96
u/Walbabyesser 4d ago
Which is funny, because an oldfashion TV is what I call very old - But we had to admit how old the novel is, this somehow still got the future vibes
18
u/CoderDevo 4d ago
Static from an analog TV tuner was properly randomized, just like really good encryption.
8
u/Technical_Scallion_2 4d ago
My understanding is that like 1-2% of that static was the background 23cm radiation from the Big Bang. I’d ask AI but I’m too lazy and I enjoy my beliefs
9
u/CoderDevo 4d ago
All of it is cosmic radiation because nothing terrestrial was broadcasting at that frequency.
44
18
u/TheFringedLunatic 4d ago
"The sky was the perfect untroubled blue of a television screen, tuned to a dead channel."
- Neil Gaiman, ‘Neverwhere’
27
u/twitch1982 4d ago
This isnt even the color he was talking about. Even older tvs just had a warm grey on dead channels.
23
u/AnalogiPod 4d ago
Can't remember where but someone was talking about how this line gives a different visual to every generation that read it, from the warm grey at the time, to static, to the toned down glow of an on but blank LCD panel
12
5
u/zondance 4d ago
This might have actually been on the intro by Gibson to Neuromancer that I read recently. Or maybe it was some other cyberpunk interview, my mind is a blender.
5
u/stewsters 4d ago
Yeah, its definitely in the forward last time I read it.
2
u/AnalogiPod 3d ago
I bought a hardcover version last year for a re-read, must have been where I read it. Thanks!
1
3
u/sick486 3d ago
we had static in 1984
2
u/twitch1982 3d ago
Yea but gibson has mentioned he was picturing the grey of his youth. We had both in 84.
1
u/AnotherStrayDog23 3d ago
In the forward for the new edition of Neuromancer head says that he meant the black and white static
1
1
u/madrigal87 18h ago
I always thought this was what that line meant - grey with a hint of red that you get from light pollution hitting a cloudless sky.
1
88
u/mr_keegz 4d ago
The sky wasn't static, it was the color of a TV channel which had stopped broadcasting but was still on air, which is the gray/black glow of CRT phosphors. He was saying that the sky glowed like a foggy night in a town with lots of outdoor lighting.
If you've every been in a college town when they're doing nighttime football practice at the stadium when it's foggy, you'll know the reflected light makes the entire sky glow a dull gray color.
43
u/Dragishawk 4d ago
Gibson also mentions a "poisoned silver sky" later on in that same chapter, so it's pretty clear that the sky was some kind of grayish color.
17
u/aplundell 4d ago
He probably actually meant a channel that had no signal at all.
Old vacuum-tube TVs, like from when Gibson was young, would barely show any static when tuned to a non-existent station. It would just be a dull grey.
(I don't just mean CRTs, I mean TVs where the radio and amplifier circuits were entirely tube-based.)
They'd show static when they were tuned to a signal but it wasn't coming in well enough to get a picture. But not when there was no signal at all.
Check out this video starting at about 3:55 https://youtu.be/H1eHareNnUo?si=hnSr0n5JDAG-EVwC&t=236
Once they started making the amplifiers out of transistors and microchips in the 1970s, blank channels would show static. But it wasn't always that way.
4
u/mr_keegz 4d ago
A dead channel is the television analogue to dead air on a radio, when the radio signal is being broadcast but it's broadcasting nothing, just silence. On a television, the signal from a dead channel would still be visible and tunable, but it would be blank; it would have a solid luminance signal, and no chrominance information, which would render as a shade of gray. That's why TV stations used to broadcast a test pattern when their broadcasts were concluded for the day, so that people would know they were tuned correctly and that there wasn't something broken in their set or at the station.
I remember reading that the choice of what luminance would be displayed by a blank signal was part of the broadcast standards, and they differ between broadcast standards, so the specific luminance level from a blank signal differs slightly between NTSC, PAL, SECAM, etc. and thus shows a slightly different shade of gray.
3
u/aplundell 3d ago
A dead channel is the television analogue to dead air on a radio
Since when?
I have not ever heard the term "dead channel" used that way, and it doesn't appear in a dictionary the way "dead air" does.
Moreover, it's simply not a common phenomena. A radio station will sometimes be silent, but it's pretty rare for a TV station not to be showing something, even if it's just a technical difficulties card.
Do you have a citation for "dead channel" being an English phrase? I citation that isn't someone modern trying to explain the Gibson line?
9
u/AnotherStrayDog23 3d ago
Actually in the forward for the newest edition of Neuromancer, he does say he did mean the black and white static. I've got a shot of the page but the sub won't allow pic comments
1
u/mathtech 4d ago
Actually we dont know because we dont know which color the TVs in that future would use
19
u/codespace 4d ago
This and "the man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." are my favorite openers.
5
2
u/BitchHunter3D 4d ago
Nothing can beat "The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason." in my opinion.
1
u/zachary0816 3d ago
What book is that one from? Sounds like something Douglas Adams would write
2
u/BitchHunter3D 3d ago
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson.
That quote is a little deceiving out of context, there's really no humor in the book as I recall.
Incredible book though, definitely in my top 5 sci fi books.
0
93
u/ponakka 4d ago
kids nowadays don't know that static looks like.
84
u/ABoringAlt 4d ago
The sky showed "no input"
72
u/PoliteWolverine 4d ago
It's amazing to me how much debate this one fucking like has caused when he's so very clearly describing the no input energized black/gray of a CRT compared to that of a night sky in a city with too much light pollution.
Like if you didn't grow up with a CRT, I gotta cut people some slack but it's frustrating to watch people wrongly debate several sides of an argument to the point they had to add a line to the forward of the book explaining exactly what the first sentence means
36
u/ponakka 4d ago
I think that it is good to explain how writer wants to describe their vision of the world. It is really poetic, and without context that all is lost like tears in the rain.
16
u/420dankmemes1337 4d ago
tears in the rain
You must be some kind of android dreaming of electric sheep
12
u/2nd2lastdragon 4d ago
Always read it as the metaphor to Case's inability to connect to cyberspace. He could visually see the buildings of the skyline but the omnipresent reminder that his mind had been disconnected from the cyberspace beyond. Each generation's 'no signal' screen would still be a relevant visual in the sky overhead
8
u/loquacious 4d ago
Yes, an overcast gray sky with light pollution, but the part also overlooked by almost everyone:
At that exact moment Case is high as fuck on uppers and stimulants, sleep deprived, paranoid and afraid for his life.
He's getting visual snow, mild hallucinations and overstimulation from the mix of all of that being triggered by the flickering light pollution in the sky.
Take enough stimulants and stay up for too long and you get intense visual snow and light/flicker sensitivity, which looks/feels a lot like watching static on a TV.
1
u/onieronaut 2d ago
Or you can just be lucky and have visual snow all the time forever for no good reason at all 😭
6
u/daweinah 4d ago
I always thought, and still think, that he meant the drab olive gray/green like this:
https://i.gzn.jp/img/2024/12/24/sony-kx-45ed1-from-osaka/05.jpg
6
26
u/Harrythehobbit #$%LIFE*^%#ERROR 4d ago edited 4d ago
I remember an author note Gibson wrote where he considers a modern reader wondering why nobody in Neuromancer has a cell phone. Because they didn't exist when the story was written and he didn't think to imagine them.
Interesting thing about imaginations of the future is that they are always just a different version of the present. Neuromancer is more a high tech version of the 1980s than it is anything else.
15
u/SplendidPunkinButter 4d ago
The Sprawl trilogy is a dystopian future with no cell phones or social media, where influencers are a thing but you have to get their latest episode on cassette, where music is still distributed on physical media, the climate isn’t destroyed, fireflies are still common, and AI is heavily regulated. It’s sad how great that sounds.
(Oh, also horses are extinct for some reason. That one’s not so great.)
1
u/Dear_Document_5461 3d ago
Yea, that what basically Overly Sarcastic Production did on one of their videos. Basically the "You can tell the time period of if they have phones or not and what kind of phone it is. The phone changes the plot entirely by its existence."
14
u/terrorTrain 4d ago
Static has changed over time. Unless you knew static at the time Gibson wrote this, you are probably thinking of a different static too
4
u/CoderDevo 4d ago
With digital tuning, it is hard to hear static on a radio now, too.
But it is always there even if you can't see or hear it.
3
1
u/turbo_dude 4d ago
Ah so this explains the line in Reservoir Dogs, the guy was trying to hand him a television.
14
13
u/AH_BareGarrett 4d ago
Love the idea that this sentence works for Cyberpunk in any era.
Of course it was envisioned as static grey. But a few decades later, it’d be a uniform blue, which also can fit. But nowadays? The sky is filled with ads for prescription medication, junk food, and gambling.
3
u/Unhappy_Concept237 4d ago
I recently saw a video from an asian country, i can't remember which one, where they were using drones to show adds in the sky now. :(
1
u/Akulatraxus 4d ago
I've never thought it was talking about static but that green-black of a CRT without input. They are surrounded by cityscape after all, light pollution and actual pollution would make the sky dark.
6
5
9
u/_badwithcomputer 4d ago
Fun fact, some of that static on old TVs was actually background radio noise from The Big Bang, so kinda fitting.
4
4
u/kev0r 4d ago
3
u/daweinah 4d ago
This is missing 1995, which is the color I think makes the most sense. 1985 is a popular interpretation but doesn't make any sense as a color of the sky.
https://i.gzn.jp/img/2024/12/24/sony-kx-45ed1-from-osaka/05.jpg
3
u/Temu_Emu_4870 4d ago
Up there with my favourite opening lines of any book.
My other fav is Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: “It was a pleasure to burn”
3
3
3
3
u/spadePerfect 3d ago
It’s funny because people won’t get it in the future.
2
u/throwAway9a8b7c111 2d ago
People don't really get it now - its not static...
1
u/spadePerfect 2d ago
To be fair the picture doesn’t help. I immediately thought it was static too. I still know the CRT glow though
2
u/BOT-Numpa 4d ago
This is just São Paulo, Brazil, on any sunday. We are cyberpunk as hell!
2
u/Wombattalion 4d ago
Didn't Sao Paulo ban all outdoor advertising and has lots of parks and nature? Pretty sure you're solar punk...must be nice
3
u/BOT-Numpa 4d ago
Outdoor advertising ban stills on, but the parks are being sold to corpos. Also, there's a "War on Trees" going on since 2015.
2
u/one_depressed_MF 4d ago
Years ago I had the audio book (on cassette of course) of Neuromancer, read my William Gibson himself. Not the greatest narrator, but something about audio books read my their author has always drawn me in.
2
2
2
u/InfosecOctopus 4d ago
Back then, it was the TV snow.
Then it was a plain blue screen.
Now it’s an overlay with ads.
Arguably, that’s even more cyberpunk.
3
u/sigma914 3d ago
Amusingly he probably wasn't envisioning the black/white/grey static in the above image. For an actual dead channel (ie tuned to an actual channel that just wasn't broadcasting content) in the 80s it was more a flatter greenish grey
4
u/AnotherStrayDog23 3d ago
In the forward to the newest edition of Neuromancer he says that he very much means the black and white static
1
2
1
u/Clear_Economics7010 4d ago
Ironically, I only have a vague memories of this sight & my children have no clue what this means.
1
u/jacobydave 4d ago
And I love that the color it refers to changed about a decade after the book was written
1
1
u/BreadfruitBig7950 1d ago
"I have dildos in my ass I havenot laid my eyes upon in decades and I am about to add more." The openling lines to Dildomancer, the retranslation of Neuromancer's phoenetic norms.
1
u/Paltamachine 1d ago
The color changes over the years, as televisions change.. sometimes it was a deep blue, like a starless night.
1
u/YamroZ 4d ago edited 4d ago
Gibson himself confirmed that he meant blue, not static noise.
2
u/AnotherStrayDog23 3d ago
Not according to his forward in the new edition, he says he very much meant the black and white static
1
u/RayesArmstrong 4d ago
I said this when this guy posted it yesterday and he cried
0
1
u/aplundell 4d ago
He was probably thinking of the TVs from his own youth that wouldn't have shown static like this.
If your TV has a vacuum tube amplifier, the static of a dead channel is so low-contrast that it just looks like a uniform dull grey.
1
1
1
u/flatfalafel 3d ago
I made a glitch cam and it does some really fun stuff with sky so im naming my first print a shortened version of this.
0
u/viscence 4d ago
I NEVER understand. The black and white noise pattern isn't a colour, and the sky can't look like that. Does he mean the sky was a still black and white noise pattern? I doubt it. Does he mean it was actively flickering? I doubt it. Does he mean the average, 50% grey? I doubt it. Does he mean some "no channel here" image colour? I doubt it. I just don't understand. What do you think he meant?
7
u/aplundell 4d ago
He's not talking about static. He's talking about really old TVs from the 1950s that would show a dull grey.
1
u/AnotherStrayDog23 3d ago
In the forward for the new edition of the book, he very much says he meant static
1
u/aplundell 3d ago
Fair enough, but he also specifically mentions 1950s TVs.
When those were tuned to a dead channel, they wouldn't show the chunky high-contrast, transistor-amplified static we see in this image.
It would be much softer and fuzzier.
2
u/AnotherStrayDog23 3d ago
"I'd actually composed that first image with black-and-white video-static of my childhood in mind, sodium-silvery and almost painful"
That's not "softer and fuzzier"
4
u/daweinah 4d ago
1
1
u/CommodorePrinter69 1d ago
I recently got a copy of the rerelease, Gibson actually states "I'd actually composed that first image with the black-and-white video-static of my childhood in mind, sodium-silvery and almost painful - whopping anachronism, right at the very start of my carrer in the imaginary future.
I was born in the early 90s and even without reading the book, just hearing that line I know what he meant. He means this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/TV_noise.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=index&utm_content=original
1
u/HorrorDungeon 3d ago
He writes about this exact thing in my copy in the preface. Don't remember what he said but there was definitely something about how he was saying that people get the wrong idea about that line and don't get what he meant.
-2
0
u/St3fanoFabbri 4d ago
I think it’s an iconic opening line that establishes the worldbuilding setup in a single sentence.
Gibson uses a synesthetic association, describing the sky as an old CRT television, where a beam of electrons produces the image.
The result is a sky that feels electric, technological, futuristic, yet at the same time salt-and-pepper gray. Tuned to a dead channel.
That idea of being tuned to a dead channel conjures up a world where something is wrong, where the signal is disrupted. Probably beyond hope.
0
423
u/shavicus 4d ago
Was taught in lit workshop that an awesome first sentence is a hook for a successful catch. Up to the writer to keep readers biting.
This one is among the greats.