels, has just been released, and I just finished it tonight. I am very, very happy. I think (hopehopehope) this guy is going to be around for a while. After the brilliance of Neuromancer, I was supremely, tragically unimpressed with Gibson's later books, but not so with this second one of Morgan's. Damn, damn good.
