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Sci-Fi Books

William Gibson Announces New Sci-Fi Comic Book (arstechnica.com) 32

Posted by EditorDavid from the cyberpunked dept.
68-year-old science fiction author William Gibson just released a complicated new science fiction comic book, and this weekend Ars Technica proclaimed that "the results are grand". An anonymous reader shares their report: A father and son occupy the new White House as President and Vice President. We never meet dad, but his son -- an evil jerk by the name of Junior Henderson -- has been surgically altered to resemble his grandfather, because Junior is about travel to an alternate Earth in 1945 to take grandpa's place, with the intent of remaking that world more to his liking (and, presumably, to prevent whatever it was that laid waste to the one we start off in)...The world is in ruins. The White House relocated to the ominous-sounding National Emergency Federal District in Montana. They have technology that far outstrips our own...

"It's an alternate-history/cross-worlds story," Gibson writes... "And I wouldn't want to spoil too much of the frame, because that's an inherent part of our narrative. But I will say that one of the first verbal tags we had for the material was 'Band Of Brothers vs. Blackwater.'"
On his Twitter feed, Gibson is also applauding the news that Marvel and DC comics abandoned a two and a half year legal battle to enforce their trademark on the word "superhero" against a publisher in the U.K.
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William Gibson Announces New Sci-Fi Comic Book More

William Gibson Announces New Sci-Fi Comic Book

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  • Nice to see he's still writing (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Geez, it's been at least 25 years since I read my first Gibson novel. I think I read some of the "trilogy" books in the wrong order, but they were always really intense.

    When San Francisco opened their new Bay Bridge, it was a little disappointing. I was kind of hoping that it would turn into its own autonomous trade zone, like in "All Tomorrow's Parties."

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by subk ( 551165 )

      I was kind of hoping that it would turn into its own autonomous trade zone, like in "All Tomorrow's Parties."

      FTFY:

      I was kind of hoping that it would turn into its own autonomous trade zone, like in "Virtual Light."

      • I have read everything Gibson has written since Neuromancer, because I always find at least one amazing, put-the-book-down-shake-head-and-re-read clever idea that is wonderfully prescient in the way that Clarke made science fiction prescient in the Golden Age. (Like in Idoru, written years before anyone ever heard of Vocaloid, in which a Japanese singing idol is kidnapped, only for the detective to discover she is really software, a Virtual idol, and being "held captive" on an abandoned corporate website...

  • Proof that Slashdot is dead (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    What could be nerdier than a sci-fi comic book? That there's only one comment is proof that all of the nerds have departed Slashdot.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, it is a three-day weekend... Maybe all the nerds are out watching the new X-Men movie.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'd be curious to know the percentage of links that come from Ars Technica. Seems like a lot.

      If Ars changed their comment system I'd have no reason to come to Slashdot.

  • Clickbait much? (Score:4, Informative)

    by DudeTheMath ( 522264 ) on Sunday May 29, 2016 @02:00PM (#52206285) Homepage

    Would it really be so hard to put the title of the comic in the story instead of requiring a click through? Anyway, it's Archangel.

    • Do not ascribed to clickbaitism what is more easily ascribed to shitty editing.

      • Yeah, I saw another post from EditorDavid that had Kurzweil's name misspelled in the headline. EditorDavid is apparently only David, because he sure as hell doesn't edit.

  • What are the characters names? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Donald and Fred Trump?

  • an exclusive pantheon (Score:4, Interesting)

    by epine ( 68316 ) on Sunday May 29, 2016 @02:31PM (#52206395)

    I'm a digital pack rat. I collect just about anything that raises my eyebrows in my personal wiki. It's a crazy thing, like people who build entire houses out of used beer cans, but for me, at least, it pleasantly passes the time.

    I strongly prefer insight over outrage, so I was awfully slow off the mark in finally creating an "asshole" page (subpage "corporate asshole"), but having done so about six months ago, what a boon it has become.

    Welcome Marvel.

    Welcome DC Comics.

    Allow me to make some introductions. On your left is Comcast, Marriott, General Mills, and Sony. You probably know most of those already. On your right there's FIFA, IOC, NCAA, and Voltage Pictures. Another cluster top heavy in the usual suspects. Across the room, there's Gawker Media and the IAB conferring in what appears to be an almost romantic tete-a-tete.

    Be sure to pull up a chair while you have the opportunity. Word on the street is that we soon might need to suspend the fire code.

    What's that, you say? Where's General Hayden?

    Company Men: Torture, treachery, and the CIA [harpers.org]

    The Panetta Review had reached the same conclusions, on the basis of the same documents, that the Senate report later did. In other words, the CIA's own analysis of its records refuted all the cheerleading claims currently being trotted out by its team of publicists. Had the agency, in obstructing the report and spying on Senate investigators, finally overplayed its hand? "Nothing could be further from the truth," Brennan insisted, following in the footsteps of Michael Hayden, whom the report depicts as a kind of unflappable Pinocchio, fibbing under oath at every opportunity.

    Yes, I understand why you might be puzzled not to find him here. The situation concerning Hayden is complicated. Innocent until proven guilty, and all that rot. His was a complex mandate. Many good minds suspect he's rather too full of himself in a bad way, but other perspectives remain credible.

    It's not like you can simply go to Wikipedia and read the following:

    The word 'superhero' dates to at least 1917. Antecedents of the archetype include such folkloric heroes as Robin Hood, who adventured in distinctive clothing. The 1903 play The Scarlet Pimpernel and its spinoffs popularized the idea of a masked avenger and the superhero trope of a secret identity. Shortly afterward, masked and costumed pulp-fiction characters such as Zorro (1919) and comic strip heroes such as the Phantom (1936) began appearing, as did non-costumed characters with super strength, including Patoruzu (1928), the comic-strip character Popeye (1929) and novelist Philip Wylie's protagonist Hugo Danner (1930).

    Feel free to mingle among the assembled company of like minds.

  • Damn, Ray Kurzweil and William Gibson make front page on the same day? What is this, 1996?!?

  • What I enjoyed about Gibson's books was that his vision of the future was grim and very dystopian at times, but it was always at least halfway believable. Sure, we had AIs and perfect human-computer interfaces, we had easy, reliable space travel and a lot of things were different from what we're used to, but all the changes that he proposed were at the very least possible. Plausible even at times. Prophetic at others.

    Time travel doesn't really fit that bill, Bill.

    • It's not exactly time travel. They go back in time, but only to an alternate universe (according to the comic, ours). So they may not be going back so much as just over, and the other universe is 70 some years behind? Dunno. But hey, it's also a comic book, and liberties are taken sometimes for an interesting story. It is pretty good, I don't get too many comics any more but picked this one up due to Gibson's name and liked it a lot.
      • The concept sounds interesting, and like something Gibson could really do justice to. I've liked everything else he's written, loved a lot of them, I'm picking this up. Glad to hear someone confirm its good!
    • It's a comic book, the man's done good work in his more serious, realistic novels, let's see what he can do in a different format. Another favorite of mine, Alistair Reynolds, pretty much sticks strictly to known physics, no FTL, etc but will bend his rule for the sake of a story, to great effect, so I'm not discounting this before giving it a try over the time travel though i agree it has the potential to be problematic if handled clumsily.

      • Ive given up with Alastair Reynolds, he seems intent on not telling the story he builds up to telling - both the Revelation Space and the Poseidons Children series end with the interesting story that is being built up to actually being utterly skipped, Terminal World sets up an interesting world but Reynolds has said he never intends revisiting it, Century Rain almost comes to a conclusion but never quite does - only Pushing Ice and House of Suns end.

  • Gibson (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Webs 101 ( 798265 ) on Sunday May 29, 2016 @05:00PM (#52207185) Homepage

    "68-year-old science fiction author William Gibson"

    What the hell? Cripes, I'm old.

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