I have spent the greater part of my life reading, and re-reading, the works of William Gibson. From the beginning I have loved his experience of the now and how he shows it to us, often dressed in the clothes of the near future, in a style that is more Jazz than any sort of normal prose.
The purpose of this project is to note some of the interesting recurring rhythms within in his work and, sometimes, to explore in more detail an object or an idea. This is not intended to be a scholarly analysis. It is simply a serial observation of some of the beats that give Gibson’s writing such a unique character.
The title of this project, Hidden Architectures, comes from Chapter 3 of Zero History, in which protagonist Hollis Henry (one of many uses of the name Henry) muses on the character of Hubertus Bigend (one of several wealthy and eccentric patrons who enlist a protagonist to solve an art-related mystery).
“Possibly he found him creepy, too, though for Inchmale, interesting and creepy were broadly overlapping categories. He didn’t, she guessed, find Bigend that utter an anomaly. An overly wealthy, dangerously curious fiddler with the world’s hidden architectures.”
