[SFRA-L] Citation Needed for William Gibson's Foreword/Afterword to Mona Lisa Overdrive

[Jason Ellis]

Hi again,

I should have read the beginning and ending of the foreword/afterword
more carefully. Gibson writes, "The technology through which you now
access these words didn't exist, a decade ago," and "It gives me great
pleasure to have these three books digitized, datacompressed, and
published in this (make no mistake) revolutionary format." So,
apparently, this is taken from an etext of some sort. It could be
this:

Electronic Book Versions

Voyager Co. (http://www.voyagerco.com--dead link) sold an Expanded
Book edition of Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive on
floppy disk for Mac and PC. It's surprisingly readable and has search,
comment, and bookmark features, but the content is very plain. I would
have liked to see the original artwork, the extensive reviews of
Neuromancer, etc.
>From http://www.voyagerco.com/CD/gh/p.eb.html (dead link)

Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, and Count Zero by William Gibson
(Mac/Win) $19.95
Cat. No. EB15 June 1992
ISBN: 1-155940-254-7
Cover: gray morphed liquid shapes "WOMBO, 1991" (c) David Em
Virtual Light by William Gibson (Mac) $19.95

(from http://www.skierpage.com/gibson/biblio.htm)

Has anyone seen or used this software?

Best, Jason

On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 2:13 PM, Jason Ellis <dynamicsubspace at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> In two illicit etext versions of William Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive,
> there is an essay by Gibson titled either "Author's Foreword" or
> "Author's Afterword" dated 6/16/92 that begins:
>
> "Ten years have now passed since the inception of whatever strange
> process it was that led me to write Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona
> Lisa Overdrive. The technology through which you now access these
> words didn't exist, a decade ago.
>
> Neuromancer was written on a "clockwork typewriter," the very one you
> may recall glimpsing in Julie Deane's office in Chiba City. This
> machine, a Hermes 2000 manual portable, dates from somewhere in the
> 1930's."
>
> I assume this appears in an edition of MLO from 1992 or after.
> Unfortunately, I cannot find a citation for this or any reference to a
> foreword/afterword in the editions available to me in Ohio. I have
> also checked Worldcat and several libraries with science fiction
> collections (Liverpool, Riverside, TAMU, KU) for any reference to
> this. The ISFDB lists a 1992 Bantam trade paperback edition and a 1995
> Voyager/Harper Collins UK trade paperback edition--I wonder if it
> appeared in either of these. If you have a later edition of MLO handy,
> can you check it for this foreword or afterwork and please let me know
> the bibliographic information including page numbers?
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Jason
>
> --
> Jason W. Ellis
>
> PhD Candidate, Kent State University
>
> Vice President, Science Fiction Research Association
>
> Visit my Science Fiction Studies blog at http://dynamicsubspace.net/



-- 
Jason W. Ellis

PhD Candidate, Kent State University

Vice President, Science Fiction Research Association

Visit my Science Fiction Studies blog at http://dynamicsubspace.net/