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# Even if the Rewards Have Diminished
- URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/december-27-2022/
- Published: 2022-12-27T21:16:42.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:42.000Z
- Description: Each time I step outside, I feel like I’m on a new planet, and I wonder if I will ever tire of the desert.
- Author: James A. Reeves
- Tags: Notebook

It was cloudy in Las Vegas today. Unlike the blank winter grays of the Midwest and East Coast, these clouds are well-defined, painterly, and startlingly low. Here and there, sunlight escapes and soaks the mountaintops. Each time I step outside, I feel like I’m on a new planet, and I wonder if I will ever tire of the desert.

*The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.* This is the monumental first sentence of William Gibson’s *[Neuromancer](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/28/william-gibson-neuromancer-cyberpunk-books?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, and it came to mind while I languished at the post office for an hour, waiting to pick up a key to my mailbox. Last night I crossed the halfway point of another Gibson novel, *[The Peripheral](https://www.theverge.com/2014/10/27/7066433/william-gibson-the-peripheral-review?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, and I’m not sure whether to proceed. Abandoning a book feels like a failing on my part, but doggedly finishing every book I begin, even if the rewards have diminished, might point to a deeper failing. That said, I’ve enjoyed the big-game future-casting in *The Peripheral*, and Gibson writes like he knows something I don’t.

A nearer vision of the future, via [Ryan Oakley](https://thegrumpyowlredux.wordpress.com/2022/12/15/the-great-and-gummy-void/?ref=jamesreeves.co): “And, perhaps previewing of the shape of future wars, automated plagiarism detectors have been deployed against automated essay generators.” I’ve added his novel, *[Technicolor Ultra Mall](http://www.edgewebsite.com/books/technicolorultramall/tum-catalog.html?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, to my queue. And I might go for a long walk into the desert after reading [this post from Craig Mod](https://craigmod.com/ridgeline/153/?ref=jamesreeves.co): “Basement solitude — isolated without serendipity, static, stagnant, stuck with your face in a screen, manipulated by the algorithms — is the death of the soul.”