Mona Lisa Overdrive
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
Mona Lisa Overdrive
| Author | William Gibson |
|---|---|
| Published | 1988 |
| Pages | 320 |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | The closing volume of William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy, which pays off both earlier books: four viewpoints run in parallel and the plot turns on an attempt to fuse a human mind with the entities that now live in the matrix. It is the volume most interested in what happens to a person who is stored rather than embodied — recorded personalities, constructs and copies as ordinary infrastructure. |
Mona Lisa Overdrive
Where I heard about it
- a16z’s infrastructure team — on the a16z Infra Reading List, in the Sci-fi — Must reads section (S tier), under the Sprawl trilogy — the origin document for how a generation of engineers pictures networks, interfaces and identity.
About this edition
Gibson lets the trilogy’s characters and loose ends surface without explaining them, so it reads best after Neuromancer and Count Zero.
Connections
- a16z Infra Reading List — where this is listed, in the top tier.
- William Gibson — the author.
- Count Zero — the second volume, whose loa and characters return here.
- Artificial Intelligence — minds as something that can be run, copied and negotiated with.
- Ready Player One — a much later, much lighter treatment of the same lived-in-network premise.
- Science Fiction — the genre.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.