Was man so alles von William Gibson lernt: ([burst city trailer] [where the holograms go])

Hak Nam, City of Darkness, the old Walled City of Kowloon was finally demolished ten years ago, in 1993, and to the end it retained its seedy magnificence. Rearing up abruptly in the heart of urban Hong Kong, 10, 12 and in some places as many as 14 storeys high, there was no mistaking it: an area 200 metres by 100 metres of solid building, home to some 35,000 people, not the largest, perhaps, but certainly one of the densest urban slums in the world [1,9 Millionen Menschen pro Quadratkilometer, sagt der Wikipedia-Artikel Kowloon Walled City]. It was also, arguably, the closest thing to a truly self-regulating, self-sufficient, self-determining modern city that has ever been built.

[...] the Walled City became that rarest of things, a working model of an anarchist society. Inevitably, it bred all the vices. Crime flourished and the Triads made the place their stronghold, operating brothels and opium 'divans' and gambling dens. Undoubtedly, these few (and it always was a small proportion) kept the majority of residents in a state of fear and subjection, which is why for many years outsiders trying to penetrate were given the coldest of shoulders.

[Kowloon Walled City, Newsline, Issue 03.02, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation]

TM: Angel Dust seemed to me to be a thriller on the plot level, but it seemed you went searching for other elements inside that.

Yes. The metaphysical (laughs). I spent a lot of time reading books in the years before that, especially the work of Philip K. Dick and J.G. Ballard. Reading them, I saw new possibilities of expression and they continue to influence me to this day. By that time, virtual reality was coming up in Japan and the meta fiction these writers use in their novels was really similar to what was happening in Japan at this time.

[Midnight Eye Interview: Sogo Ishii]

Wild Palms is a six hour mini-series, which first aired in 1993 on the ABC Network in the United States. From its beginning, "Wild Palms" was conceived as an Event Miniseries, with a limited amount of episodes.

Produced by Oliver Stone, and Bruce Wagner - who was also the writer - Wild Palms was a sci-fi drama about the dangers of brainwashing through technnology and drugs. It was based on a comic strip written by Wagner and illustrated by Julian Allen first published in 1990.

[Wild Palms, Wikipedia, 23. Juli 2006]

[Eine weitere SciFi Serie, von der mir bis jetzt nichts bekannt war. Langsam nimmt das bedrohliche Ausmaße an. Das ganze gibt es (lächerlich billig) auf DVD, für uns aber leider nicht. Dafür bekommt man auch hier den Wild Palms Reader.]