I like. The Toms seem like a particularly novel and potentially fertile (sorry) strand. And you get the right language cadence in the first intro bit before the proper info dump begins.
Unfortunately Gibson has becomes so egregore captured at this point his vision to be able to pull something like this off is stunted. It's a real shame. Neil Stephenson might be able to do it but he's too far down the environmentalist rabbit hole of late I think. Unlikely he'll be able to replicate anything as creative and forward thinking as Anathem in the future.
I don't know, I rather liked the Blue Ant stuff to be honest. It was slower, sure, but still fun and still engaged in some interesting concepts. His twitter feed is brainmeltingly dumb.
I still need to read The Peripheral. I have a hardcopy on my nightstand that I never opened, and I was disappointed that the series got canned.
The earliest I've seen this plot used was "The Barbie Murders", a 1978 short story by John Varley. The Barbies were a cult focused on a doll rather than an actor. You didn't have to be nearly as much a clone of Barbie as you did of Tom Cruise to start, but they practiced intensive plastic surgery....
Though as I think of Hollywood, there might have been plastic surgery to become a Tom.
I feel like if I'm going to do this, I'd rather channel Robert Anton Wilson than William Gibson. Make a list of every dire prediction and popular conspiracy theory no matter how absurd, presume they're all true, and map out what that looks like in 75 years.
I'll steer clear of Birds Aren't Real and Flat Earth, but I'll definitely include UFOs. I'm on the fence about lizard people, and I can't put anything in stone about JFK until Trump gets done releasing info later this year.
The Illuminatus trilogy was an excellent read-once, but I couldn't slog through a second reading. The conspiracies in "The Butterfly Kid" were more fun -- that, I've read several times. It's the first book of The Greenwich Village Trilogy, and by far the best.
I like. The Toms seem like a particularly novel and potentially fertile (sorry) strand. And you get the right language cadence in the first intro bit before the proper info dump begins.
Fantastic.
Plot twist: I had a conversation about the Toms at SHOT last week.
Double Plot Twist: It was NOT the conversation I had with you.
Woah. Who with, do you mind sharing?
This was the part of the article I figured would be the *least* likely to be part of the general zeitgeist.
Pastes “take my money” meme.
Great writing, bravo, applause, William Gibson and William Burroughs tier. This has to become longer and a chapter in a book.
Unfortunately Gibson has becomes so egregore captured at this point his vision to be able to pull something like this off is stunted. It's a real shame. Neil Stephenson might be able to do it but he's too far down the environmentalist rabbit hole of late I think. Unlikely he'll be able to replicate anything as creative and forward thinking as Anathem in the future.
For sure once Gibson started doing “near future” stuff his writing became boring.
I don't know, I rather liked the Blue Ant stuff to be honest. It was slower, sure, but still fun and still engaged in some interesting concepts. His twitter feed is brainmeltingly dumb.
I still need to read The Peripheral. I have a hardcopy on my nightstand that I never opened, and I was disappointed that the series got canned.
I remember that one being good, good San Fran cyberpunk.
This is terrifying and wonderful at the same time
Wow. That might be a little too dystopic for my tastes. And I *like* Dystopic Cyberpunk Literature.
Wait til we get to the part about population collapse, antibiotic collapse, hormone collapse, mass AI egregore brainwashing, and the UFOs.
LOL!
The earliest I've seen this plot used was "The Barbie Murders", a 1978 short story by John Varley. The Barbies were a cult focused on a doll rather than an actor. You didn't have to be nearly as much a clone of Barbie as you did of Tom Cruise to start, but they practiced intensive plastic surgery....
Though as I think of Hollywood, there might have been plastic surgery to become a Tom.
“We would cease to be human not by becoming gods, but rather by becoming ant queens”
That’s an interesting direction. Would be cool if you explore that further.
For further inspiration, I recommend Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu. To get a very interesting non-western take on scifi.
Don’t quit your day job.
Have you read “Kaleidoscope Century” by John Barnes? It’s reminiscent of this.
Same.
I figure I'll test the world building concepts out in short substack pieces over the next year to see how they play.
Upcoming: egregore wars, UFOs, and a unified theory of religious metaphysics.
Noice. I like how you are bagging on all the extremely online internet cliques with poetic language.
I feel like if I'm going to do this, I'd rather channel Robert Anton Wilson than William Gibson. Make a list of every dire prediction and popular conspiracy theory no matter how absurd, presume they're all true, and map out what that looks like in 75 years.
I'll steer clear of Birds Aren't Real and Flat Earth, but I'll definitely include UFOs. I'm on the fence about lizard people, and I can't put anything in stone about JFK until Trump gets done releasing info later this year.
The Illuminatus trilogy was an excellent read-once, but I couldn't slog through a second reading. The conspiracies in "The Butterfly Kid" were more fun -- that, I've read several times. It's the first book of The Greenwich Village Trilogy, and by far the best.