Spook Country (Vancouver)
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
I enjoy reading William Gibson's books. I still remember the impression that reading Neuromancer first made on me. Although most of his books were sci-fi, his last two have been based in the recent present. The latest book, Spook Country was especially interesting for me as a good portion of it is set in Vancouver (William Gibson lives in Vancouver but hadn't featured the city in his novels before Spook Country. I took my older daughter to a writing session that he spoke at here a few years ago and, unlike many writers, he speaks as well as he writes.). It was fun to read the Vancouver bits and mentally "follow in the footsteps" of the characters as I recognized just about every place he mentioned in Vancouver! In the book, one of the characters comments on his impression of Vancouver:
"Cities, in Milgrim's experience, had a way of revealing themselves in the faces of the inhabitants, and particularly on their way to work in the morning. There was a sort of basic fuckedness index to be read, then, in faces that hadn't yet encountered the reality of whatever they were on their way to do. By this standard, Milgrim thought, scanning faces and body language as Brown drove, this place had an oddly low fuckedness index."It's hard to describe why you like one city over another, but the "feel" of a place has a lot to do with it. Gibson (as is usual with his writing), manages to capture the "feel" of Vancouver very nicely.
I won't comment on plot; however, the following scene (snapped by me as the fully-loaded container ship was about to go under Lions Gate Bridge) reminded me of the book.
BTW, if APL gets to have it's name on a ship, Lisp should too! ;-)
