Roy will be shocked. Now, very nearly a year after I bought it. I've finally begun reading the latest William Gibson novel, called Zero History.
I have a love/hate relationship with William Gibson. Love, in that he is by far my favorite author of all time. Hate, because he is so bloody far from prolific. This is his ninth novel, and while that certainly borders on prolific in some literary circles, it's not nearly enough for me.
The best way to enjoy this man's novels without fear of the novel ending far too soon is to simply have the next William Gibson novel waiting for you, ready to be opened the moment the final page has been turned on the last.
I was spoiled like that, by way of introduction, many years ago when my dad gave me Neuromancer. The two sequels in William Gibson's first cyberpunk trilogy had already been written (Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive) and were waiting for me when I was done with Neuromancer.
While I was waiting for the next novel, there was Burning Chrome, the original short stories that introduced the term 'cyberspace' and characters like Johnny Mnemonic and Molly Millions and the Sprawl, the single urban entity stretching from Boston to Atlanta that the Eastern Seaboard had become.
Next came Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties, the second trilogy by the man who seems irritated by the fact that everyone things he writes trilogies when he doesn't believe that's what he's doing. Suffice it to say that many of the same characters, like Molly Millions aka the Razor Girl, continue on in these individual sets of three novels.
Zero History is the new third, following behind Pattern Recognition and Spook Country (his best, I think, since the original trilogy.) And, knowing it might be some time before the next new and completely unrelated novel appears, as it certainly must, I tried to wait as long to begin this one as possible, much to Roy's endless fascination.
"Started it yet?"
'No."
This Roy has asked at least once a week for the past several months since I giddily opened the package from Amazon Books that contained it, and then left it sitting, untouched, on the bookcase, for the next several months.
I intend to remain mysterious to the very end with my man, to hold his interest forever. May work, might not, but I'm not going to sweat it. One should never lose one's mystery in any event, never allow a sense that everything interesting about you is already known. That sort of thing, I think, leads invariably to complacency, which leads to being taken for granted, which leads to men doing very stupid thinking with their penuses in their middle age, or even sooner.
So, I always love it when I see these expressions on his face, like he's realizing there is still so much more of me left to figure out. Hell, he hasn't even figured out how I read my favorite books yet, much less so many important things. Case in point, with Spook Country, when he saw me starting the book over again for the second time.
"Uh, weren't you already about half way through that one?"
"Yes."
And...you're just starting it over?"
"Mmm hmm."
"Uh...why?"
Well, the real reason is that the book lasts 50% longer that way. The other reason is that our brains focus on different parts of the writing on the second read through; they focus on everything we missed the first time around. Then, when you get to the halfway point again, you've got both reads working in your brain at the same time.
This time, a few lines, some small bit of the amazing way he explains the most simple and apparently least significant things.
A taxicab in London: "Inchmale hailed a cab for her, the kind that had always been black, when she'd first known this city. Pearlescent silver, this one. Glyphed in Prussian blue, advertising something German, banking services or business software, a smoother simulacrum of its black ancestors, its faux-leather upholstery a shade of orthopedic fawn."
