Time Travel discussion

"The Gernsback Continuum" gets 1 star from me. If I could give it less, I would. It just felt like a diarrhea of words thrown about with nothing to show for them afterward. I certainly wouldn't call it "time travel" either. I think this seals my decision to never read anything by Gibson again. He's just not for me. Luckily, this was a short short story. Did anyone actually like it?

...I did :)

Yes, I enjoyed it. It wasn't proper time-travel, I agree. What I enjoyed was the imagination of that future which never came - and may never come. And which we may never want to come.

Part of my enjoyment was because when I was ten a colleague of my father's gave me a stack of magazines called Modern Wonder from the 1930s. They were full of these exact same fantastical visions of the future - visions which were surely a bit mad-cap even back then. I recently pitched some 'Did they come true?' journalism based on some of the ideas. No takers, sadly.

I looked up Nazi Sex Motel. Someone released a song/tune/dirge with the title. It was truly dreadful.

I think there was an intriguing idea somewhere in this story but as Amy pointed out, it does get lost in the "diarrhea of words." It's an idea or image without any supporting structure or plot. There were a few fun phrases thrown about. "...all the sinister fruitiness of Hitler Youth propaganda" caught my attention. As did "an aluminum avocado with a central shark fin rudder..."

This writer is definitely all about imagery and the feel of the story more than the story itself. Nothing much really happens other than this brief glimpse of a world we never knew. It gets two and a half stars out of me. A good concept drowned in a sea of clever descriptions. It's a cool concept, but I would have liked to see more done with it.

I am not sure if I can put a finger on Gibson's writing style, however he writes with the assumption that his reader has a frame of reference to understand his settings...

Movie Theater...Sticky floor, aroma of buttered popcorn, dark cushy theater seats, excellent trailers, thrilling movie...

However when Gibson does it, he does it in a way that lacks a point of reference or something we can compare it to....

Solarium....Gelatinous exoskeleton, aroma of burnt malaria molecules, Ergonomic panoramic viewing aperture, superb marketing incentive motivators, Snarfletching Aqua sauce!

Now that I have set the mood and told you where we are and set the mood...he spends a lot of time with his characters drinking, eating, peeing, sleeping....The dialogue in Peripheral specifically drives me nuts with the amount of conversation derails because someone needs to ask for a coffee...Its realistic I suppose but maddening as well.

Am I the only one that saw a clear story about a guy who has a meaningless job that doesn't challenge him, who comes into contact with his imagination... balks at it... and drowns it out in sex and violence.

As, it is suggested, did America.

At least, that's what I got. I can see it clearly and can quote the steps along the way.

Really liked this:

The Thirties dreamed white marble and slipstream chrome, immortal crystal and burnished bronze, but the rockets on the covers of the Gernsback pulps had fallen on London in the dead of night, screaming

I'm a big fan of the future-look from the 30s. And I found myself seeing what Gibson described. Especially the Tom Swift Airplane.

I suspect the problems with the language are less Gibson's ability to describe and more a lack of interest in his subject matter.

Lincoln wrote: "Solarium....Gelatinous exoskeleton, aroma of burnt malaria molecules, Ergonomic panoramic viewing aperture, superb marketing incentive motivators, Snarfletching Aqua sauce!"

Can you repost the second comment, that's apparently been deleted?

And I probably agree that it wasn't proper time travel. It implied the possibility of an alternate timeline that was and was not real. Very vague. But yes, more of some kind of alternate dimensional fantasy thing.

Or a delusional state of mind. Take your pick, because either can be supported.

I couldn't decide if it he was seeing some type of dream of what the world could be or if was seeing an actual bleed over from a parallel steampunk-esque world. Either way ... not really time travel.

Second Paragraph

I suppose it started in London, in that bogus Greek taverna in Battersea Park Road, with lunch on Cohen's corporate tab. Dead steam-table food and it took them thirty minutes to find an ice bucket for the retsina

The way Gibson sets the stage just doesn't do it for my imagination I seriously picked out a sentence to try to explain where my brain goes while reading this.

London ok I understand I can picture London.

in the bogus Greek taverna...What makes it bogus and what is with the word taverna I read it as tavern..

Battersea Park Road (am I supposed to know where that is?)

on Cohen's corporate tab (this informs the character in that he is eating on some one else's dime, but who is Cohen?)

Dead steam-table food (What does your imagination do with a description like that?, What makes it Dead what makes it steam-table? imagining dead steamed veggies?)

And it took them thirty minutes to find an ice bucket for the retsina. (They got bad service or had to wait half hour but the first thing my mind does when you reference an ice bucket it goes to a hotel setting...also I have no idea what retsina is...not the authors fault...)

Having to work this hard to establish myself in my own brain to appreciate the story is to much work.

I tried to convey this thought previously but perhaps this makes it more clear having used an actual passage.

I suspect I would like the novels by Gibson more since I actually enjoy his style. It's not dull. I may not pick up on each nuanced detail, but I like the flow. I think my main gripe with the story was more the lack of structure or resolution. The not getting more bone under the layers of description. I imagine I would be better off with his longer stories. I certainly liked the concept and the era of architecture he was resurrecting. It reminds me a little bit of Epcot's Tomorrowland and the future we envisioned that that is still on display.

Lincoln wrote: "Dead steam-table food (What does your imagination do with a description like that?, What makes it Dead what makes it steam-table? imagining dead steamed veggies?)"

Interesting. I found the same things evocative. I'll use the same examples to identify what I liked about it.


Like specifying Battersea Park Road, rather then just, "in London"; "bogus Greek taverna" works because Greek restaurants are commonly given the "taverna" title, for flavour and "bogus" because it's not very Greek.

Dead steam-table food... Well, steam-table food automatically makes me think of high school cafeterias. And using the obvious word, "dead", is an attempt to emphasize the unappealing nature of the food. Have you ever seen something that looks far... worse... all slimy-looking, pale, and steam-tabley? I have.

And retsina, a Greek wine, simply adds more atmosphere.

Difficulty finding an ice bucket tells you that they don't normally put wine on ice... another way of commenting on the class of the establishment.

He found a few ways of dissing the restaurant, without actually saying that it sucked. I like that.

And for anyone's interest, he wasn't imagining a steampunk world, he was imagining a sleek futuristic world.

Steampunk car:



Gernsback Teardrop Car:

It appears to be every possible futuristic world concept and conspiracy theories bleeding through at once: "bits of cultural imagery that have split off and taken on a life of their own".

Retro-futuristic
*Pinballs
*American Streamlined Moderne: https://www.google.com/search?q=volks...
*day-glo jogging shoes: https://www.google.com/search?q=day-g...
*30s and 40s streamlined design
*wingliners: https://www.google.com/search?q=day-g...
*gyrocopters

Steampunk
*Jules Verne airships: https://www.google.com/search?q=jules...
*raygun gothic

Disneyland
*Volkshalle: https://www.google.com/search?q=volks...
*animated holograms

futuristic
*flying oil refineries

Conspiracy theories
*bigfoot
*loch ness monster
*UFOs

Those weren't all in his "visions". Some of those were about his friend's journalism.

But yeah, except the conspiracy theories section, the day glo and the Volkshalle those all fit the future-world ideals of the time. Tom Swift, to the rescue!

Like he said, he was tapping the future-zeitgeist of the past.

Meta.

James wrote: "Like he said, he was tapping the future-zeitgeist of the past.

I like that phrase - like how for a long time the future was depicted as all clean and white plastic'y (see Barbarella, Sleeper, Logan's Run), then Star Wars, Blade Runner & Alien changed the aesthetic.

James wrote: "Am I the only one that saw a clear story about a guy who has a meaningless job that doesn't challenge him, who comes into contact with his imagination... balks at it... and drowns it out in sex and..."

No, that's what I got out of it. I also got out of it the ways he describes things indirectly, etc... but it gets painful when there's so much allusion to things unknown. I didn't know retsina, I had to work hard to figure out Hasselblad, etc etc.

However, the fact that I had to work so hard to decipher such a simple and ugly little story annoyed me enough to give it only 2 stars. Credit due for the imagery I did understand, and for the humanity of the guy in Tucson who compassionately told our hero that he's not crazy. But more than 2 I cannot rate this.

Cheryl wrote: "but it gets painful when there's so much allusion to things unknown. I didn't know retsina, I had to work hard to figure out Hasselblad, etc etc"

To each their own, of course. I like when I learn things, from an author. I knew Hasselblad, but it adds flavour to learn/hear about the ultimate portrait camera.

I didn't know what retsina was, either. I looked it up, which was easy since I'm e-reading the book and I'm on my computer.

It's one of the things about Harlan Ellison, that I loved. He made me learn new things. He never wrote to lull you. I'm pretty sure Gibson doesn't, either.

I do like learning. I don't like being lulled. There's a continuum, James, between a story or context that's too easy vs too difficult... Ellison gives enough context clues that enough can be figured out. Gernsback didn't, here.