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"[Science fiction] has become big business, where books are merchandised and promoted and distributed and placed on sale like slabs of bacon or cans of soup."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Virtual Meeting | ||
| A meeting space that exists only in a computer; the descendant of today's web conferences. |
William Gibson, the godfather of cyberpunk, dishes out some good work in Idoru. The descriptions of cyberspace are not just artful; they advance the plot by providing oblique details about characters and, invariably, exude a subtle ennui that is characteristic of Gibson's work.
| They met in a jungle clearing. Kelsey had done the vegetation; big bright Rousseau leaves, cartoon orchids flecked with her idea of tropical colors (which reminded Chia of that mall chain that sold "organic" cosmetic products in shades utterly unknown to nature. Zona, the only one telepresent who'd ever seen anything like a real jungle, had done the audio, providing birdcalls, invisible but realistically dopplering bugs, and the odd vegetational rustle artfully suggesting not snakes but some shy furry thing, soft-pawed and curious. The light, such as there was, filtered down through high, green canopies, entirely too Disneyesque for Chia - though there was not real need for light in a place that consisted of nothing else. |
| Technovelgy from Idoru,
by William Gibson. Published by Putnam in 1996 Additional resources -
|
You read a long way into this paragraph before you get any hint of unreality, which further heightens the effect.
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Tech news articles related to Idoru
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Virtual Meeting-related
news articles:
- Virtual Reality and Your Spider Sense
| Outdoor Video Screens Can Be Arbitrarily Large |
| iPhone Air Fulfils Jobs' Promise From 2007 - A Giant Screen! |
| Transparent 4K OLED Wireless TV From LG |
| DOTPad Braille Device Offers Live Access |
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Science Fiction
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'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
'It hurtled on down with inconceivable speed until it was visible as thousands of tiny robot planes...'
