From: tsdavies@rodan.syr.EDU (T.S. Davies)
Subject: Re: _Dog Soldiers_ by R. Stone, a wild ride!
Reply-To: T.S. Davies <tsdavies@mailbox.syr.edu>
Summary: Gibson's inspiration
In-reply-to: alison@wsrcc.com's message of 21 Dec 92 03:05:52 GMT
Organization: Sam Hill Cabal, DS
Date: Sun, 27 Dec 92 19:33:15 EST

AC> = Alison Chaiken <alison@wsrcc.com>
LM> = Larry McCaffery
WG> = William Gibson

AC> A few weeks ago someone requested names of books that could be
AC> described as "a wild ride," where the reader feels helplessly
AC> drawn into a breathless adventure.  At the time I couldn't think
AC> of anything appropriate, but I think _Dog Soldiers_ fits the bill.

[Plot summary deleted.]

Synchronicities strike again.  When I saw this message, I was about
two-thirds of the way through _Dog Soldiers_.  I had recently finished
reading Larry McCaffery's _Storming the Reality Studio_, which I had
finally remembered to get from the library (I wanted to see if it had
enough material that wasn't in the special issue of the _Mississippi
Review_ to make it worth looking for -- it does.), and _Dog Soldiers_
is mentioned twice -- once in an annotated list of influences on and
important works of cyberpunk/postmodern fiction put together by
McCaffery and Richard Kadrey, and again in an interview McCaffery did
with William Gibson:

LM> What first strikes many readers about _Neuromancer_ is all the
LM> "cyberpunk" elements -- the exotic lingoes, drugs,
LM> cyber-realities, clothes, and so on.  But in many ways the plot
LM> here is very traditional: the down-and-out gangster who's been
LM> fucked over and wants to get even by pulling the big heist.
LM> Attaching this punked-out cyber-reality to an established plot
LM> framework must have been a conscious decision.

WG> Sure.  When I said earlier that a lot of what went into
WG> _Neuromancer_ was done out of desperation, I wasn't exaggerating.
WG> I knew I was so inexperienced that I was going to need some kind
WG> of traditional plot armature which had proven its potential for
WG> narrative traction.  I had these different things I wanted to use,
WG> but sine I didn't have a pre-set notion of where I was _going_
WG> with these things, the plot had to be something I already felt
WG> comfortable with, a familiar structure.  Also, since I wrote
WG> _Neuromancer_ under the influence of Robert Stone -- who's a
WG> master of a certain kind of paranoid fiction -- it's not
WG> surprising that what I wound up with was something like a Howard
WG> Hawks' film.  But it also had a lot to do with that need to feel I
WG> was operating with _some kind_ of safety net.  I couldn't think of
WG> anything more appropriate than this _film noire_ underworld
WG> premise to hang all this stuff on.
					(McCaffery 1988:224-225)


I thought the title sounded familiar, and after about five minutes of
scanning the contents of the shelves in our basement, I found it.
Interesting book -- it does draw you in and drag you along -- despite
not caring for any of the characters, I kept turning the pages.

McCaffery, Larry

   1988    "An Interview With William Gibson" (14 August 1986,
            Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), in _Mississippi
            Review_, 16:2/3 (#47/48).  Pp. 217-236.

Stone, Robert

   1973    _Dog Soldiers_.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

--
I'm enthralled by combine harvesters. In fact, I yearn to have one -- as a pet.
	From _The Day of the Jackal_
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    T.S. Davies		tsdavies@mailbox.syr.edu		SHC, DS