Wiilliam Gibson has a blog.
Thanks. New book, too, it appears: next month.
Jim, any thoughts on the Gibson's news that he's ceasing his blog when the promo tour for Pattern Recognition ends? I have to admit my first reaction is "What a shuck." Finding out his blog is a "book tour quickie" makes it seem like another Raging Cow promotion. Sterling, on the other hand, lives this stuff--he's not a tourist or fake blogger. I read the book and have some critical/skeptical thoughts about it--this news only makes me more critical/skeptical. Eventually I might write something but I'm curious to get your take.
I guess I give him the benefit of the doubt. Not sure if that's the right thing to do. He doesn't say that he's stopping because the book tour for PR is stopping, although maybe that's the case. Instead he makes the reasonable claim that starting to write a new novel will preclude his blogging, which makes some sense to me. A guy only has so much writing juice.
Plus, I'm glad he did it at all, which right off the bat distinguishes it from something like raging cow.
But sure, I wish he would keep it up. But would I rather see him blog, or get more novels out of him? Not sure. Probably more novels, unless his blogging was quite a bit more prolific. Cory Doctorow does both, and argues that blogging synergizes his writing (since he blogs about the kind of high tech gadgets that show up in his stories.) Probably we can't hold it against Gibson if it dosn't work that way for him.
I haven't read PR yet, but will get to it eventually.
[This comment brought to you by wafflers international, dedicated to more words with less actual opinion.]
I dunno, maybe I'd be less harsh if he'd said at the beginning "This is an experiment; probably I won't be able to keep this up once I start writing my next book." Agreed that he wasn't a very prolific blogger. I got some insight from the few nuggets. But I never looked at his chatboards--there's a limit to my fandom. And Sterling mainly just links to stuff he's interested in.
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- jim 1-07-2003 5:50 pm
Thanks. New book, too, it appears: next month.
- tom moody 1-07-2003 6:18 pm
Jim, any thoughts on the Gibson's news that he's ceasing his blog when the promo tour for Pattern Recognition ends? I have to admit my first reaction is "What a shuck." Finding out his blog is a "book tour quickie" makes it seem like another Raging Cow promotion. Sterling, on the other hand, lives this stuff--he's not a tourist or fake blogger. I read the book and have some critical/skeptical thoughts about it--this news only makes me more critical/skeptical. Eventually I might write something but I'm curious to get your take.
- tom moody 4-15-2003 8:46 pm
I guess I give him the benefit of the doubt. Not sure if that's the right thing to do. He doesn't say that he's stopping because the book tour for PR is stopping, although maybe that's the case. Instead he makes the reasonable claim that starting to write a new novel will preclude his blogging, which makes some sense to me. A guy only has so much writing juice.
Plus, I'm glad he did it at all, which right off the bat distinguishes it from something like raging cow.
But sure, I wish he would keep it up. But would I rather see him blog, or get more novels out of him? Not sure. Probably more novels, unless his blogging was quite a bit more prolific. Cory Doctorow does both, and argues that blogging synergizes his writing (since he blogs about the kind of high tech gadgets that show up in his stories.) Probably we can't hold it against Gibson if it dosn't work that way for him.
I haven't read PR yet, but will get to it eventually.
[This comment brought to you by wafflers international, dedicated to more words with less actual opinion.]
- jim 4-15-2003 8:58 pm
I dunno, maybe I'd be less harsh if he'd said at the beginning "This is an experiment; probably I won't be able to keep this up once I start writing my next book." Agreed that he wasn't a very prolific blogger. I got some insight from the few nuggets. But I never looked at his chatboards--there's a limit to my fandom. And Sterling mainly just links to stuff he's interested in.
- tom moody 4-15-2003 9:25 pm