Status
Available
Call number
Series
Collection
Publication
Ace (1986), Edition: Revised, Paperback, 208 pages
Description
Best-known for his seminal sf novel Neuromancer, William Gibson is actually best when writing short fiction. Tautly-written and suspenseful, Burning Chrome collects 10 of his best short stories with a preface from Bruce Sterling, now available for the first time in trade paperback. These brilliant, high-resolution stories show Gibson's characters and intensely-realized worlds at his absolute best, from the chip-enhanced couriers of "Johnny Mnemonic" to the street-tech melancholy of "Burning Chrome.".
User reviews
LibraryThing member edgeworth
Burning Chrome is a collection of ten short stories by William Gibson. Of those, I would rank five (Johnny Mnemonic, The Gernsback Continuum, Hinterlands, New Rose Hotel and Burning Chrome) as "very good" or higher.
From me, that's high praise. I don't know why, but I just usually don't enjoy short
Anyway, the point is that I usually shrug my shoulders when reviewing short story collections, but I liked Burning Chrome a lot. I think Gibson's style suits itself to short fiction (and essays) as much as it does to long fiction. (Normally I'd say "better than," but Gibson is one of the most important writers of the last 30 years and his long fiction is amazing as well). He's a writer for whom style is as important as substance, a man who holds a mirror up to our culture, his fiction littered with the brand names and place names of an increasingly capitalist and globalist society. He's like a Stephen King in reverse, predicting the zeitgeist of the future instead of capturing the zeitgeist of the past (and both writers have less mainstream recognition than they should, because they dared to write genre fiction). Burning Chrome is full of stories about flawed people living on the margins of society, alienated in enormous cities, forging connections with other losers, dystopic technology integrated into their grey and painful lives.
Aside from a few melancholy clunkers (Fragments of a Hologram Rose, Dogfight) Burning Chrome sets a remarkably high standard, and proves why William Gibson is one of history's greatest science fiction writers.
From me, that's high praise. I don't know why, but I just usually don't enjoy short
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story collections very much. A while ago I stopped reading them in one hit, because that's not how short stories are supposed to be read, and instead started reading a short story or two in between novels - but it didn't make much difference. I just don't think I enjoy short fiction as much as long fiction, and I'm not alone. I'm not going to try to find a link to back that up; it's conventional wisdom in the publishing industry that short stories don't sell, and every Google hit for that phrase brings up an article trying fruitlessly to debunk it or arguing the self-evident point that commercial value doesn't equal literary value.Anyway, the point is that I usually shrug my shoulders when reviewing short story collections, but I liked Burning Chrome a lot. I think Gibson's style suits itself to short fiction (and essays) as much as it does to long fiction. (Normally I'd say "better than," but Gibson is one of the most important writers of the last 30 years and his long fiction is amazing as well). He's a writer for whom style is as important as substance, a man who holds a mirror up to our culture, his fiction littered with the brand names and place names of an increasingly capitalist and globalist society. He's like a Stephen King in reverse, predicting the zeitgeist of the future instead of capturing the zeitgeist of the past (and both writers have less mainstream recognition than they should, because they dared to write genre fiction). Burning Chrome is full of stories about flawed people living on the margins of society, alienated in enormous cities, forging connections with other losers, dystopic technology integrated into their grey and painful lives.
Aside from a few melancholy clunkers (Fragments of a Hologram Rose, Dogfight) Burning Chrome sets a remarkably high standard, and proves why William Gibson is one of history's greatest science fiction writers.
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LibraryThing member truth_of_spirit
It features some of the characters from the Sprawl trilogy as well as introducing some of the key concept discussed in those novels, it kind of gets you in the mood for reading them ;-)I really like it.
LibraryThing member MaowangVater
This collection of ten stories could define the subgenre of science fiction that came to be called cyberpunk. It’s a bunch of tech savvy guys behaving badly: hacking, stealing, treating their girlfriends badly, all delivered against a backdrop of frenzied noir in a near-future that’s teetering
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on the edge of dystopia. Which is not to say that they aren’t good. The title story is the best, a heist story told by a somewhat reluctant participant. There are also two near earth orbit tales and a few stories of remorse and regret. It’s a fine sampling of Gibson’s early work. Show Less
LibraryThing member klarusu
This is a collection of Gibson's short stories which contain the embryonic shells of many themes, characters and stories we see in all his full length novels alongside other more individual pieces. I thoroughly enjoy Gibson's world and his full-length novels but I found this collection a slightly
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frustrating mixed bag of shorter pieces. They veered between stories that never quite fulfilled their promise (the confusing 'Johnny Mnemonic' being a prime example of this) and others which were thoroughly enjoyable but left me itching for more than just a few pages worth of writing that the short story format allowed (such as the eponomous 'Burning Chrome'). It's possible that I am clouded by a dislike of the format itself - I am never fully satisfied by the short story as I find it slightly contrived in style and execution, not substantial enough to fulfil my need. For me this is an interesting window into what Gibson shows he can do in the full-length form, but not my favourite of his publications. Show Less
LibraryThing member DRFP
Short story collections invariably tend to be a mixed bag of some good, some bad, some in-between.
"Burning Chrome" is one of the more consistent collections I've read from any genre of fiction. There isn't a bad story in here. The two Sprawl related stories are good and interesting reads (a nice
There are two real stand outs though: "Hinterlands" and "The Winter Market".
"Hinterlands" is a seriously unnerving look at humanity in the future attempting to contact another life form. It's a brilliant story; very bleak and actually one of the most scary stories I've ever read.
"The Winter Market" is very different. It's a much more touching story about humanity and technology. Exceptionally well written, proving Gibson can write as well as just have great ideas, and very poignant.
This collection is worth owning for these two shorts alone but the other stories don't disappoint either.
"Burning Chrome" is one of the more consistent collections I've read from any genre of fiction. There isn't a bad story in here. The two Sprawl related stories are good and interesting reads (a nice
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introduction before getting starting on Neuromancer) and the rest, some more heavily sci-fi than others, are all at least decent reads.There are two real stand outs though: "Hinterlands" and "The Winter Market".
"Hinterlands" is a seriously unnerving look at humanity in the future attempting to contact another life form. It's a brilliant story; very bleak and actually one of the most scary stories I've ever read.
"The Winter Market" is very different. It's a much more touching story about humanity and technology. Exceptionally well written, proving Gibson can write as well as just have great ideas, and very poignant.
This collection is worth owning for these two shorts alone but the other stories don't disappoint either.
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LibraryThing member tlockney
Just as good as the first time I read it -- though the experience is obviously colored having seen the future, in many ways, that Gibson was trying to capture. There's a few weak spots in here, but overall I'd say it holds up well. Think of it, in some cases anyway, as an alternate history version
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of the last couple decades (and maybe shades of things to come). I can clearly see more of Gibson's influences now -- prime among them in the case of this book would be PKD, honestly. He might not agree, but it shows through pretty strongly, in my opinion. Show Less
LibraryThing member masyukun
This collection of short stories includes many of Gibson's classics, like Johnny Mnemonic. Reading Gibson is a mind-altering experience: his stories somehow stretch and change you. I couldn't read the whole book in one sitting, because I felt like I needed to come up for air after just a few of
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them. Show Less
LibraryThing member danahlongley
Awesome cyberpunk short stories - just about all of them classics.
LibraryThing member isabelx
We're an information economy. They teach you that at school. What they don't tell you is that it's impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal information. Fragments that can be retrieved, amplified . . .
The other
The other
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stories in this book were science fiction, but "The Belonging Kind" would probably be best described as horror (even though nothing too scary actually happened). My favourites were "The Gernsback Continuum" and "The Winter Market", and I probably liked the title story least since the ice-breaker run through the matrix to burn Chrome seemed a bit samey after reading a couple of his novels recently. Show Less
LibraryThing member jayduhon
Great background story to Neuromancer.
LibraryThing member Superdave08
I liked the writing in most of the stories, although some of them seemed to lack focus. It is interesting to note that Gibson is credited with bringing science fiction out of the doldrums in the 80's and making it more respectable in the literary arena. Oooookkkaaaayy. I guess I understand that.
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These stories are definitely more literary, darker and more opaque than say a vintage Asimov, so I guess because of that they lend themselves more readily to a technical literary criticism. Show Less
LibraryThing member Toast.x2
William Gibson's Burning Chrome, 1986
Public transit actually made this a more enjoyable read than I would otherwise think. It is not so much that the bumping and swerving of bus drivers, or the low pitched drone of a rail system enhanced the book. Instead, there was more that there was time to mull
A couple weeks back, I finished reading Burning Chrome on my way to work. When finished, I was surprisingly lucky that I did not have a "back up book" with me. It is very rare that i do not have a second book available to me. In this case, it had slipped my mind that I would be finished soon. Half of the last story was left when I just gave up. When i arived at work, I handed the book to a coworker who wanted to read it and wrote it off as unfinishable.
As far as collections of short stories go, I tend to stay away from them. They seem like teases to a larger plotline, the story that i would prefer to read. They often seem either too rushed to make a point, or too slow and thus meandering about, ultimately showing an authors inability to create a shortened and cohesive tale.
When I read this collection, it did not swayed from my typical short story experience. In fact, I had difficulty reading every story as each one fell into one of the categories. As stated earlier, it was bad enough that when I got to the last tale in the book (having read only 3-4 pages) I just called it quits. I didn't feel bad about it, I felt victorious. I had beat the compulsion to finish reading it, regardless that my level of enjoyment was minimal.
Cue the ride home: Bare handed and unable to zone out. I kept staring at the folks riding the train and I found myself comparing individuals to characters from the book, each taking on a life that was not previously associated. As we passed under the freeway overpasses and through Portland's Washington/Zoo tunnel, I recalled details from the underworld of Johnny Mnemonic. Certain shops we went past brought forth an artdeco alternate reality. Homeless people on the street became computer geniuses in a slovenly and grimy future or juiced up cybernetic fiends needing a fix. Each tale became bigger and more lifelike than when I read it.
When I got back to work the following day I picked up the book from my coworkers desk and finished reading the last story. It seemed appropriate, as opposed tocompulsory.
Like Neal Stephenson, Gibson is given a lot of glory for the darker side of our modern scifi future, for the cyber punk hell holes where everything is better, provided you never scratch the surface or wish for autonomy. I don't think that my mind had fully absorbed what I was reading.
This book was like a good a good local or homebrew porter. Underneath a perfect, cream colored head, you find a dark nectar and perhaps some sediment suspended, trying to sink but unable to. With the right recipe, and the proper delivery, even a pessimist given a half glass would still say, "That's a damn fine brew".
--
xpost RawBlurb.com
Public transit actually made this a more enjoyable read than I would otherwise think. It is not so much that the bumping and swerving of bus drivers, or the low pitched drone of a rail system enhanced the book. Instead, there was more that there was time to mull
Show More
it over.A couple weeks back, I finished reading Burning Chrome on my way to work. When finished, I was surprisingly lucky that I did not have a "back up book" with me. It is very rare that i do not have a second book available to me. In this case, it had slipped my mind that I would be finished soon. Half of the last story was left when I just gave up. When i arived at work, I handed the book to a coworker who wanted to read it and wrote it off as unfinishable.
As far as collections of short stories go, I tend to stay away from them. They seem like teases to a larger plotline, the story that i would prefer to read. They often seem either too rushed to make a point, or too slow and thus meandering about, ultimately showing an authors inability to create a shortened and cohesive tale.
When I read this collection, it did not swayed from my typical short story experience. In fact, I had difficulty reading every story as each one fell into one of the categories. As stated earlier, it was bad enough that when I got to the last tale in the book (having read only 3-4 pages) I just called it quits. I didn't feel bad about it, I felt victorious. I had beat the compulsion to finish reading it, regardless that my level of enjoyment was minimal.
Cue the ride home: Bare handed and unable to zone out. I kept staring at the folks riding the train and I found myself comparing individuals to characters from the book, each taking on a life that was not previously associated. As we passed under the freeway overpasses and through Portland's Washington/Zoo tunnel, I recalled details from the underworld of Johnny Mnemonic. Certain shops we went past brought forth an artdeco alternate reality. Homeless people on the street became computer geniuses in a slovenly and grimy future or juiced up cybernetic fiends needing a fix. Each tale became bigger and more lifelike than when I read it.
When I got back to work the following day I picked up the book from my coworkers desk and finished reading the last story. It seemed appropriate, as opposed tocompulsory.
Like Neal Stephenson, Gibson is given a lot of glory for the darker side of our modern scifi future, for the cyber punk hell holes where everything is better, provided you never scratch the surface or wish for autonomy. I don't think that my mind had fully absorbed what I was reading.
This book was like a good a good local or homebrew porter. Underneath a perfect, cream colored head, you find a dark nectar and perhaps some sediment suspended, trying to sink but unable to. With the right recipe, and the proper delivery, even a pessimist given a half glass would still say, "That's a damn fine brew".
--
xpost RawBlurb.com
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LibraryThing member themulhern
These early short stories by William Gibson are sometimes very depressing and sometimes rather ridiculous. Many evoke the hard-boiled futuristic Sprawl world in much the same way as Neuromancer. Johnny Mnemonic is a prequel of sorts.
LibraryThing member antao
Hippies have known about these dangerous technologies for a long time, and the state cracks down hard on them, and not entirely without good reason either. The world cannot run (for long anyway) on raves and drugs and loud music, any fool can see that. There is also a false economy in these
I'm not kidding when I say we're talking about a euro's worth of gear and a euro's worth of electric to cater to the bulk of the needs of a thousand people, and I would gladly break down the math behind that if necessary. Of course when something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. I mean, clearly everyone has different tastes and needs and requirements in life, and I raise just one very specific example of an absurdity that I'm intimately familiar with. But the same is true across every area of experience you can possibly imagine, and while there are some experiences which are fundamentally wasteful and unsustainable, and I don't believe it could ever be possible (without the sort of post-apocalyptic future predicted by Gibson) to take away people's freedoms to do that, it is on the other hand perfectly practical and reasonable to develop and support alternative experiences that would lead people away from the ones which are wasteful, by simply being: better, cheaper, more enjoyable, more accessible, more deep and rich and diverse a set of experiences, and so on.
We can predict the potential for this with scientific accuracy in much the same way as Gibson has predicted so much of the recent development in the tech world in the same way. Like Gibson’s “Count Zero”, I base what I'm suggesting by observing people's behaviour when exposed to certain forms of technology and experience. That's not to say any of this is inevitable, because it represents such a radical departure away from what there is at present, and there is very little credible work existing in the literature - academic or fiction - to support the idea of a future that moves in that direction.
To make things even harder, there are a good deal of historical incidences of where that way of thinking has failed spectacularly or simple led in a direction that either couldn't work out long term due to its aggressive and hateful attitudes towards the establishment, or due to the aggressive and hateful attitudes of the establishment towards it (and it's usually a case of 'six of one, half a dozen of the other'), like the travellers movement and rave culture of the 80's and early 90's.
The reliance on road vehicles and unwarranted land occupation to sustain the process are the two biggest stumbling blocks to progress, so I devote my thinking to working around that problem. I think it would be more logical to claim that William Gibson back then, imagined future technologies through his work and they have informed and inspired digital inventors and inventions. However, even that would overlook the cycle of technological development. Science informs SF literature and vice-versa. Those claims above, suggest science and SF writing occur within vacuums independent of one another.
SF = Speculative Fiction.
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supposedly 'efficient' economies, because if you run a sustainable event and people attend your event in a car, you can wave goodbye to any benefits you might have yielded from the technology itself. The ubiquity of the car, and all the other rampant wasteful consumerism which often surrounds an event, cripples your efforts right from the off. This thinking is very much in a fledgling stage and has a long way to develop before it could be said to be anything more than purely experimental, but experiment we must. The fact is that, if the idea of travelling long distances in cars and trains was not such a common and necessary element of the process of doing things, then the sheer requirement of fleshing out our world with meaningful and worthwhile experiences to make the drudgery of contributing to the whole process all worthwhile, would be extremely low on impact and high on output.I'm not kidding when I say we're talking about a euro's worth of gear and a euro's worth of electric to cater to the bulk of the needs of a thousand people, and I would gladly break down the math behind that if necessary. Of course when something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. I mean, clearly everyone has different tastes and needs and requirements in life, and I raise just one very specific example of an absurdity that I'm intimately familiar with. But the same is true across every area of experience you can possibly imagine, and while there are some experiences which are fundamentally wasteful and unsustainable, and I don't believe it could ever be possible (without the sort of post-apocalyptic future predicted by Gibson) to take away people's freedoms to do that, it is on the other hand perfectly practical and reasonable to develop and support alternative experiences that would lead people away from the ones which are wasteful, by simply being: better, cheaper, more enjoyable, more accessible, more deep and rich and diverse a set of experiences, and so on.
We can predict the potential for this with scientific accuracy in much the same way as Gibson has predicted so much of the recent development in the tech world in the same way. Like Gibson’s “Count Zero”, I base what I'm suggesting by observing people's behaviour when exposed to certain forms of technology and experience. That's not to say any of this is inevitable, because it represents such a radical departure away from what there is at present, and there is very little credible work existing in the literature - academic or fiction - to support the idea of a future that moves in that direction.
To make things even harder, there are a good deal of historical incidences of where that way of thinking has failed spectacularly or simple led in a direction that either couldn't work out long term due to its aggressive and hateful attitudes towards the establishment, or due to the aggressive and hateful attitudes of the establishment towards it (and it's usually a case of 'six of one, half a dozen of the other'), like the travellers movement and rave culture of the 80's and early 90's.
The reliance on road vehicles and unwarranted land occupation to sustain the process are the two biggest stumbling blocks to progress, so I devote my thinking to working around that problem. I think it would be more logical to claim that William Gibson back then, imagined future technologies through his work and they have informed and inspired digital inventors and inventions. However, even that would overlook the cycle of technological development. Science informs SF literature and vice-versa. Those claims above, suggest science and SF writing occur within vacuums independent of one another.
SF = Speculative Fiction.
Show Less
LibraryThing member AnesaMiller
This is not the type of book I usually choose, but I did and I loved it! Wm. Gibson collaborates with other writers on some of the stories in this collection, characterized as cyberpunk science fiction.
In racy language that reminded me of the hard-boiled detective genre laced with acronyms and
Fast-paced development, engrossing intrigue, evocative trappings of pomo oppression--these qualities kept me fascinated with imagery of brain chemistry manipulations, bio-computer interfaces, genetic engineering and bizarre implantations (Doberman teeth in cyberpunks' jaws...). A very appealing read!
In racy language that reminded me of the hard-boiled detective genre laced with acronyms and
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foreign borrowings, specialized high-tech terms (Neologisms, since most of the signifieds don't exist?), these stories capture the type of futuristic nightmare Frederic Jameson predicts: rakish computer jockeys chisel out a small corner of freedom by bilking the moguls of capitalist domination. Most of the stories are formulaic to an extent: the male protagonist (or partnership) works out a complex computerized heist of some kind with a lone female character providing mystical sexual atmosphere/attraction. Fast-paced development, engrossing intrigue, evocative trappings of pomo oppression--these qualities kept me fascinated with imagery of brain chemistry manipulations, bio-computer interfaces, genetic engineering and bizarre implantations (Doberman teeth in cyberpunks' jaws...). A very appealing read!
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LibraryThing member macha
collection of early short stories that includes his first published story, three stories set in The Sprawl (Johnny Mnemonic, New Rose Hotel, and the brilliant Burning Chrome), and three collaborations (with John Shirley, Bruce Sterling, and Michael Swanwick). reread. still great stuff. Burning
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Chrome especially is amazing, it's odd that nobody's ever tried to make a movie out of that story. but they're all excellent, including the three collaborations. these stories read as freshly today as they did when they first came out - every last detail sears into the brain and changes the world it describes. and they don't date at all. Show Less
LibraryThing member Lukerik
Several of these stories are set in the Neuromancer Sprawl universe and there are a couple of recurring characters, including Molly. I should imagine this is the reason most people come to this collection. It’s certainly why I did. However, you don’t need to have read the Neuromancer trilogy to
I particularly enjoyed these Sprawl stories. I find his sociological extrapolations particularly frightening and I like his conception of the internet as a three dimensional world rather than the page-based system we’re gone for. I’d like an Ethernet socket installed in my skull.
As for the rest of the stories, some feel a little like they’re looking for something. Red Star, Winter Orbit may lack a little in the execution but it’s questioning of how we will maintain a presence in space is very interesting. And The Belonging Kind may be in search of a plot but is creepy and atmospheric and worth a read.
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enjoy what’s here.I particularly enjoyed these Sprawl stories. I find his sociological extrapolations particularly frightening and I like his conception of the internet as a three dimensional world rather than the page-based system we’re gone for. I’d like an Ethernet socket installed in my skull.
As for the rest of the stories, some feel a little like they’re looking for something. Red Star, Winter Orbit may lack a little in the execution but it’s questioning of how we will maintain a presence in space is very interesting. And The Belonging Kind may be in search of a plot but is creepy and atmospheric and worth a read.
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LibraryThing member Ma_Washigeri
How did I miss William Gibson back in the eighties? These short stories are brilliant. Partly a window back in time to a way of thinking about the future that feels retrospective without feeling dated. The start with Johnny Mnemonic and The Gernsback Continuum are brilliant, as is the the finish
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with Burning Chrome, and other favourites in between are Red Star, Winter orbit (with Bruce Sterling) and New Rose Hotel. I'll be keeping this collection to read again. Show Less
LibraryThing member TomMcGreevy
A very good collection of Gibson's work between 1977 and 1986. He explores his characters with masterful insight, to understand their needs and fears as if they were his own. All this through the lens of cybernetics, and speculative near futuring. I would highly recommend this book.
LibraryThing member mkfs
Saw this on a forgotton bookshelf and gave it a go after twenty-odd years. Still holds up, even if it is rather grounded in the 80s (landlines, cassettes, discs).
Dogfight used to be my favorite story in here, now I'm leaning more towards Winter's Market or Belonging Kind.
Dogfight used to be my favorite story in here, now I'm leaning more towards Winter's Market or Belonging Kind.
LibraryThing member wealhtheowwylfing
What I really loved was not the cyber-punky coolness, but rather the sensory details. Gibson has an incredibly descriptive style. Many years later, I still remember the story about meeting a girl with an exoskeleton at a party.
LibraryThing member wenestvedt
One of the stories in this collection, "Johnny Mnemonic," was made into a movie starring Keanu Reeves (who looks as though he can't pronounce the title) which I didn't see.
LibraryThing member juniperSun
Short stories with a common thread of neuro-jacked interface with computers in a multinational scene. Some focus on fictional Russian space program. Some with underdog protagonists fighting (or trying to make it in) the system. Not my usual choice, but interesting concepts. Maybe I'll see if my
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grandson going into cybersecurity would like to read it next. Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1986
Physical description
208 p.; 6.77 inches
ISBN
0441089348 / 9780441089345