iBoy — Review

24th July, 2018.

You know, there are plenty of things, I could be saying, right about now.

Really.

I’ve had the day off ill, today.

The guts have been playing up, again.

I swear, I will have to do something about that.

The possibility of implanting my personality into a younger body?

Has some appeal.

The fact I’m sitting here, sweating like an especially sweaty person, on a hot night in southeast England?

Is something else.

And, yes, I realise that’s not a pleasant image.

If it pleasant?

I’d rather you weren’t reading this, frankly.

There’s website’s for the sort of thing.

At any rate, I’m kind of grateful, at the moment.

That I’m the proud owner of an iMac.

One that, like any Mac, these days, lets me navigate around its interface … using assorted keyboard commands.

Hitting the Ctrl button and the Left and Right cursor buttons lets me navigate between the alternate desktops.

Cmd and Tab lets me switch between apps.

Is handy.

Especially when my mouse is recharging.

What CAN I tell you … ?

Apart from yes.

That is Kraftwerk playing in the background: Radio Activity, if you must know.

And, yes.   I’ve used my time to sit in front of the TV and watch a movie.

The 2017 Adam Randall Netflix piece that is … <>iBoy</>.

The things got some heavyweights in there … 

~≈§≈~

When the Counting Gets Tough …

Do you remember, a few week’s ago, I wrote about William Gibson’s influential novel, “Neuromancer”?

I was always impressed by it.

And by the sequels, as well, come to that …

And I’m not to sure if I made it clear at the time, but all three novels — “Neuromancer”, “Count Zero”, and “Mona Lisa Overdrive” — are available to read online, at Project Cyberpunk.

It also looks like a certain Mr Gibson wasn’t the first person to use the phrase, although it was in relation to his work I first heard it.

They’re well worth checking out, I think, but I’m something of a sci-fi fan; just a touch biased, you could say …

But moving on …

Both sequels are a little different to the original novel.

“Neuromancer” had one plot; by contrast, both “Count Zero” and “Mona Lisa Overdrive” have three plot threads, that meet and resolve at each sequels climax.

“Count Zero” follows three threads to a joint climax.   One thread follows a mercenary called Turner, as he and others attempt to help a scientist called Mitchell — along with some revolutionary research — defect from the company he works for; another follows the activities of small time, young hacker, Bobby Newmark — the ‘Count Zero’ of the title — almost being killed as a result of testing out some black-market software he’s picked up; the third sees out-of-work art-gallery owner Marly Krushkova, hired by the reclusive industrialist Josef Virek, to trace some Cornell style boxes he’s interested in.   In addition, cyberspace — Gibson’s future version of the net — seems, after the events of “Neuromancer”, to have developed … inhabitants.

Who claim to be Vodou gods …

“Mona Lisa Overdrive” uses the same form three-thread, one climax form.   The third novel in Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy sees title character, and hooker, Mona hired for an unexplained, and possibly dangerous, job.   A second thread sees gangster’s daughter Kumiko having to move to London — and assigned Molly, one of the central characters of “Neuromancer” — for safety during a Yakuza mob war.   Thread three finds reclusive artist and ex-con, Slick Henry being burdened with an apparently comatose body, hook up to a very strange — and very LARGE — exterior-drive.

Now writing a story like this isn’t something else, except in other works by William Gibson; “All Tomorrow’s Parties” springs to mind, but don’t quote me on that.

I couldn’t even tell you what what the technique is called.

 

But I do know I’ve enjoyed these.

Go follow those links through.

I think you’ll like them.