I’m a William Gibson fan. Back at Wired, I even got to work with him a bit (this piece got us banned in Singapore, which was sort of our goal…). Gibson restarted his blog a week or so ago, and today he reports that Pattern Recognition, his latest novel, may well turn into a film by Peter Weir. Yippee! Finally, something to look forward to out of Hollywood!
But Gibson warns (perhaps remembering Johnny Mnemonic, which Keanu aside I actually rather liked…):
I should warn you, should you happen to bump into me in the meantime, that I don’t regard films of novels as being the ultimate form in which a novel may be lucky enough to manifest. I regard *the novel* as the ultimate form in which the novel manifests. And if I should suspect that you think otherwise, I’m liable to snap at you.
The best part about books is they indirectly cause our minds to imagine and think about what we’re reading. Movies will never hold a candle to the power of the mind. SciFi books just do that more than others and in ways that help us problem solve real (technology)-world situations.