Ellington

"No Maps for These Territories" is a fascinating glimpse into the philosophy and biography of William Gibson, the science-fiction writer best known for coining the phrase "cyberspace." Beyond that claim to fame, Gibson is a very real person and an entertaining one, with a charming self-deprecation and an interesting way of looking at the world.

The film presents this glimpse in spite of its MTV-editor-on-Benzedrine visuals, which are incredibly annoying and, for me, a huge distraction from the interviews, at least at first. (Eventually they slow down to a minor irritant, except for short eruptions as segues.) According to the DVD box, Gibson was put in a limousine and driven around the country for the interviews—they take place entirely within the limousine. The landscapes out the car window are often either computer generated or enhanced in editing. The reason for the gas expenditure is lost to the viewer; presumably they got the gig only by promising to drive Gibson on a book tour.

The other possibility, of course, is that the visuals are oddly evocative of Gibson's body of work, brilliant, and not designed simply to cover up for some shoddy DV camcorder work and that I'm the lesser for not having gleaned all that. Whatever. It's still an enjoyable trip that's only slightly spoiled by the date of the interviews—1999 and pre-Bush II. An update on how real-world terrorism and the curbing of civil liberties will have to wait for the train-based version, presumably. I just hope I'm the one on a train, listening to the sequel on headphones.

— Todd Stauffer