What do You think about Burning Chrome (2003)?
Amazon.com Review Ten brilliant, streetwise, high-resolution stories from the man who coined the word cyberspace. Gibson's vision has become a touchstone in the emerging order of the 21st Century, from the computer-enhanced hustlers of Johnny Mnemonic to the technofetishist blues of Burning Chrome. With their vividly human characters and their remorseless, hot-wired futures, these stories are simultaneously science fiction at its sharpest and instantly recognizable Polaroids of the postmodern condition. From Publishers Weekly In his enthusiastic description of the '30s and '40s "moderne" style of industrial design (featured in one of these stories), Gibson might be writing about his own work: "The change was only skin-deep; under the streamlined chrome shell, you'd find the same Victorian mechanism . . . . It was all a stage set, a series of elaborate props for playing at living in the future." That dexterous, shallow artifice has won Gibson awards and fervent fans (especially for his first novel, Neuromancer but beneath it is something old, worn and tired. Thus "Johnny Mnemonic," whose body computer stores secret information, is just a variation of Mr. Memory from The 39 Steps. Gibson's gangsters, corrupt industrialists, young techies and lowlifes eager to belong to any in-group that will have them, are cliches without conviction. This weak collection of 10 short stories seems to have been rushed out to cash in on Gibson's current popularity. Paperback rights to Berkley. Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
—Joseph Harris
In 2005 my husband and I rented Johnny Mnemonic; it was one of the stupidest films we had ever seen. Curious to see if it was a problem with the translation to film or the source material, I decided to get a copy of the book: Burning Chrome, the first story being "Johnny Mnemonic." Having now suffered through the entire collection of stories, I can say that both the filmmakers and the author can share the blame equally.I know that there are many fans of William Gibson's books but he doesn't do much for me. The worst of the stories in Burning Chrome bored me. The others were vaguely derivative of Philip K. Dick and Jack Kerouac but with some new cyber-babble thrown in. The three best stories of the book were ones that Gibson co-wrote: "The Belonging Kind" with John Shirley, "Red Star, White Orbit" with Bruce Sterling, and "Dogfight" Michael Swanwick. These collaborations allowed Gibson to world build (his strong suit) while the plot was left to the collaborator.
—Sarah Sammis
Burning Chrome is a collection of William Gibson’s early short fiction and a good starting point for anyone unfamiliar with his work. These seminal cyberpunk stories were written in the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s. And although technology has gathered substance and taken form in the intervening years, they’ve lost none of their power. Of the ten stories included in this collection, “Hinterlands” and “Burning Chrome” are my particular favorites. “Hinterlands” is a lonely, evocative tale about a space station positioned alongside ‘the highway’ – a mysterious phenomenon discovered when a ship, traveling between Earth and Mars, suddenly disappears. The ship’s eventual return from parts unknown inspires other ‘hitchhikers’. But the highway proves fickle: it accepts some and rejects others. Those favored are greeted upon their return by the space station’s first responders, who brace themselves to confront whatever grim reality is to be found within each returning ship.I'm not a technician, but I appreciate Gibson's craft here: his story arc, the way he feeds us digestible bites. There are beautiful passages, such as his rationale for choosing the word 'highway' over any other description of the phenomenon. I consider this story to be a little apart from Gibson’s usual pieces in content and tone.If “Hinterlands” is a little apart, “Burning Chrome” is smack dab at the center, classic Gibson, as befits a title piece, and more representative of the cyberpunk science fiction subgenre. “Burning Chrome” is a crime caper of the first order, the tale of a clever heist perpetrated by two hackers in the Sprawl, Gibson’s signature landscape. It has a cinematic feel that resonates even in the first sentence: “It was hot, the night we burned Chrome.” In “Burning Chrome” Gibson introduces constructs and concepts he will continue to develop in later work, and several of his recurring characters make their first appearance. For example we meet simstim (simulated stimuli) star Tally Isham, whose biotech-enhanced senses record her immediate experience for sensory download by the general public: reality TV on steroids.In these stories, just as in his novels, Gibson’s abstractions stand in concrete relief against the background of a cultural infrastructure too immediate and too gritty to be purely futuristic or theoretical. There’s no question of his prescience. Read him if you haven’t already.
—mentor&muse
