In responding to Milan Ilnyckyj on his a sibiliant intake of breath blog posting about Spook Country, I have rambled on a bit:
Are you commercially associated with Gibson or his publishers?
Not in any way, just a fan.
Spook Country certainly mentions a lot of specific contemporary events and technologies. People who pick it up in twenty years will probably find that it has a retro flavour.
The same will be true of anything else which depicts contemporary technology or events. Everything from 1986 has a retro flavour today.
Response to the ROT-13 protected "spoiler" comments below:
"The resolution of the central mystery really doesn’t make a lot of sense."
Neither did the ending of "Neuromancer", make much sense i.e. voodoo spirits, super artificial intelligence and faster than light communications with Alpha Centauri. It is the sign of a good writer if he can make you suspend your disbelief in such things whilst reading the novel.
"If you wanted to irradiate a 40 foot container full of money, shooting nine cesium bullets into it doesn’t seem like a terribly sensible way to go about it. After punching through the steel, it seems unlikely they would penetrate too far."
As Gibson implies in the text, the low melting point radioactive caesium would vapourise and contaminate the interior of the container.
However, there is a risk that, as a reactive alkali metal, which explodes on contact with water,
it would also ignite some of the paper and plastic inside. Given that they have a man physically climbing on to the container, the use of armour piercing bullets, rather than , say a drill, or some concentrated acid, to puncture the container, or simply breaking the seals and opening the door of the container, does seem a bit complicated, but it adds to the drama.
"Also, the general motive for punishing the thieves in such a roundabout way is unclear."
How would you force an official governmental investigation into a container full of money which has successfully bypassed the customs authorities around the world for some considerable time ?
Once the radiation alarms go off, it may be impossible to simply spirit the container away in secret, no matter how much influence you might have in the "Spook Country" of the US Government.
Presumably it is the investigation of the paper and computer data trail associated with the illegal cash, to embarrass whoever is controlling it, which is important to the old man character, rather than just simply hijacking or destroying the $100 million itself.
"Like Bigend’s levitating bed, a lot of the technology included in the novel seems unnecessary"
Surely the impractical and expensive architect designed magnetic levitating bed, like his Brabus Maybach customised Mercedes car, is just something which illustrates the designer obsessed lifestyle of the rich advertising agency founder Hubertus Bigend ?
"For instance, it isn’t clear why ultra-precise coordinates would be necessary for locative art. Even if they were, it would be the viewer who needed them, more than the artist, in order for all the overlaid images to seem to be in the right places."
The Locative Art is meant to be a sort of stealth graffiti artwork, done without the visible cooperation of the owners or managers of the locations themselves, hence the hassle by the security guards in Tower Records Virgin.
Even if the artwork is entirely generated by the equipment that the viewer is wearing, there needs to be some accurate datum points in order to superimpose the images correctly. Either that or you also need an artificial intelligence vision system comparable to human sight and cognition, which can interpolate the orientation of the images simply from visual and motion clues, something which not even military heads up displays are capable of doing today.
Of course neither GPS nor mobile phone, nor "RFID" technology is actually accurate enough to allow for the 3D holographic effects which the commercially sponsored Archie the squid installation for the Japanese department store, implies.
Actually tracking a 40ft container, with a GPS aware tracking device installed, is not possible when the container is not stacked at the top of a pile or on the top deck of a ship with a clear view of the sky i.e. most of the time, for the majority of such containers.
William Gibson had to revise his text at a late stage before publication, after it was pointed out to him by Cory Doctorow, that GPS simply does not work indoors, hence the triangulation from mobile phone cell tower and the RFID system in Tower Records/Virgin ,(which is already out of date as a real location since February 2006, when the book is set.)
William Gibson's novels have never been detailed technical how-to manuals.It is his ability to keep you turning the pages, to willingly suspend your disbelief, together with his stylish, often witty, prose and nuanced descriptions, which make "Spook Country" an entertaining read.
Thanks for the detailed response.
On a general level, I agree that Spook Country is one of Gibson's best pieces of writing.
It's good that you have put so much effort into thinking and writing about it.