Mona Lisa Overdrive
Mona Lisa Overdrive is the final novel of the William Gibson's cyberpunk Sprawl trilogy. Living in the vast computer landscape of cyberspace, young Mona taps into the mind of world-famous Sense/Net star Angie Mitchell who deciphers cyperspace plans, including those devised by Japanese underworld.
Stats for nerds
16recommend
59mentions
50people
2010–2026years
31% recommend54% neutral15% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Things I really liked:
- The Murderbot Diaries (all of them)
- Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Count Zero (Sprawl Trilogy) – perfection
- Discworld series (almost all of them)
- Bobiverse serise (all of them)
- Old Man's War series
- Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir – Werner Herzog's autobiography
- The Songlines - Bruce Chatwin
- Kissinger: A Biography (approval of Kissinger not required)
- various collected works of Borges
- various works of Carl Jung
- Starship Troopers
- A Man Called Ove – made me cry
- A Stitch in Time – a star trek actor novelizing his headcannon of the character he played
- Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town
- Mickey7
- Solaris
- Flowers for Algernon
- Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death
- I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
Things I disliked:
- The Wheel of Time (I forget how many I got through)
- Eruption – a posthumous Michael Crichton book was really terrible
- The Book of the New Sun
- The Creative Act: A Way of Being – an artist trying and failing to talk about science
- I caught up with some science fiction this year.
The Murderbot diaries books by Martha Wells - 6/10. Mixed on these. They're fun to read. The setting is cool and the worldbuilding is shallow but effective (i.e., don't read it if you want game of thrones in space). Each novella takes an afternoon to read. I think "snarky violent droid" is overcooked these days and lost interest after book 5.
Light by M. John Harrison - 7/10 excellent prose; great multiple-storyline plot; the journey was better than the destination, but it kept me thinking
Far from the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson - 7/10 Fun. If "near future Nigerian/British post-colonial frontier action with guns, robots, and psychic aliens" sounds cool to you, check it out. I liked his Rosewater Trilogy just as much.
Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts - tough to rate these. brilliant ideas, VERY challenging plots. I wish I didn't get so confused by the end of each book.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - 6/10 - this and the Martian read like blog posts pasted together. The grand dilemma is spelled out on page one and never gets any deeper. Pro: the plot is in your face on every page and you will never be confused when reading; Con - there is zero internal character development. Read if you like stories driven by applied science, not comparative moral decision-making.
The City and the City by China Miéville - 9/10 - you will invariably see something like "Kafka meets [some affected crime novelist] to describe this book, and that ain't wrong. Kind of SF, kind of fantasy.
Railsea by China Miéville - 8/10 - great good vs evil YA SF about, well, imagine if trains were like boats. Good character writing, tight plot.
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi - 8/10 - loved this. More "realist" near-future fabulism than Gibson, but if you love cyberpunk, read this.
The Shipbreaker Triology by Paolo Bacigalupi - 6/10 - near-future YA science fiction with a lot of blood and guns. Pretty good stories.
Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers - 9/10 - reread. I had to go back. This gets a near perfect score because of its style, setting, and plot.
The Sprawl Trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive) by William Gibson - 9/10 - I had read Neuromancer 3 times but never the next two. I was pleasantly surprised to find the second and third novel easier to read* but just as enjoyable as Neuromancer.
The Bridge trilogy by William Gibson - 8/10 so far. I am in the second book. Can't believe I slept on these for the last couple decades.
non-SF:
Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991 by Michael Azerrad - 9/10 - if you like punk/hardcore from the 80s, this is a great read.
* Every time I read Neuromancer, Gibson's literary footguns --holograms, false memories, hallucinations, and drug-addled unreality--make me feel crazy for not being able to follow the plot at times. I'm okay with believing that was the intended effect.
- Ah, the novel that changed my teenage life! This work helped a generation of kids believe that maybe... computers could be cool. :-)
I reread all his novels recently, after having a read in previous years quite a bit about the art and craft of writing, the various approaches to the the classic three act plot, etc (writing features heavily in my own work).
On reread, I honestly think vol 3 "Mona Lisa Overdrive" is the perfectly crafted sci-fi thriller, and his best written book. It was so well done I reread it a third time as soon as I was finished. I think it was his best single work.
Used to see him around sometimes in Vancouver too. If you see this, thanks for everything Mr Gibson.
- Yeah honestly he just keeps getting better IMO. Seveneves in particular gives me chills just thinking about -- so dark at points.
Likewise, I think the Blue Ant books are Gibson's best work, though I have a strong attachment to Mona Lisa Overdrive just because of where I was in life when I first read it.
- The writing in Neuromancer is a lot less polished than in the second two books, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, and I understand your point.
I like Stephenson but I don't know that you can directly compare, while they're both 'Cyberpunk' authors to an extent Stephenson's work is wildly different, there's a lot more 'education' in Stephenson whereas Gibson is pure exposition. Stephenson can also be a bit (very) preachy. I've read the Gibson books many many times and but the Stephenson ones... well, the second time I went through 'Snow Crash' I was already skipping massively, and The Diamond Age... once you've read it, you've read it.
This is going to sound incredibly judgemental but to me, Gibson writes the future, Stephenson the past.
If all you've read is Neuromancer I'd agree. What other Gibson works have you read?
- Many of Philip K. Dick books and short stories, but Ubik and A Maze of Death are my favorites.
William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive)
Douglas N. Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Frank Herbert's Dune books
Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human
Robert A. Heinlein - Citizen of the Galaxy
Robert Charles Wilson's Spin trilogy
Frederik Pohl's Heechee books
