Review: Burning Chrome

Burning Chrome by William Gibson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Cynical misanthropia. Sex, drugs and presumably punk rock. This is a collection of universe expanding stories for the cyberpunk sensation 'Neuromancer'. I almost guarantee that I missed the point in most of these. Perhaps I was getting the wrong vibe but it seemed that Gibson was trying to warn us about a future of liberalism, like the worst thing about the future is that people are going to be amoral by his definition. More than that is the idea that we'll all switch off and allow ourselves to be led by corrupt organisations that are designed to fleece us while perpetuating a meaningless existence. I guess I kind of vaguely get on board with this latter but not in a big way.

1. The Gernsback Continuum.
A photographer has a vision which he finds disturbing and the advice he receives in order to make sense of it, is not to make sense of it.

2. Fragments of a Hologram Rose.
Ah, the title of this was pretty damn apt. The delivery had the feeling of a fragmented verse, putting this one firmly in the pile of "poetry that Frank doesn't get". It's a very short one though so not too much of a chore.

Another reviewer here suggested that Gibson likely wrote some of this content as though it was intended for the denizens of the cyberpunk world he had created and not for us, the readers. Kind of a profound way of thinking about it and I'm glad I caught that opinion before reading this collection. I think this one is a great example of that idea.

3. The Belonging Kind.
(Written with John Shirley)
Pretty tame dude gets a little obsessive about a girl he meets briefly in a bar and winds up following her around some of the more depraved parts of the society. Depraved because they are places where drugs and non traditional sexualities are explored. So probably a shocking concept when this was penned but pretty much business as usual for readers in the twenty-first. The ending does a little thing that y'all will probably understand better than I do, because y'all have read Neuromancer before this one. Anyway, it reminded me of 'Better Than Life' from the Red Dwarf universe but it didn't have much to add to the story.

4. Hinterlands.
Ok. This was right up my alley. After a little preamble we're off travelling the solar system (and beyond too, I think). We (humans) discover another intelligent species and subsequently have a bit of a "cargo cult" reaction, trying to seek them out or draw them back. However, they just don't give a hoot about little old primitive hoomans. With a fairly brutal and harsh conclusion, the story continues to focus on the pointlessness of our actions.

5. Red Star, Winter Orbit.
(Written with Bruce Sterling)
I guess this one kind of shows its age the most so far because we're given a narrative that focuses on an old KGB agent attempting to bring old KGB values along with us as we move human societies into space. However despite the KGB having little relevance in modern life, the idea of an outdated warmonger clinging onto his dreams of soviet dominance is uncomfortably familiar in 2022.

However, if I've got the details right, the Russian technicians aboard their Kosmograd aren't having it and they form a resistance movement.

Largely conversational and as far as I could tell this story didn't really go anywhere, so it didn't do anything for me, but I guess I liked it in principle.

6. New Rose Hotel.
This was like a love poem or a love letter reminiscing on days gone by and although in doing so it took a walk through the cyberpunk setting it didn't appeal to me overall. Apart from maybe the final few lines:

"It’s all right, baby. Only please come here. Hold my hand."

7. The Winter Market.
I don't know folks. I was enjoying this to begin with. Another walk through the norms of the cyberpunk future created for this trilogy but, well, firstly the plot is completely bland and, well, secondly it's getting kind of lame that debauchery is at the crux of every forboding that the author penned about this possible future society. I prefer futures in which debauchery is held up with higher regard.

8. Dogfight.
(Written with Michael Swanwick)
C'mon man. I'm just trying to enjoy a bit of Fear and Loathing in Gibson's version of a dystopia. It seems like the thing about the future that's so scary is that people will openly take drugs and have more frequent casual sex. So fkn what! Next.

9. Burning Chrome.
This the titular story was the only one that felt worth reading and in retrospect perhaps I'd have enjoyed it even more if I'd discovered it on its own instead of after struggling through the rest of this crappy collection.

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Well, I'm about to try 'Neuromancer' so wish me luck and I'll see you over at that review when I'm done with it.

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