William Gibson Books Trivia Quiz

Answer: Maryalice

She seems to have gone down in the world further in 'All Tomorrow's Parties', from criminal to wrecked part-time PR girl for unknown country musician Buell Creedmore.

Answer: blue

This is a 'trivia' question indeed. :)

Answer: Legba

From 'Count Zero'. The loa are the gods of Vodou or Voodoo. Voodooists believe the loa can possess certain specially trained humans and act through them. (By the way, an houngan is not a loa, but a Voodoo priest.) In the latter two books of the Neuromancer trilogy, a split has occurred in the universal self-consciousness of Cyberspace (a conciousness that arose through the mingling of the AIs Wintermute and Neuromancer in the first novel), the scattered pieces of artificial conciousness desperately searching for suitable identities in the store of available archetypes and finding the Voodoo gods best suited to their needs and tastes. Which brings us to the next question:

Answer: contact with another huge self-concious AI from Alpha Centauri

The nature of this contact is not specified in the books, nor is there an explanation why such a contact should cause the Terran Cyberspace persona to split. We have to accept it at face value that such a split occurred and are left to ponder if in Gibson's view aliens are generally male-volent, even the artificial ones.

Answer: Boomzilla

From 'All Tomorrow's Parties'.

Answer: $5

In 'Virtual Light', Chevette buys three eggs from the 'egg lady', an old woman that sells them out of a basket. The dollar in the future of 'Virtual Light' seems to have been devaluated somewhat. :)

Answer: True

They spend the night together after an evening on the veranda while Turner's brother is elsewhere on the premises.

Answer: Korean

From 'Mona Lisa Overdrive' where almost all the characters that count are female - and very well outlined characters at that. Kumiko is a clever, courageous child and you cannot help but feel sympathy for her. Angie is a clever, courageous young woman.

Her lookalike Mona is less clever and not especially courageous, but an equally well drawn character who inspires sympathy because she is so absolutely helpless and dumb in a harsh world. :) Even the mature Sally = Molly from 'Neuromancer', although an absolute bitch and a killer, shows some sympathetic traits in her mother-daughter-like relation with Kumiko; and of course, she is also clever and courageous. Even the major villain (and a convincingly evil one), the personality-construct of 3Jane Tessier-Ashpool, is female. Together with some strong minor male roles, 'Mona Lisa Overdrive' has an assortment of well laid-out characters that makes the book one of my favourites among Gibson's works.

Answer: Arthur Conan Doyle

From 'Count Zero'. 'Simstim' or 'stim' is the future's equivalent to TV and cinema: direct sensorial input, like in the movie 'The Matrix', albeit done less intrusively: you just have to wear a cap with wires on your head. Actually, if you made it this far, this is probably irrelevant information to you. :)

Answer: dissidents

The article, called 'Disneyland with the Death Penalty', appeared 1993 in 'Wired' 1.04. It can be read here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/gibson.html . Gibson seems little thrilled about Singapore. Actually, the only thing that met with his unlimited approval there was the food.

Answer: mechanical watches

He got bitten by the e-bay bug when he finally had internet access. An article of his about this appeared in 'Wired' 7.01: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.01/ebay.html . E-mail addresses is the last thing he would collect, I believe. Now he has a computer, he does have one, but it's top secret, of course.

Answer: extorting information and money from other criminals

From 'Idoru'. In Australian folklore, such a man is supposedly called a 'stand-over man' be-cause he 'stands over' his victims when torturing them, at least according to the explanation that one of the characters gives in the book. However, when I asked an Australian about it that I know from elsewhere in the net, this term was unfamiliar to him. Any Australians there to help me out on this?

Answer: DatAmerica

From 'Idoru'. His ability was a long-term effect of an experimental drug he took as a child during a medical experiment in the orphanage where he was living.

Answer: Padania

Mention of this can be found in 'Virtual Light' (where she still is his girlfriend, although fed up with and scared of him) and in 'All Tomorrow's Parties'.
'Padania' means northern Italy, north of the river Po (Padus in Latin). It would include such famous cities as Milan, Venice, Torino and Genua. There actually is a right-wing movement, called the 'Lega Nord', that aims to separate the prosperous north of Italy from the less prosperous south and call the new country 'Padania', so in the future of 'Virtual Light' they must have succeeded.

Answer: human

Thoughts of Marly Krushkova on encountering a Cyberspace representation of her new employer, art collector Josef Virek, in 'Count Zero'.