William Gibson: Spook Country
Tuesday, September 25
Festival Room, SCH
7:00 PM

Author William Gibson speaks on his new novel, Spook Country. Book signing to follow. This is a free event, everyone is welcome.

In Spook Country, William Gibson, author of eight critically acclaimed previous novels, picks up the thread that began in his most recent bestseller Pattern Recognition, continuing to probe cultural changes in the U.S. since 9/11 and the space where politics and paranoia intersect. Like Pattern Recognition, this latest Gibson novel takes place in a contemporary setting and carries into our new century his perceptions of technology, globalization, and terrorism.

Of course, relaying this news on my blog has a potential backfiring effect of having more people show up causing an even larger queue, but whatever. I enjoyed Neuromancer and Count Zero even if I can’t really remember what happened in either of those two books. I do have Pattern Recognition although I don’t think I’m even thirty pages in on that book.

Anyway, I’m likely going to go to this and am going to try and find out how many books he’s going to be signing. If someone wants me to pick up a copy of Spook Country for him and also get it signed (since I’ll be in the queue), I can do that (assuming he’s going to sign more than one copy per person), just let me know. I’m probably going to contact Mr. Bittle and see if he wants in on this.

With this episode’s events, it seems that they’re going to tie in “祟殺し編” with this arc. I never really liked “祟殺し編” because of its idiotic ending and we had a glimpse of that idiocy here both as some brief flashback scenes and in the way how Rika just kind of went back and forth between whether she cared about anything or not. I just found it ludicrous in how she tried to act all tough throughout the episode but then just started crying at the end of it all. Admittedly, we also got a bit of that from Chie sensei when she decided to go talk to Satoko’s uncle although her failed attempt was actually funny to me whereas Rika’s change of heart seemed really out of place.

In terms of the overall development of the arc as a whole, I’m really liking it. The pacing for this episode was fine and we are also presented with some new information. It’s interesting (and also rather odd) how Takano is actually on Rika’s side but has been killed every loop. You’d think that she’d try to convince Takano and Tomitake to not do things that might get them killed…but no, just no.

It’ll be interesting to see what Keiichi’s got brewing for the next episode. If it’s anything like what happened in the third episode, we’re going to be in for some good laughs. Depending on how quickly this event gets resolved, I’m curious as to whether these events actually transpired in the visual novel or not. When you consider how many episodes it took for each arc in the first season, you have to wonder whether they’re adding original material into the anime series or whether the last two chapters really are long enough to span so many episodes. Though, as aforementioned, I’ve been totally fine with the developments and pacing of this arc so far, so even if this “section” isn’t actually in the visual novel, I’m totally cool with it.