Dead Channels
I was reading the end of Neil Gaiman’s ‘Neverwhere’ last night when I noticed a hat tip to William Gibson. As Richard Mayhew emerges from London Below he sees:
The sky was the perfect untroubled blue of a television screen, tuned to a dead channel.
It’s an echo of the first line of William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’:
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
Nice.
I’ve read that line of Gibson’s dozens of times in articles over the last twenty years. It’s a lazy quote; the first line of the first novel, and universally well regarded. But there is so much more.
I’ve recently been reading ‘Pattern Recognition’ again and have been amazed by the power and inventiveness of Gibson’s language as he introduces us to Cayce Pollard.
Damien:
Damien is a friend.
Their girl-boy Lego doesn’t click, he would say.
Jet lag:
She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien’s theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.
Her new black 501s
… every trademark carefully removed. Even the buttons on these have been ground flat, featureless , by a puzzled Korean locksmith, in the Village, a week ago.
That’s just in the first few pages. I last read ‘Pattern Recognition’, partly in paperback and partly as an audiobook, a few years ago during a really stressful time. I’m sure there’s a lot I missed. Looking forward to finding out what.
Both Neil Gaiman and William Gibson are active Twitter users. Gaiman as @neilhimself and Gibson as @GreatDismal. They both seem very nice and surprisingly responsive to questions and comments.