Case and the RazorGal

Oh WOW! Here I am with one of my long-time favorite authors, William Gibson, at the public library Zero History talk/tour. In this pic he is signing my old, tattered copy of Neuromancer!! I asked, and he signed it: "To ZenWoman, a real RAZOR GIRL, best, Wm Gibson 2010 " OMG, I love it and have a pic thanks to my new BFF Riann. (never dreamt you would send pics so FAST! U R the bomb and a RazorGirl, too!!) For those who don't want the entire RazorGirl history, here's a brief quote about his original Razor, Molly:

William Gibson's Neuromancer is the original and still definitive text of cyberpunk fiction. No character is more beloved by cyberpunk fans than Molly, the original "razor girl." Among Molly's cybernetic augmentations are surgically inset mirrorshades which seal her eye sockets, "ten double-edged, four-centimeter scalpel blades [in] housings beneath [her] burgundy nails" (Gibson, 1984, p. 25), and a jacked-up nervous system for "the reflexes to go with the gear" (1984, p. 147). She also carries "a fair amount of silicon in her head" (1984, p. 34) -- not exactly the most feminine place in which to accommodate one's silicone augmentations ;) but these enhancements make her faster, tougher, and stronger than any of the male characters of the novel, none of whom sport cyborg augmentations to the same degree as hers.

YEAH BABY!!! Razor GALS Forever!!
I'll add another pic later and write up more about the event, too. Just had to get this posted ASAP so I can tweet and Fbook it! I also got my Zero History signed and my old Burning Chrome (his first stories!!) Thanks BookWorks and ABQ/BC Library and especially my pic-takin' pal! (and of course, JC who went with.) ps - Case was the protag in Neuromancer, but Molly was my early inspiration as a female hacker!! (think Lisabeth Salander, but the ORIGINAL!)

The Artiste of the Slightly Funny Deal

Phil's in the news again. The New Yorker magazine this time. I like this line, "Dick’s allegiance was not to literature but to writing and to the possibilities of writing as a form of protest and instant social satire. Another twist of fate, or circumstance, and he could have ended up as Rod Serling." The article also says, "Dick’s last big book was a work of cosmic explanation in which lightning bolts of brilliance flash over salty oceans of insanity. Poe’s explanation of everything was called “Eureka.” Dick’s was “VALIS.”

And, William Gibson's tour de force was "Neuromancer." I know I just went off on this topic a few days ago, but I'm not done. (sorry Phil, but I've got Gibson and Cyberspace on the brain right now.) I just blogged about the fact that Gibson coined the phrase cyberspace in 1982, a good ten years before mainstream America was about to step head-long into it. I was tinkering in that virtual realm myself back then (running a BBS from 1983 until I converted to a website in 1994.) I've paid homage to both Gibson, and Neal Stephenson (of SnowCrash fame) as my cyber godfathers. Both clearly visualized worlds where we exist virtually, rather than physically (in meat space, as Gibson called it.) And, yes, Philip K Dick was certainly a visionary, also. He was writing about computers and alternate realities in the 1950's, for gawd sake! But, did you know that on the same page where Gibson first used the now famous word Cyberspace, he also called it the Matrix!!! Here's the groundbreaking line: "He operated on an almost permanent adrenaline high, a by-product of youth and proficiency, jacked into a custom cyberspace deck that projected his disembodied consciousness into the consensual hallucination that was the Matrix."

In fact, our anti-hero Case (the protag of Neuromancer) was a "console cowboy" using a cyberspace deck to jack into the Matrix. So, the Matrix (aka, Metaverse to me and Neal) was the destination. I searched just now (in cyberspace, of course) and found that the directors of Matrix, the Wachowski brothers, credit Gibson, Stephenson and Philip K Dick for their concepts! That's cool. I was always kind of pissed off thinking they plagiarized the stuff.

Anyway, what got me going on all this (again) is the release of Gibson's newest book, "Spook Country." This is the second of his "current time" novels and uses some of the same characters as Pattern Recognition. I'm anxious to LISTEN to it on audiobook CD while traveling in a few days. I purposely didn't put links to a lot of the references to keep you moving forward. But, here, by all means, jack in yourself to the book that started it all and go ahead and veer off to PKD 's latest tribute (of sorts.) Even take a quick click on Johnny Mnemonic, an even earlier Gibson creation

Oh, and as for the title of this entry... that was a line from the first page of Neuromancer where the bartender Ratz refers to Case as "the artiste of the slightly funny deal." PKD, and hell, me, too!