Neuromancer was published in July 1984. It would have been accepted for publication 12 months earlier, so written in 1981-82.
That was before analog cellphone service started, never mind GSM. Neuromancer predates the CD, the end of the USSR, the Space Shuttle flying (and exploding), Diet Coke, TCP/IP, Wifi, the PC AT, the Apple Macintosh, air bags in cars, the end of leaded gasoline, public recognition of global warming ...
@jwz One of these days, I swear, someone will buy the TV rights to the Laundry Files and not realize they start out in 2001, so everyone will be toting iPads and wearing flares and smoking cigarettes in the office.
@logickal@jwz A 'TV tuned to a dead channel’ STILL means something, but the colour it turns is typically a saturated bright blue, not a greyish static fuzz. (And it's increasingly less meaningful as TVs turn into computer monitors rather than anything with a radio receiver built in.)
@cstross@logickal@jwz A surprising number of TVs will now generate static. I think it's because the blue screen looks like a windows crash more than no input.
@cstross@jwz Also, interestingly, the writing preceded the Bladerunner movie, but was published after. I think Gibson commented on that in an interview some time, but I forgot what he said ¯\(ツ)/¯
He stated in an interview that he walked out because it was so close to what he was in the process of writing, he didn't want to incorporate somebody else's work into it.
@janxdevil Because while New Rose Hotel is a somewhat faithful adaptation, it is an absolutely shit movie, unless your fetish is hours of watching Harvey Keitel cry in a capsule coffin.
First of all, you're underselling just how fucking terrible that movie is. The last half of the fucking thing is literally flashbacks to the first half of the fucking thing. Any sane person would rather watch steam come off a log of hot dog shit than watch that movie twice.
Secondly: Willem Dafoe. It's Willem Dafoe. And Christopher Walken. And you'd by god think they could have made something half watchable, but no.
@charlykuehnast@jwz Indeed. In the three decades since the 90s, have any of them had a distinctive aesthetic and art? 2010s maybe. By 2019 we had something definable in pop culture, as well as a lot of good music for the first time in a while. If the AI bubble gets big enough, it could help define the 2020s.
@brendo@charlykuehnast We have an ongoing, moderately successful "90s/2000s"-themed dance party called "Why 2K" and I still cannot explain to you what genre that is. The best I can do is, "It's the same top 40 pop-hiphop dreck that Bootie played all the time, but now you get the whole song instead of just 30 seconds of it."
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