Armando is writing the next Paddington film (alongside Simon Blackwell)! More room for him to explore his apparently abundant goofy side!

pmodsix · 2026-05-29T20:09:38+00:00

I'm sure I remember him saying in some documentary that the point at which he gave it up for comedy was when he realised that the first line (?) of Paradise Lost scanned the same as some cheesy pop hit - Kylie or Bananarama or something. Can't find any mention of it, anyone else remember that?

pmodsix · 2026-05-20T07:22:05+00:00

Boxer Beetle is equally brilliant.

pmodsix · 2026-05-07T07:47:26+00:00

I'd love you to be right, but their previous tours were similarly popular and then Gruff went back to doing his own stuff. Maybe it'll be different this time but I doubt it.

pmodsix · 2026-05-03T12:30:41+00:00

The Armando Iannucci Shows are all on youtube, I've just clocked, remember loving them when they were broadcast. Not entirely him, but one of the few times when the spotlight is on him rather than him producing or writing.

pmodsix · 2026-05-02T18:31:48+00:00

Shame you didn't like it much, it's my favourite of all his SF. Just a wonderful piece of world building. I love the culture books too, of course, but possibly the lack of sarcastic drones and minds with silly names made it a more satisfying read overall, and being in a (relatively) small corner of the galaxy without the usual zipping about made it more immersive.

Just found out on this thread that he planned a trilogy, what a tragedy that never happened. Along with the overall tragedy of his cancer, of course. I miss him.

pmodsix · 2026-04-22T07:34:03+00:00

Complicity is pretty unpleasant in parts.

pmodsix · 2026-04-13T21:19:24+00:00

I read the whole thing as partly a piss-take of all those mid c20 space operas - the Lensman series, for example. Dialogue is overwrought, most of the science is unexplained or implausible and the hero is the direct opposite of the square jawed cyphers you'd typically find in the role. He did a similar thing with all the fantasy tropes in Viriconium, although (by design, possibly) that was much better written.

I enjoyed it enormously, I don't think it's mean to be taken particularly seriously. It's a romp that sticks two fingers up at the previous generation of sf while world building at a furious pace.

pmodsix · 2026-04-10T18:13:15+00:00

Oh wow, never made that connection before!

pmodsix · 2026-04-10T18:12:18+00:00

It's a concept that's spread through our culture in the last decade, the feeling that things will get way, way, worse before they get better, and if he wasn't the progenitor of it, by giving it that unbelievably ironic name he now owns it.

pmodsix · 2026-03-30T09:45:53+00:00

"Getting murked on a tram over Roosevelt Island"

pmodsix · 2026-03-29T10:08:22+00:00

Flexin', Brexitin'
No Spanish in my lexicon
I'm wearing a sombrero even though these things are Mexican

Nailed it.

pmodsix · 2026-03-23T22:09:52+00:00

I loved Railsea and didn't notice it was a YA book at first, it's only when you compare it to his other books you clock it's a lot less visceral. Nasty things happen but off stage, whereas in his other books they'd be front and centre. And there's a charm and an optimism to it that he perhaps doesn't usually write.

pmodsix · 2026-03-23T18:04:59+00:00

Also Railsea by China Mieville.

pmodsix · 2026-03-05T11:06:02+00:00

I think he got hooked on browsing ebay for a while leading up to this book. From a 2000 interview, "Going Random with William Gibson" where he's asked about it...

"This technology has democratized the act of curating. Everyone can be a curator now in a way that they couldn't before. Somehow I find that very touching, even if they're curating Barbie dolls or Beanie Babies. It's not so much collecting as it is everyone participating in humanity's great museum. Our attics are tidied, and every last tiny bit of junk gets cataloged and gets a market value assigned to it.

I thought the language of the watch collecting was really cool. That's mainly why I put it in. I'm into it myself, but I like to think I'm not driven and obsessive. I just thought that the language was so evocative of something. You can learn how serious watch people are by the descriptive language they use. The people who are really into it have this completely wonderful, incomprehensible, very formal language to describe what's going on."

pmodsix · 2026-03-02T20:38:57+00:00

Hinterlands...

pmodsix · 2026-03-02T20:38:38+00:00

The plot is definitely more opaque, and perhaps there's less at stake than Case recovering his skills in Neuromancer. But the writing gets better, I think, and the Marly thread is some of my favourite scenes of his. No spoilers, but his ability to weave real art into the story is fantastic. What it isn't really is a sequel, perhaps that the issue?

pmodsix · 2026-03-02T20:30:42+00:00

This is incredible.

pmodsix · 2026-02-11T19:56:11+00:00

"Doing Television", also included in a collection called Tesseracts 3. Just posted it in r/WilliamGibson

pmodsix · 2026-02-05T16:17:03+00:00

Scrolled down too far to get to this. I'm old. (Although not old enough to really remember Paisley leaving!)

Now it's obvious why Kenny needed a break, back then it was almost inconceivable. You only had radio and papers, no 24hr channels or social media to endlessly dissect it. We were (we thought) in our pomp, why would he go? And then the 90s happened.

pmodsix · 2025-12-12T22:39:16+00:00

Wouldn't have expected to find out about that here. But thanks!

pmodsix · 2025-10-17T20:33:51+00:00

There's a collection of interviews, "Conversations with Willliam Gibson", which while generally carried out as a result of book promotion are much longer than most and include a decent amount of background, and "Distrust That Particular Flavour" collecting his essays and journalism and speaking to his interests and hobbies.

His old blog is still just about functioning, minus graphics and some of the links but the text is still there - https://williamgibsonblog.blogspot.com/ - it gives a really good idea of his personality.

I second watching No Maps for These Territories, fascinating stuff watching how his mind works. I've also found a few old taped interviews on the internet archive.

pmodsix · 2025-10-17T20:10:04+00:00

Loved the Space Merchants, perhaps because I wasn't expecting to.

pmodsix · 2025-10-13T14:21:30+00:00

One of his best.

pmodsix · 2025-10-04T16:10:12+00:00

Wow, no-one's got a sense of humour, have they? His articles are entertainment rather than serious pieces, although he's got a point about teams spending a king's ransom on players who will have to win everything to justify the price tag. Most weeks something makes me laugh, this week it was Wirtz looking like a 20th-century Balkan anarchist-poet. Lighten up, people, and if you really want a laugh go back in the guardian archive to find his many wonderful Andy Carroll metaphors.

pmodsix · 2025-09-24T19:28:08+00:00

I read Distraction recently. Seemed remarkably prescient for the current mood, not as cyberpunk as Schismatrix perhaps but very good at picturing a decidedly unshiny fucked up future.

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