Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Towns like this are for people who like the way down.”

Neuromancer by William Gibson

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Reading the “classics” of a subgenre is sometimes an underwhelming experience. Decades of creators have had opportunities to explore and expand the subgenre. By the time one gets to the roots, a novel can sometimes be more of a respected artifact than an engaging book. Unfortunately, that is what happened to me with Gibson’s famous Neuromancer. That being said, it was still an enjoyable page-turner. The story centers on Case, a digital cowboy. He is a talented (and drug-addled) data thief in the matrix, a sort […]

Review #11: “Boy, I was daid”

Neuromancer by William Gibson

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A re-read, but one I do every year or two because of just how much I love this book. Publisher’s description: “The Matrix is a world within the world, a global consensus-hallucination, the representation of every byte of data in cyberspace… Henry Dorsett Case was the sharpest data-thief in the business, until vengeful former employees crippled his nervous system. But now a new and very mysterious employer recruits him for a last-chance run. The target: an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence orbiting Earth in service of […]

William Gibson (1)

The Miracle Worker by William Gibson

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My AP students are rounding the bend on the school year and I assigned them one final out of class reading of their choosing, so I have been reading and rereading some of their choices. I really pressed some of them who have shown some weariness to look at plays as a source for their final reading. Here’s one I found in a Little Free Library that I think should work. It’s a classic that many of us read at some point or watched the […]

End of Year Final

Phases of Gravity by Dan Simmons

The Making of the President 1960 by Theodore White

The Peripheral by William Gibson

Stella Maris by Cormac Mccarthy

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

Why Orwell Matters by Christopher Hitchens

Liberation Day by George Saunders

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

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Phases of Gravity One of the very few “realistic” novels by Dan Simmons. Usually his novels are science fiction, horror, fantasy, or some combination of those. Sometimes his books are noir or suspense, and even though those books take place in the real world, it’s just not quite the same thing as realism. Don’t tell Raymond Chandler I said this.  This book was written in the late 1980s and our lead character Dan Baedecker is a retired astronaut who has also in recent years becomes […]

Zero History

Zero History by William Gibson

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This is the third and final “Blue Ant” novel, which circulates around a few recurring characters like a musician turned brand specialist and a Dutch advertising entrepreneur. In this book, we focus on the world of wildcat clothing design, specifically underground denim design. A mysterious denim designer has been doing guerilla product drops in order to avoid the world of fashion and our business exec Hubertus Bigend puts Hollis (our musician) and a another older character Milgrim on the task of finding the designer. Milgrim […]

The greatest Alien movie never made.

Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay by William Gibson by Pat Cadigan

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Alien3 had a long, strange trip before it made it to screens in 1992, fully six years after the critical and box office smash Aliens made writer/director James Cameron a household name. During that time more than twenty scripts were considered at one time or another for the follow up. Before work began the only consideration was that series heroine Ellen Ripley, played perfectly by Sigourney Weaver, would be sitting this one out. Weaver had expressed fatigue with the series and did not think there […]



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