Hey Man, well this is Babylon

I started re-reading Neuromancer last night for my first ever re-read. I’d forgotten how just plain good this book is. My original goal was to get myself back in the cyberpunk mindset for my new Shadowrun Monday-night game, but after only a page in I had become truly immersed in the prose all for the sake of its own qualities. Gibson is one helluva phrase-turner, to say the least. To this day, Neuromancer has the single most memorable opening line out of every book I’ve ever read (see post title)*. Every time I think of this book and those that followed it, that opening line resonates in my brain, spoken by Ron Perlman in the same style as the famous opening lines to every Fallout game. While I personally feel that the Bridge Trilogy was a better-written series than the Cyberpunk trilogy, Neuromancer still stands out in my memory as one of the best and most original books I’ve ever read. The re-read is highly enjoyable so far.

* = I was discussing this line with some folks the other day, and someone made an amusing observation: youngsters today reading this book for the first time will have no idea what Gibson meant by this. To kids today, a “dead channel” on TV is actually a bright blue screen, instead of the staticky fuzz of the 1980s. How sad, in a purely nostalgic way.

Note to self: pick up Spook Country sometime soon. Really enjoyed Pattern Recognition, so let’s see how another non-cyberpunk Gibson novel turns out.

Last night I finally got around to watching The Transporter, and now I’m kicking myself for having not seen this sooner. The melee fight scenes from that movie were fucking amazing in their choreography. Story was pretty generic, but I wasn’t watching it for the story. I also finished the first season of Leverage, and am really excited to see the new season. It starts next month, and has been filmed almost entirely here in Portland. For those who haven’t seen it, this show is essentially Shadowrun, minus the elves, magic, and cyberpunk. The premise: five specialists work together doing thief-like jobs in the modern day, usually as “pro bono” revenge jobs for folks that have been wronged by crime syndicates or soulless corporations. As their organizer says, “we pick up where the law leaves off.” It’s like that awesome movie Sneakers – in fact it’s a lot like that movie. If you like “professional job” heist-like things, watch this show. It really makes me want to play Kane & Lynch, but it’s too bad the story in that game personally offends me in its sheer awfulness.

Over the last several months, I’ve had this itch to somehow soon return to that Sky Pirates styled game that I set up way back when with Drake, Chris, Melissa, and Eric. That game, and the follow-up I had with Chris, Sam, and Kevin, was host to some of the more awesome moments I’ve seen in Savage Worlds game. It was also the first time I ever used Monkey Knife Fight to resolve mook vs mook combat in that system (which worked fabulously, btw). What keeps drawing me back, though, are the characters. The scarred overzealous fire-warrioress, the gambling deserter-soldier, the seemingly ageless and ancient “honored grandmother” with a knack for sucking the souls out of things, the twin pilot-adventurers and more, those were some damn fantastic characters. I’m still fishing out for another supplemental game, and I don’t think the second Shadowrun game will work out just yet. I think come August, though, I just might try and get this game back together.

(x-posted from Livejournal)