The book is widely hailed as a classic and although a bit dated it still is fairly involving. It is still a bit hyped which the prose can not live up to but it is a passable read if a person is not particularly interested in the science fiction genre.

I decided to brush up on my sci-fi history by reading this archetypal Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick award winning Cyberpunk novel. I’ve already read Pattern Recognition and Spook Country, so I knew a bit of what to expect. What I found was Gibson in his raw unpolished brilliance. You would expect a twenty-five year old book about the future to feel dated. However, aside from a few exceptions, it felt remarkably current. This novel lives up to its reputation.

The prose is dreamlike, blurring the lines between action and reflection—much like the plot blurs the lines between real and virtual reality. You need to pay attention while reading it to keep track of the characters, but the payoff is worth it. The story stays with you once the book’s back on the shelf.

Few things are more satisfying than reading a classic that exceeds your expectations. ( )

Neuromancer may have effectively spearheaded the genre of cyberpunk, but I did not find it to be especially exciting. I think it may simply be that I am looking at it after the genre has had time to stretch its wings.

Much of the first half of the book is spent just developing an understanding of the terms and the world that exists. In fact, much of the second half of the book is also spent roughing out general ideas. Everything begins as being an unknown. You do not understand the speech, the world, the technology, or the plot. Because no part of the story makes sense, you need to get the entire picture all together in your head before you can clear up any of the details.

Once I had a good view of the story, the characters, and all the details, I found that I was both uninterested, and unattached to anything. By the end of the book it was simply reading to finish. This book was not what I hoped it would be, but I do recognize the fact that it does hold an important place in literature as a whole. Ultimately, though, it has become nothing more than a checked box on a list of to-read items. ( )

A lozenge is a shape. Like a cube, or a triangle, or a sphere. I know that every time he types it, you are going to imagine a cough drop flying serenely by, but it's a shape. It's from heraldry for god's sake. You may want to look up some synonyms to insert for yourself when he uses it, here are a few: diamond, rhombus, mascle.

Now that the greatest obstacle in Gibson's vocabulary has been dealt with, I can tell you that he writes in one of the finest voices of any Science Fiction author. His ability to describe things in succinct, exciting, sexy ways is almost certainly the reason we owe him for words like 'cyberspace'.

It took twenty years for his visions of leather-clad kung-fu ladies and brain-computer interfaces to reach the mainstream in The Matrix, but only because he was that far ahead of his time.

However, Gibson was no early adopter. He used a typewriter to write a book that predicted the internet, virtual reality, hacking, and all the nonsense we're embroiled in now (and some stuff we're still waiting for). It can sometimes feel unoriginal, but, much like Shakespeare, that's because what we have today is based on what he was doing then.

Though Gibson may not be as radical as Dick, or as original as Bradbury, there is something in his words, his stories, and his 'coolness factor' that keep bringing me back. Indeed, he is much more accessible than the philosophically remote Dick, Bradbury, or Ellison, and all in a slick package.

Just don't try to watch Johnny Mnemonic. Ever. He did write the best X-Files episode, though: 'Kill Switch'. He also wrote a script for Alien 3, which I have never read, but can state with certainty was better than the one they chose to film. ( )

I know that this book is considered a classic, the pioneer in the genre of cyberpunk, and all around awesome, but I'm going to admit: I had to force myself to keep trudging through it. In fact, several times I gazed wistfully at my shelf, which is filled with China Mieville books that have just come in from the library, as well as John Scalzi's Zoe's Tale, and almost gave into the urge to cast it aside entirely in favor of one of those many TBRs.

My issues with this book are myriad. First and foremost is a writing style and style of worldbuilding that made reading this book /far/ more work than it needed to be. Gibson loves to throw slang and jargon and crazy stuff at you without explaining what it is. To some extent, that's fine - I don't like pages of solid exposition either. What I /do/ like, though, is an author who knows how to weave his world, his slang and jargon and crazy tech, into the story so seamlessly, with description and plot uses that naturally explain what's going on, that you don't notice that it's all foreign. The number of times I had to stop, backtrack, and reread a paragraph - or a /page/ - in order to figure out 1) what was going on and 2) what the characters were /actually saying/ was simply insane. I have spent time translating French with less effort.

His world is unclear, his action is unclear, his character's speech is unclear, his characters themselves are often unclear. It feels like Gibson was enamored of this vision of a world he saw in his head (and where I can glimpse it, too, I can see why! Some things are intensely arresting, like Molly's silver-lensed glasses), but he forgot that the reader doesn't live in his head - we need a bit more help to get there!

All of these things might have been forgiven if the story or characters had blown me away. Unfortunately, I found the characters to be fairly stock and, frankly, boring (I certainly wasn't invested in any of them), and the action of the story was both difficult to follow and not all that interesting once I did. The latter probably stems from the book's age - some things here would probably seem far more revelatory were I reading it in 1984 rather than 2009. Some science fiction can stand the test of 25 years, but those are typically concerned with humanity and character, not dazzling tech. Neuromancer doesn't care much about either, so it doesn't feel relevant and it barely feels interesting.

I feel a little bad being this harsh on something that has clearly earned its place - the number of bits and pieces that have been blatantly ripped off by other books, movies, television shows, and other modern sci fi formats is astounding. What Gibson did here was probably unbelievably amazing, new, fresh, exciting, 25 years ago. I would have been more forgiving of the density in order to get those fantastic images, that fascinating world. But I'm reading it today, and cyberspace and AI and even genetic modifications don't read the same as they once did. It's unfortunate, but true. I'd hoped to at least enjoy the book for its place in the classic canon. Sadly, the other problems meant I didn't really even do that.

Mostly,I just wanted to finish it. I did at lunch today, and within 20 minutes I was 60 pages into Zoe's Tale, and it was like breathing a giant sigh of relief. Ahhhhh--- /there's/ what I wanted! ( )