Neuromancer (original 1984; edition 2004)

I find myself at a loss to describe how I felt about this book. In some ways, it wasn't really that great - the characters are 2D at best, the first third of the book lacks any explanation or definitions to help acclimate the reader to the new world (for a while I was convinced I was going to read the whole book without having any idea what actually happened), and the whole thing seemed vague (who was doing what and why?).

By the end, though, things cleared up, I felt more comfortable with the vocab, and I closed the book feeling as if I'd been somewhere. A book that sends me somewhere is a book worth reading, no matter what frustrations it takes to do it.

Sitting in the middle of the Internet era, it's obviously difficult to evaluate Gibson's amazing prescience, but I will say that his seeming concern from his intro in the 20th Anniversary Edition about the book's lack of cell phones is really unwarranted. Everything in Neuromancer's world fits just so, and it never would have occurred to me that it was odd no one was picking up a cell phone to contact each other. ( )

didn't like this novel, while it is very creative written, I felt lost the whole time never understood what or why ( )

This book was interesting. It was engrossing, it kept my attention for an hour at a time, and it talks about computers, hacking, and cyberspace in ways that were not conceived of at the time. I can see Keanu Reeves stumbling through this book and being totally confused.

I kept getting yanked out of the text every time I recognized a reference The Matrix made to this book. The computer matrices, the descriptions of cyberspace, the Rastafarian Army floating down from Zion. I thought Zion was just a Biblical reference, but apparently not.

I love that a good portion of the muscle in the book was a mirror-eyed samurai chick with knives under her fingernails. The knives yanked me out as well, actually, because I kept thinking of Lady Deathstrike.

I don't know what to say about this book. I got it. It was diverting. I read it a few days ago, though, and I'm still not entirely sure that I liked it. Steampunk may be more up my alley than cyberpunk. ( )

I just tried to re-read this, along with a few other cyberpunk novels that meant a lot to me when they first came out, and I tell you what... it didn't hold up for me. I'm sad. ( )

When I saw the movie Matrix, it initially struck me that it had something to do with the Matrix in this book. But, for better or for worse, the Wachowski brothers took that movie trilogy somewhere else and I was left to wondering what a movie version of [b:Neuromancer|22328|Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1)|William Gibson|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1285017005s/22328.jpg|909457]'s Matrix would be like. (Here's a link to some of the failed attempts at bringing this book to film: link). It's a credit to [a:William Gibson|9226|William Gibson|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1282769227p2/9226.jpg]'s particular genius that the images he painted in this seminal book remain in the popular consciousness this far removed from its original publication. Well, at least, they have remained in mine --- the landscape of the datasphere, the geek hacker jacking into his rack of hardware, mirrorshades, virtual reality indistinguishable from reality, and of course, the lost and bedraggled cyberpunk. Comparing this book to his more recent efforts, such as the Blue Ant series, I can still see the traces of the early Gibson, keenly nuanced prose that borders on flash while promising more meaty energies running unseen. But you can feel it. And it is this sense of emergent tension that drives Neuromancer, hurtles it forward on a narrative trip that, alas, does not resolve well. This book is more about the ride, and the scenery on the way, rather than the destination. Vintage Gibson. ( )