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Quiz about William Gibson Books
Quiz about William Gibson Books

William Gibson Books Trivia Quiz


A quiz about my favourite and easily one the best SF authors of all time: William Gibson, embodiment of the 'Cyberpunk' movement in SF literature. An easy quiz for connoisseurs.

A multiple-choice quiz by guqxuv. Estimated time: 6 mins.
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Author
guqxuv
Time
6 mins
Type
Multiple Choice
Quiz #
126,567
Updated
Nov 05 22
# Qns
15
Difficulty
Difficult
Avg Score
8 / 15
Plays
260
- -
Question 1 of 15
1. To warm up, what is the name of the tragicomical 'country music' blonde in 'Idoru' and 'All Tomorrow's Parties'? Hint


Question 2 of 15
2. What is the colour of the cough medicine Colin Laney develops an addiction to in 'All Tomorrow's Parties'? Hint


Question 3 of 15
3. Who is the loa of roads? Hint


Question 4 of 15
4. What caused the splitting of self-aware Cyberspace into multiple personae? (Tip: It's mentioned at the end of 'Neuromancer' and again at the end of 'Mona Lisa Overdrive'.) Hint


Question 5 of 15
5. What is the name of the young boy that guards Chevette's and Tessa's van at the Bay Bridge for a little 's* money'? Hint


Question 6 of 15
6. What do three eggs cost on the Bridge? Hint


Question 7 of 15
7. In 'Count Zero', mercenary Turner has a brief affair with his brother's girlfriend. True or false?


Question 8 of 15
8. In her flight from Swain's estate through winter London, Kumiko briefly warms up in a noodle seller's stall. The noodle seller is kind to her, and probably he is also an agent of her father's, placed there to protect her. What is his nationality? Hint


Question 9 of 15
9. When recovering from the attack on his life in Delhi, Turner's mind lives in a 'simstim' simulation of a New England boyhood from the previous century for three months while his body heals. Which author does this 'boy simulation' like to read? Hint


Question 10 of 15
10. In an article for the magazine 'Wired', Gibson describes a journey to Singapore. What does he find to be exceedingly rare there? Hint


Question 11 of 15
11. William Gibson's personal one-time hobby was to collect what? Hint


Question 12 of 15
12. What was Blackwell's 'profession' before he became Rez's bodyguard? Hint


Question 13 of 15
13. In which organisation/company did Colin Laney undergo testing of his phenomenal ability to search Cyberspace instinctively for complex information? Hint


Question 14 of 15
14. Which future European country does Maria Paz, ex-girlfriend of notorious Public Relations specialist Cody Harwood of Harwood/Levine, come from? Hint


Question 15 of 15
15. And finally, my favourite quote from all of Gibson, with the crucial word left out:
'And for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely...'

Answer: (starts with h)

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Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. To warm up, what is the name of the tragicomical 'country music' blonde in 'Idoru' and 'All Tomorrow's Parties'?

Answer: Maryalice

She seems to have gone down in the world further in 'All Tomorrow's Parties', from criminal to wrecked part-time PR girl for unknown country musician Buell Creedmore.
2. What is the colour of the cough medicine Colin Laney develops an addiction to in 'All Tomorrow's Parties'?

Answer: blue

This is a 'trivia' question indeed. :)
3. Who is the loa of roads?

Answer: Legba

From 'Count Zero'. The loa are the gods of Vodou or Voodoo. Voodooists believe the loa can possess certain specially trained humans and act through them. (By the way, an houngan is not a loa, but a Voodoo priest.) In the latter two books of the Neuromancer trilogy, a split has occurred in the universal self-consciousness of Cyberspace (a conciousness that arose through the mingling of the AIs Wintermute and Neuromancer in the first novel), the scattered pieces of artificial conciousness desperately searching for suitable identities in the store of available archetypes and finding the Voodoo gods best suited to their needs and tastes. Which brings us to the next question:
4. What caused the splitting of self-aware Cyberspace into multiple personae? (Tip: It's mentioned at the end of 'Neuromancer' and again at the end of 'Mona Lisa Overdrive'.)

Answer: contact with another huge self-concious AI from Alpha Centauri

The nature of this contact is not specified in the books, nor is there an explanation why such a contact should cause the Terran Cyberspace persona to split. We have to accept it at face value that such a split occurred and are left to ponder if in Gibson's view aliens are generally male-volent, even the artificial ones.
5. What is the name of the young boy that guards Chevette's and Tessa's van at the Bay Bridge for a little 's* money'?

Answer: Boomzilla

From 'All Tomorrow's Parties'.
6. What do three eggs cost on the Bridge?

Answer: $5

In 'Virtual Light', Chevette buys three eggs from the 'egg lady', an old woman that sells them out of a basket. The dollar in the future of 'Virtual Light' seems to have been devaluated somewhat. :)
7. In 'Count Zero', mercenary Turner has a brief affair with his brother's girlfriend. True or false?

Answer: True

They spend the night together after an evening on the veranda while Turner's brother is elsewhere on the premises.
8. In her flight from Swain's estate through winter London, Kumiko briefly warms up in a noodle seller's stall. The noodle seller is kind to her, and probably he is also an agent of her father's, placed there to protect her. What is his nationality?

Answer: Korean

From 'Mona Lisa Overdrive' where almost all the characters that count are female - and very well outlined characters at that. Kumiko is a clever, courageous child and you cannot help but feel sympathy for her. Angie is a clever, courageous young woman.

Her lookalike Mona is less clever and not especially courageous, but an equally well drawn character who inspires sympathy because she is so absolutely helpless and dumb in a harsh world. :) Even the mature Sally = Molly from 'Neuromancer', although an absolute bitch and a killer, shows some sympathetic traits in her mother-daughter-like relation with Kumiko; and of course, she is also clever and courageous. Even the major villain (and a convincingly evil one), the personality-construct of 3Jane Tessier-Ashpool, is female. Together with some strong minor male roles, 'Mona Lisa Overdrive' has an assortment of well laid-out characters that makes the book one of my favourites among Gibson's works.
9. When recovering from the attack on his life in Delhi, Turner's mind lives in a 'simstim' simulation of a New England boyhood from the previous century for three months while his body heals. Which author does this 'boy simulation' like to read?

Answer: Arthur Conan Doyle

From 'Count Zero'. 'Simstim' or 'stim' is the future's equivalent to TV and cinema: direct sensorial input, like in the movie 'The Matrix', albeit done less intrusively: you just have to wear a cap with wires on your head. Actually, if you made it this far, this is probably irrelevant information to you. :)
10. In an article for the magazine 'Wired', Gibson describes a journey to Singapore. What does he find to be exceedingly rare there?

Answer: dissidents

The article, called 'Disneyland with the Death Penalty', appeared 1993 in 'Wired' 1.04. It can be read here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/gibson.html . Gibson seems little thrilled about Singapore. Actually, the only thing that met with his unlimited approval there was the food.
11. William Gibson's personal one-time hobby was to collect what?

Answer: mechanical watches

He got bitten by the e-bay bug when he finally had internet access. An article of his about this appeared in 'Wired' 7.01: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.01/ebay.html . E-mail addresses is the last thing he would collect, I believe. Now he has a computer, he does have one, but it's top secret, of course.
12. What was Blackwell's 'profession' before he became Rez's bodyguard?

Answer: extorting information and money from other criminals

From 'Idoru'. In Australian folklore, such a man is supposedly called a 'stand-over man' be-cause he 'stands over' his victims when torturing them, at least according to the explanation that one of the characters gives in the book. However, when I asked an Australian about it that I know from elsewhere in the net, this term was unfamiliar to him. Any Australians there to help me out on this?
13. In which organisation/company did Colin Laney undergo testing of his phenomenal ability to search Cyberspace instinctively for complex information?

Answer: DatAmerica

From 'Idoru'. His ability was a long-term effect of an experimental drug he took as a child during a medical experiment in the orphanage where he was living.
14. Which future European country does Maria Paz, ex-girlfriend of notorious Public Relations specialist Cody Harwood of Harwood/Levine, come from?

Answer: Padania

Mention of this can be found in 'Virtual Light' (where she still is his girlfriend, although fed up with and scared of him) and in 'All Tomorrow's Parties'.
'Padania' means northern Italy, north of the river Po (Padus in Latin). It would include such famous cities as Milan, Venice, Torino and Genua. There actually is a right-wing movement, called the 'Lega Nord', that aims to separate the prosperous north of Italy from the less prosperous south and call the new country 'Padania', so in the future of 'Virtual Light' they must have succeeded.
15. And finally, my favourite quote from all of Gibson, with the crucial word left out: 'And for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely...'

Answer: human

Thoughts of Marly Krushkova on encountering a Cyberspace representation of her new employer, art collector Josef Virek, in 'Count Zero'.
Source: Author guqxuv

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor Bruyere before going online.
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