GIBSON/r_leader.txt (Early William Gibson)

"Academy Leader":

Her mother removes the glasses. Her mother looks at the timer. Three hours. "But you don't like games, Kelsey..."

"It's not a game," tears in her eyes. "It's a city." Her mother puts on the glasses, moves her head from side to side, removes the glasses.

"I want to go there," Kelsey says.

"It's different now. Everything changes."

"I want to go there," Kelsey insists. She puts the glasses back on because the look in her mother's eyes frightens her. The stones, the white sand: cloud-shrouded peaks, islands in the stream...

She wants to go there...

Anecdote from the Gibson forums (yes I do mostly post quotes)

red76

Re: Which gibson book to read first?

Many, many years ago I bought Virtual Light second hand, read it, thought it was OK, and then lent it to a friend. Said friend develops paranoid schizophrenia, excacerbated by drug use and other factors. Several years pass. I never get it back. One day, as a present, out of the blue, he gives me Neuromancer. I read it. Hooked. Go back to friend.

"This book is great" I say. "Yeah" says he.

"I've been meaning to show you something."

He then reaches into his backpack (I've never seen him without it) and pulls out the copy of Virtual Light from several years ago. It's battered beyond description - sticky tape, rubber bands, paper clips, the whole nine yards. Opens it up.

Passages underlined, writing in the margins, dozens of bookmarks, Post-It notes, pages of hand written notes on A4 paper throughout the thing . Looks like something out of A Beautiful Mind. Proceeds to tell me that the book was his sigil, his compass through his illness and much of his adult life. "Thank you" he says, with the non blinking stare of the heavily medicated.

I have since bought all the Gibson books, and read then reread them compulsively.

The moral of the story?

Don't start with Virtual Light.

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