Breathe in, breathe out

Tomorrow, I’m skipping work to catch William Gibson at a local bookstore. He’s on tour for his new novel, (7th or 8th, depending how you’re keeping score) “Pattern Recognition.” If I’m lucky, I’ll get a chance to ask him a question in line when he signs my copy.

Here’s the question: Suppose you’re working on a new novel and you find out that what you’re writing about has already been done, or at least part of it has, say with a certain plot device. Do you cut your losses or try to find a new spin on it?

In case you don’t know who Gibson is, in 1984 he published a novel called “Neuromancer,” which only changed the face of science fiction forever, scooping up every major sci-fi writing award and spawning a flood of copycats trying to emulate his hacking-at-the-apocalypse-in-the-neon-glow-of-globalized-paranoia-and-shady-characters. When you think of Gibson, think “The Matrix” or “Blade Runner” and you’ll get a general idea of the stuff he writes about (give or take all the vague mysticism and slow-motion kung fu). He’s also the guy who coined the word “cyberspace” and is on record in the miniseries “Wild Palms” as “living to regret it.”

My trouble is I’ve started out building the wire framework of a novel that features a character who has something noticeably in common: the ability to divinate, to some degree, the future by sifting through oceans of data.

In “Idoru,” Gibson’s seer is Colin Laney, who can absorb data and predict outcomes through “nodal points” where everything comes together. In “Pattern Recognition,” there’s Cayce, a “coolhunter” who can pick up on trends before anyone else does (to be fair, coolhunters already exist and are hard at work tracking proto-fads like hunters on safari).

And, of course, I plan out my character (one of two main ones) before I read “Idoru.”

So, my heart sinks when I go wind of Colin and Cayce. I’m burning through “Idoru” right now. The verdict: it’s close enough to what I’m thinking about, although Colin’s (and it appears Cayce’s) ability is merely a device to move the plot along as well as a subtle envisioning on the evolution of trendspotting mixed with a global communications diet.

So, here I am. In angst. Trying to figure out the right way I can spin this, to salvage my work that now feels as if it’s been grafted to my muscle fibers. A conjoined twin of creation. Remove it and, well, who knows what might happen.

Okay, anything but that. Find. A. Way.

And once in a while, something will appear. An idea, a curious commentary. Off I go to write it down, along with the other creative castaways bound together to make something of themselves. Maybe my id rises up and say “Gibson isn’t all that hot anyway. He doesn’t know how to write people, just overheated prose.” And I tell my id to calm down and have a seat. If it was anyone else but Gibson, maybe. But this guy is Shakespeare of modern sci-fi. People will notice if you rip him off. You’ll end up like Case in the opening of Gibson’s “Neuromancer,” on the run from hit men because you crossed the wrong guy...in this case, you ripped off The Big Man. You’ll look like one of those sad sacks who rise up from their swamps to sue J.K. Rowling for stealing their ideas because, um, they thought up Harry Potter first…sure, that’s the ticket.

Meanwhile, I’m wallowing. All this work. Gone. Maybe I can jettison the first main character and keep the second one, make the story about her. No, they’re intertwined, but they don’t know it. Ahh, the globalism of novel characters.

And so, one day, trying to drown my misery with fiction, trying to get Mt. Gibson out of my vision, I stumble across a Philip K. Dick short-story collection. In certain sci-fi lit circles, Dick is considered John the Baptist to Gibson’s Jesus, the former paving the way for the latter. (I’m nearly positive the comparison would embarrass Gibson and give fits to the deceased Dick). So, I get curious about pre-Gibson sci-fi lit. I’ve only read on Dick novel before, and that was “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” which sharp-eyed nerds will recognize as the basis for “Blade Runner.” I remember not liking it when I read it long ago because it had little to do with the film (which I still adore to this day). I kept imagining Harrison Ford in the pages and linking Ridley Scott’s neon-and-slum imagery in the book’s passages. Some of it dovetails, but some definitely doesn’t.

And lo and behold, what I did I find in the short-story collection, but a work (it was later made into a film with Tom Cruise) called “Minority Report” about 21st-century cops who prevent crimes before they occur with the use of precogs, mutants who have the ability…wait for it…to see crimes before they happen by surfing through some kind of psychic data.

Whoa.

Reading deeper, Dick used precogs in several works, making them a recurring theme. Gibson claims he never read much Dick, but the similarities are striking, especially when you look at other Gibson works, seeing how he used the “future seer” trick on a number of occasions.

Now, it’s okay for Gibson to rip himself off (perhaps he's so big he can be forgiven for the "precog" copy), but since he’s so big, can someone else one day use the same device without getting labeled as a poseur?

It depends who you ask. I asked a critic who works at the paper I also work at a variation on the question I hope to pose to Gibson. With a frown, he cautioned that the artist would have to be careful not to plagiarize, but he didn’t rule out the chance (a slim one) that some new trail could be blazed.

A blogger I chat with occasionally believed the writer always adds something new to the creation, and therefore it will be different.

My wife constantly reminds me that there is nothing new under the sun.

My friend Cori tells me to shut up and write the damn thing.

It’s tough, I admit. Who wants to be the next white rapper after Eminem? Who wants to write a wizard book in the shadow of Harry Potter? Who wants to look like part of the crowd, a wannabe with a half-developed muse?

And then I got this in my inbox at work. It’s a press notice about Gibson’s events in Seattle. Standard stuff: list of locations, book summary, author praise. But at the end, singled out is a paraphrased quote: As one character observes, “the creative process is no longer contained within an individual skull…Everything, today, is to some extent the reflection of something else.”

Now, all that’s left for me to determine whether you’re going to paint something original based on that reflection or take a photograph of it and pass it off as my own.

Hopefully, Mr. Gibson will be able to shine a light on the whole matter.

Today’s Word: Barrier

From One Word

The Great Ocean one, you know…the reef off the coast of Australia, home a zillion forms of life and so achingly fragile. No, it’s okay, we’ll be careful, honest. And then some rich idiot plows by it with his Megayacht and ruins some heartbreakingly beautiful natural sculpture. I could stare at the reef for years.