I think it is easy to see the Sprawl books as being technology-oriented with cyberpunk window dressing. If that is your perspective going in to Blue Ant, then I can see how you might be disappointed. The Blue Ant series makes it clear that Gibson is interested in contemporary humans and their culture. Technology informs these topics, but isn't the primary focus.
Going back to Sprawl after reading Blue Ant, new layers of detail became apparent to me. There is a lot more than just an AI-driven singularity story going on. If anything, the [Spoiler!] Neuromancer-Wintermute union is a McGuffin made too explicit, distracting many readers from the rest of the interesting content. Like Space Rastas. How awesome are Space Rastas?!
I found it easy to follow the Cayce Pollard thread in Pattern Recognition. Everything seems to develop around her or eventually relate back to her. In some sense, Cayce is a hybrid of Case from Neuromancer and Marly Krushkova in Count Zero. Bigend is a hybrid of Josef Virek (Count Zero) and perhaps the physical aspects of Armitage (Neuromancer).
All of Gibson's books deal with characters that operate with relatively little wealth and power on the fringe of society and their interactions with figures of extraordinary wealth and power who have ambiguous locations within society. But these characters aren't just computer hackers / programmers. They can be marketing advisors, children, fashion designers, linguists, artists or mercenaries.
It is worth giving the Blue Ant* series a second change, there is more in common with Sprawl than first appears.
Going back to Sprawl after reading Blue Ant, new layers of detail became apparent to me. There is a lot more than just an AI-driven singularity story going on. If anything, the [Spoiler!] Neuromancer-Wintermute union is a McGuffin made too explicit, distracting many readers from the rest of the interesting content. Like Space Rastas. How awesome are Space Rastas?!
I found it easy to follow the Cayce Pollard thread in Pattern Recognition. Everything seems to develop around her or eventually relate back to her. In some sense, Cayce is a hybrid of Case from Neuromancer and Marly Krushkova in Count Zero. Bigend is a hybrid of Josef Virek (Count Zero) and perhaps the physical aspects of Armitage (Neuromancer).
All of Gibson's books deal with characters that operate with relatively little wealth and power on the fringe of society and their interactions with figures of extraordinary wealth and power who have ambiguous locations within society. But these characters aren't just computer hackers / programmers. They can be marketing advisors, children, fashion designers, linguists, artists or mercenaries.
It is worth giving the Blue Ant* series a second change, there is more in common with Sprawl than first appears.