Neuromancer Finished; Lolly Willowes started

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

Neuromancer was excellent. It is so different from the older sci-fi that's dominated on the list so far. So unique in vision. So modern.

Relatively modern, of course. It was written in the early 1980s. But then, unless you exist on the cutting edge of literature, don't novels get a longer timeline than other media? It wasn't until 1999 that cyberpunk found a truly mainstream outlet, in the form of The Matrix. More on that later.

So what is this super-modern book about? Basically, it's a detective story. Anti-heroes search for answers, not because their lives will improve, not because the world will be changed by the answers. Only because the question drives them. Nothing spectactular in plot alone.

The world surrounding this plot, however, is everything, television-gray sky to mirror-eyed samurai to cyberspace-jacking cowboys. Of course, that pays tribute to the stunning description of this cyberpunk world, which went on to influence comic books, anime, and then mainstream films like The Matrix. But even more significant is the link between humans and technology, which are interdependent in a way never seen before. This novel defies the works of much older sci-fi, which happily describes science and technology as the path to a utopian future, but also defies the sci-fi writers just prior to cyberpunk, who endlessly warned against the dangers of technology.

Which always bothers me a bit, sci-fi writers who are Luddites. Ray Bradbury recently riled a few people up when the New York Times quoted him as saying "to hell with the internet," coming off more as a grumpy old man than a writer of fiction that, in its time, predicted technological breakthroughs (I was less surprised than members of the tech media who criticized his outburst - he was one of my favorite authors when I was a teenager, and therefore I knew that he also distrusts cars and refuses to drive). It just troubles me, people who dislike and even fear science, writing in science's genre.

Neuromancer rebels distinctly against the Luddite sci-fi, accepting an imperfect world of tech as an integral part of our future, even a part of our evolution. Tech is even treated with a sort of romanticism, never more clear than when Case jacks into cyberspace for the first time in the novel.

Besides that, it's fun to read. The book's style has been adapted in comics, anime, and live action film, and simply felt modern and fun and exciting. Early on, when I was trying to adjust to the language of the novel, The Matrix was practically a primer. The world of Neuromancer is very abstract, and it's a bit easier to imagine that world by thinking of The Matrix (and occasionally Tron). Later, when I'd adapted enough to Gibson's writing style to understand it on its own, some parts called up memories of The Matrix so clearly that I could imagine the gears turning in the heads of the Wachowski brothers. Don't get me wrong, the movie is not the novel. But the movie is so clearly inspired by the novel.

Which is probably for the best. This is one of those novels that simply couldn't be a movie, not in any way that is recognizable as the book. It does things that only a book really does well, that just wouldn't be the same on the screen.

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The next book is Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner, which is about a woman making a deal with the devil and becoming a witch. This is one of a few novels that I'd never heard of before seeing this list. I had to order it. The library has one copy but it is lost. None of my local stores had it in stock. While waiting for it to ship I spent the week wandering around feeling antsy because I didn't have a book to read. I am very glad that it was delivered today.

Equal Rites finished; Neuromancer started; Neil Gaiman in Tuscaloosa

Equal Rites was my favorite in the Discworld series so far. It's the story of a girl who is a wizard. In the Discworld women become witches and men become wizards for no reason other than that's the way things have always been. Which means, of course, that a change will require nothing less than a paradigm shift.

Feminism is definitely a major theme. One of my favorite moments in the book is when Esk's Granny Weatherwax faces off against a wizard, and they have a confrontational discussion about wizard magic (which is showy and powerful) versus witch magic (which is practical and useful - and also seldom used because psychology often works better). The conversation reminded me of nothing so much as what an argument between a doctor and a nurse might be like in an age when female doctors and male nurses were less common, with the nurse pointing out that while the doctor has his big important degrees and surgeries and diagnoses, the nurses are the ones who do all the work of actually helping people (which is true today as well, even though the fields are more gender-balanced).

It's very funny, and I think Pratchett was getting really comfortable with the Discworld and its possibilities at this point. Unlike the previous two novels, Equal Rites had a specific plot direction; the girl wizard Esk needs to get into the Unseen University, the school for wizards. I think when I originally began reading the first Discworld novel, The Color of Magic, I gave it up because the story was sort of a sprawled out thing (that, and because I was reading numerous things at once). I had a hard time focusing on the story. My second reading of The Color of Magic was far more rewarding, but it is nice to read a Discworld story that takes a more direct approach from beginning to end.

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I've decided to break from the Discworld series for now, and I've started Neuromancer by William Gibson. This is yet another one of the books that I'd tried to start reading at some point prior to taking on this project, and stopped reading because I didn't get into it. Upon taking it up again, I read the first 60 pages of it in one sitting. This is a very good start considering the speed with which I normally read. It is also the result of trying to burn an audiobook to iTunes while in a library, and learning that the laptop needed me to load some critical updates or else it would insist on crashing repeatedly all day long. It just goes to show that if you want to get a lot of reading done, all you really need is 3 hours in a library and a computer that requires 4 restarts and a number of downloads before it decides to cooperate with you.

Also, I think there is a lesson to learn from all the books I half-read before and have now started again to find that they are actually interesting. The lesson is that I don't multitask as well as I think I do.

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I got to see Neil Gaiman on his recent visit to Tuscaloosa, where he read several short stories and did a Q&A. He even read one story that I am not familiar with, which is impressive because I tend to be on top of these things. I don't think I could sum up the evening as well as he did, so I'll just provide this link to his blog, and note that he's right, we do read and we do need more authors to visit. We especially need him to visit again, preferably with a signing next time.