Difficult Gibson

From: Nalo Hopkinson (bl213@FREENET.TORONTO.ON.CA)
Date: Thu May 22 1997 - 09:48:29 PDT


I'd suspect that anyone not familiar with sf who picks up William Gibson
for the first time might find it a struggle. His prose, to my eye, is
very stylized. Combine that with unfamiliar vocab and setting, and it
might be daunting. I enjoy a lot of Gibson's work, but had the odd
experience of trying to listen to _Virtual Light_ as an audiocassette
(read by the man who played Robocop, don't remember his name, but he did
a good job). For the first 5 to 10 minutes, I hadn't a clue what was
going on. I could tell what most of the words meant singly, but not
together. Got into it fairly quickly, but it was strange to realise that
the same words I had read easily on the page took so long to decipher
when I no longer had the ability to stop and mull over particular phrases
for meaning.

-nalo

"And when I'm done with my logic and my theory,
I throw in a 'motherfucker!' so you ignorant niggers hear me."
                                -Lauryn, The Fugees



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