Dennis Fischer <[log in to unmask]> writes:
(about Akira)
>OK, I'm game. It is not an easy plot to follow:
> In the year 1988, the old city of Tokyo vanishes in an energy,
>mushroom cloud of unknown origin.
In the comic strip the mushroom cloud is clearly the result of a nuclear
attack. One of my students who saw the film when it first opened in Tokyo
said that the incoming missiles were clearly labelled with U.S. insignia,
but that part of the film was quickly excised from all prints, leaving the
sense of "unknown origin" referred to above.
For those of you who are not discouraged by all the carping about
Neuromancer but want help making sense of it, consult my study guide at
<http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/science_fiction/neuromancer.html>. Although it
contains many questions for my students to answer it also explains a lot.
As for the "inner thoughts" of Gibson's characters, I don't think they have
particularly rich inner lives. It's the gritty, textured surface of his
prose that grabs me. Photography renders in a lazy way the cluttered blight
that he so lovingly builds up in words.
Paul Brians, Department of English,Washington State University
Pullman, WA 99164-5020
[log in to unmask]
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians
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