Distrust That Particular Flavor - an acclaimed nonfiction collection by William Gibson, author of Neuromancer
'The future's already here: it's just not evenly distributed'
William Gibson was writing fiction when he predicted the internet. And as his stories bled into reality so he became one of the first to report on the real-world consequences of cyberspace's growth and development.
Now, with the dust settling on the first internet revolution, comes Gibson's first collection of non-fiction - essays from the technological and cultural frontiers of this new world.
Covering a variety of subjects, they include:
Metrophagy - the Art and Science of Digesting Great Cities
An account of obsession in 'the world's attic' - eBay
Reasons why 'The Net is a Waste of Time'
Singapore as 'Disneyland with the Death Penalty'
A primer on Japan, our default setting for the future
These and many other pieces, collected for the first time in Distrust that Particular Flavour, are studded with revealing autobiographical fragments and map the development of Gibson's acute perceptions about modern life. Readers of Neal Stephenson, Ray Bradbury and Iain M. Banks will love this book.
'Gibson is a prophet and a satirist, a black comedian and an astounding architect of cool. He's also responsible for much of the world we live in' Spectator
'Part-detective story, part-cultural snapshot ... all bound by Gibson's pin-sharp prose' Arena
William Gibson's first novel Neuromancer has sold more than six million copies worldwide. In an earlier story he had invented the term 'cyberspace'; a concept he developed in the novel, creating an iconography for the Information Age long before the invention of the Internet. The book won three major literary prizes. He has since written nine further novels including Count Zero; Mona Lisa Overdrive; The Difference Engine; Virtual Light; Idoru; All Tomorrow's Parties; Pattern Recognition; Spook Country and most recently Zero History.
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