Neuromancer

In reference to the old roleplaying game, Cyberpunk 2020, I think of 2020 as the Year of Cyberpunk. To kick off the year, I made a five day (round trip) road trip for my first William Gibson book signing, and got my 1986 paperback edition of Neuromancer signed (along with a copy of the new book, Agency). On that trip, I started re-reading Neuromancer for probably (at least) the eighth time.

This is probably the single most influential work of fiction in my life. His writing style is one of the most evocative I've ever read, right up there with Kathe Koja, Margaret Atwood, and Poppy Z. Brite. The subject matter resonates with me always, deeply, as what amounts to a third-generation computer geek born into the beginnings of the transition show more to the information age, third generation computer literate, child of two programmers. Neuromancer felt like home.

It's not home like "This future is awesome! I want to live there!" Hell, no. I find it horrifying in its implications (which turn out to be prescient as hell), cautionary rather than aspirational, but also intensely human in a way few other novels ever really get. Its view into the human (and trans-human, for that matter) condition is illuminating and all too believable. The prose conjures visions, the themes inspire, the subject matter informs, and this book reveals that the value of an intelligent outside observer -- for William has said he's no computer expert -- is immeasurable.

Pretty much everything I can say about the cultural value of Neuromancer I can also say about the rest of his books, including non-fiction, but this was first for me.

My reading list for 2020 is stocked heavily with books I've already read (because I want to read the most evocative, genuine, and elegant narrative voices I've encountered) and books with cyberpunk settings, themes, and other elements. Neuromancer tops both lists, which is why it's the first book I started reading in 2020. It's every bit as good as I remembered, in stark contrast to the experience of rereading (as an adult) some other books I remembered well from childhood, such as the Lord Of The Rings series.

I'm pretty sure there are very few free-thinking people in the world who wouldn't get something significant from reading this book. show less

Shockingly good. "Neuromancer" is both a perfect complement to "Blade Runner" and a major influence on the science fiction, and pop culture in general, of the last twenty-five years. There's a lot of good, old-fashioned fun to be had here with sexy female assassins, doomed femme fatales, space Rastas and Gibson's tightly-wound plot and lean, occasionally vicious prose. The fictional world that he describes here is both lovingly detailed and startlingly complete, a thoroughly transcultured, technologically advanced future still troubled by the age-old problems of dramatic income inequality and widespread corporate malfeasance. "Neuromancer" effortlessly transcends its genre origins, though, managing to ask some Big Literary Questions in show more between chase scenes and gunfights. The line between competing realities, virtual and otherwise, is paper-thin in "Neuromancer," making it a uniquely kaleidoscopic reading experience where even a description of a computer virus at work can have a strange, otherworldly beauty. Gibson's decision to set "Neuromancer" in a number of competing, easily traversed realities also allows its characters' identities, motivations and subcultural affiliations to change and meld almost at will. It's safe to say that he takes Descartes' meditations on the mind-body problem to places that that seventeenth-century Frenchman never imagined they'd go. What unites all of Gibson's characters, which include cyborgs, artificial intelligences, and even the odd flesh-and-blood human, is their indomitable desire to retain some shred of their personhood in a hostile and ever-shifting world. As it nears its conclusion, "Neuromancer" seems less like sci-fi novel and more like an attempt to reshape our definitions of the human experience in a time of rapid, uncontrolled technological advancement. It's an enormous challenge, and I'm happy to say that Gibson's prodigious imagination seems to have been up to the task. A positively marvelous book. show less

A totally new style and genre for me, sort of Brett Easton Ellis meets Arthur C. Clarke, but I thoroughly enjoyed every line I could understand! Gibson's writing is so vivid and familiar that even with his futuristic technology and psychedelic cyberspace scenes, both plot and characters are believable. Case is the antihero, a washed-up hacker, who is drawn in by 'razorgirl' Molly (fantastic character) and her boss to help powerful AIs Wintermute and Neuromancer to break free of the company which created them. Aside from that, this is just a pure indulgence of imagination. From the opening line, comparing the sky to a television screen tuned to a dead channel, to the final confrontation, this is an amazing experience.

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 show more the book’s back on the shelf.

Few things are more satisfying than reading a classic that exceeds your expectations. show less

Gibson is almost apologetic in the introduction, thanking the readers for breathing life into his book and for interpreting the depictions of the setting in a way that fills it with relevance (he pokes a bit of fun at the idea of lines of phonebooths in the future). He's right in that the book is sparse on the details and lets the reader fill in the blanks; exactly how things look and operate doesn't seem to have intrigued him, and it's helped the staying power a lot.

Coming to the book late, you're going to have the problem of cultural osmosis. There's little here that hasn't been copied, referenced or spun-off in something else you've read. Games like Shadowrun and Cyberpunk weren't shy about stealing the content, everything from tv show more shows to movies have done similar premises one way or another. It's Gibson's circuitous way of writing that saves much of the plot though, the mysteries unfolding into new mysteries, the uncertainty over who's playing who to what end, and the layers in which cyberspace takes place; it's kept the central story fresh and makes the originator of all those things you know worth (re)visiting. show less

Neuromancer hit science fiction like a railgun shell, and deservedly so. This is one hell of a book: a dark cynical hotwired take on technology, crime, power, and ambition. Gibson is a top-tier prose stylist, and right from the start ("The sky was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel...") he pulls you into a world of the Sprawl, of corporate games on an international levels, of crooks and spooks, of AI trying to evolve into something new.

The story follows Case, ex-keyboard cowboy and hacker, plummeting towards 'suicide-by-gangster' in Chiba City. His talent burned out by a vengeful employer he stole from, Case will move anything, make any deal, knowing that he's headed towards crossing a fatal line. He's given a second show more chance by Molly, a street samurai with upgraded reflexes and retractable blades under her fingers, working for Armitage, a blank-faced corporate cipher, and ultimately, Wintermute; an AI that has put together a team to hack itself, in violation of the basic laws that govern relationships between human beings and artificial intelligences: Never build one too smart.

Every part of this book hits home individually: the fast moving plot, the techno-noir stylings, the globe-trotting setting. But there are two things that lift Gibson far above the people who came after him. The first is that his philosophy is existentialist, not nihilist. Case, Molly, even Armitage, are profoundly damaged people trying to piece together lives on the margins of a society blowing itself apart on simulated reality and advanced technology, but they're *trying*. They're not the empty, gun-fetishistic, black-leather clad macho parodies of the genre that it's so easy to fall into--and which Gibson somehow presciently satires in one of Riveria's twisted hologram tableaux in the Villa Straylight. Second, Gibson has something interesting to say about power, in that it is literally dehumanizing. The entities that rule the world are strange post-human conglomerates: Corporate memory banks, rogue AI, clans of cryogenically preserved clones, CGI personality constructs. A lot of the later cyberpunk literature parroted this without understanding it, in the replacement of the nation-state with mega-corporations, or backstabbing Mr. Johnsons selling out the heroes, or heroic anarchist artists against soul-sucking plastic corporate goons. But for Gibson, it is always about what you lose, and what you keep with you as you approach that apex of power. show less

The reviewer who called this "low life meets high tech" was exactly on point: think 'Blade Runner' and you'll be prepared for the atmosphere. Drug use is rampant, everyone's hiding a gun under their desk or a weapon up their sleeve. Case is a drug addict with nothing left to live for, numb to the world. An unsought opportunity knocks and suddenly he finds himself reconnected to the online world, embroiled in some kind of scheme the details of which are kept hidden from him. Something I appreciate, he's always asking the right people the right questions (unlike certain other maddening characters in certain other frustrating novels). He always wants to know the score, and he's very good at puzzling out what's happening in the most show more confusing moments. It lends credibility to his in-story reputation.

In this 1984 novel, Gibson imagines an internet that we didn't get, one that is purely virtual with access only for the technically inclined. It's not a career for the faint of heart. Gibson's firewall equivalents have the ability to fry your brain if you get too close, no messing around. His descriptions of hacking in a virtual world are very visual-oriented, ready to film. I thought I'd have to be more forgiving in light of its age, but I only smirked once when I was meant to be impressed by several megabytes of data.

Things that look like clichés are actually not - remembering again, this was 1984. Immortality through virtuality, following the music back, AIs striving for freedom, other little moments that seem like echoes of other stories. This preceded those stories, or at least the ones these moments recalled to mind for me. In my head, Gibson's "Neuromancer", Stephenson's "Snow Crash" and Cline's "Ready Player One" form a kind of trilogy (Tad Williams' Otherland riding shotgun), depicting a vision of the internet before it was, a vision of the internet as it might become, and a vision of its ultimate limitations now that we can see a bit more clearly from here. This is still a fine start to that sequence. show less