Reading William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition" right now. I'm on delay because of waiting for paperback editions of hot books.

I'm intrigued by the trend of cyberpunk authors (Stephenson, Gibson and Sterling) giving up their science-fiction domains and focusing squarely on the present. I hope this is only a brief illustrative trend.

Don't give up the ghost, guys! "I believe cyberpunk is long over," Stephenson said (along those lines) in today's interview with Wired. Well, who knew that these original authors were all about genre definition? I think they are all original, and have been labeled under a genre for definition purposes. Like many schools of modern art.

I just feel that the strongest suit these three had was their collective original ideas. By bowing to the faulted present, it's only an illustration of our ephemeral flaws along the way to the Next Big Thing.

Focus on the next page. Today is already over.

Although, I will say I like Pattern Recognition more than I did Cryptonomicon. The "Big C" was full of witty and intriguing riffs, but it being a "yarn," I felt it cheapened itself more than Pattern. Snow Crash and The Diamond Age were parables disguised as yarns.

Who is going to step up and show us the future? Because there is a Next Big Thing beyond our current Thing, and if we don't see it, then we won't get to it.

Capisce?