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Revisting Neuromancer After Three Decades

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Re: Revisting Neuromancer After Three Decades

#51

Post by skmurphy »

electricslpnsld wrote: post #12
skmurphy wrote: post #2

Neuromancer, William Gibson’s first novel, was published in 1984. It helped to establish the cyberpunk genre of science fiction: a dark future where computing, communication, and artificial intelligence technologies were dominant, complemented by significant medical advances, large inhabited satellites in Earth orbit, and considerable drug use. I recently re-read it and was struck by how things have turned out differ…

> Neuromancer, William Gibson’s first novel, was published in 1984. It helped to establish the cyberpunk genre of science fiction Cyberpunk dates at least a decade before Neuromancer -- Brunner's Shockwave Rider form 1974 comes to mind (and is a pretty interesting and strangely timely read, given that it is almost 50 years old).

I agree that there were a number of earlier novels and stories that were cyberpunk in their sensibilities: John Brunner's "Shockwave Rider" and "Stand on Zanzibar", Vinge's "True Names", Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" are some of the most obvious. I think Neuromancer helped establish cyberpunk because of it's popularity and it's vivid conceptualization of "cyberspace" as a separate parallel realm, similar to the Celtic Otherworlds, that is visited in more of a lucid dream state--to pass the final barrier Case has to flatline and cross over into what is essentially a land of the dead.

I think Shockwave Rider captured the sense of accelerating change and what Toffler called "future shock" (modeled on "culture shock" it's the discomfort from finding yourself embedded in the foreign culture of the future). Vinge anticipated privacy issues (and may other important considerations in his other works like "Rainbows End") and Dick is exploring the nature of what it means to be human.

Gibson's Neuromancer shows a world where extensive body modifications are commonplace, but it does not seem to affect anyone's self-image or concerns about identity. So at some level "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" is more philosophically and psychologically profound.

Re: Revisting Neuromancer After Three Decades

#52

Post by kabdib »

electricslpnsld wrote: post #12
skmurphy wrote: post #2

Neuromancer, William Gibson’s first novel, was published in 1984. It helped to establish the cyberpunk genre of science fiction: a dark future where computing, communication, and artificial intelligence technologies were dominant, complemented by significant medical advances, large inhabited satellites in Earth orbit, and considerable drug use. I recently re-read it and was struck by how things have turned out differ…

> Neuromancer, William Gibson’s first novel, was published in 1984. It helped to establish the cyberpunk genre of science fiction Cyberpunk dates at least a decade before Neuromancer -- Brunner's Shockwave Rider form 1974 comes to mind (and is a pretty interesting and strangely timely read, given that it is almost 50 years old).

Other early works that I associate with cyberpunk are:

Vernor Vinge, True Names

Thomas P Ryan, The Adolescence of P1

Algis Budrys, Michaelmas

Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

David Gerrold, When Harlie Was One

Obviously, SF involving computers is pretty extensive, and there is a fuzzy line between "cyberpunk" and "this story involves computers at some level." My criteria are: Are computers major characters in the story, and secondarily, are they helping other characters break lots of rules? :-)

Re: Revisting Neuromancer After Three Decades

#53

Post by pjc50 »

archagon wrote: post #17

Read the book for the first time last year. I heard from some people that it hadn't aged too well—that it should be viewed as more of a precursor to things like Snowcrash —but I really loved it. In particular, the language used to describe drug states and events in cyberspace (such as the Kuang virus) was just so vivid and disorienting. (Or I guess "hypnagogic", to use a Gibsonian word.) A less talented author would…

> Now if only somebody would do a TV adaptation of the original!

I sadly don't trust anyone including Gibson to do this in a way that doesn't ruin it for me, unfortunately. So much of it is about interiority. On the other hand it's ideal anime source material, where it could sit happily next to GITS.

The only approaches that might be viable would be to draw heavily on Mr Robot and Sherlock's overlay techniques. Let cyberspace bleed visibly into the real.

(The version I'd make would be the zero-budget BBC version, filmed deliberately on scratchy VHS with badly hand-matted effects, in the corner of a disused post-industrial warehouse with props from a bankrupt Maplins. It would be extremely punk and virtually unwatchable.)

Re: Revisting Neuromancer After Three Decades

#54

Post by beat »

Something I think that is underrated in the criticisms of Neuromancer is how great the non-human characters are. I'm thinking here of Wintermute (of course), who is as cold and alien as a Lovecraftian horror. And the spider-like patience of Wintermute spending years working on manipulating 3Jane to madness and murder... it's terrifying and brilliant.

And the Dixie Flatline! The idea of a personality captured as a software construct, to get all the little tics that make the personality so good at what they do. "Case. Joeboy. Quick study." You get that sense that this is a machine that sounds like a person, because it was a person. And toward the end, when the Dixie Flatline asks Case to erase him when it's over? Can a machine have existential horror to the point of longing for its own death? Loved that.

And Armitage! Technically, not a machine... just a hollowed-out shell of a man, filled with the sort of temporary personality Wintermute could craft, when Wintermute's ability to comprehend humans was limited, and Corto's madness lay trapped just below the surface, with Wintermute knowing it would crack at the worst possible time. Another truly great science fiction alien.

Re: Revisting Neuromancer After Three Decades

#55

Post by bitwize »

pmoriarty wrote: post #37
prepend wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only he hadn’t copyrighted/patented it, we might be using it. I find it interesting how frequently “just ok” software is picked up and reaches a critical mass just because it is open. There are many good software projects that won’t grow because of licensing because they are more useful with network effects. I have lots of colleagues who use R for data analysis. It wasn’t that great in the beginning but was widely…

"I find it interesting how frequently "just ok" software is picked up and reaches a critical mass just because it is open. There are many good software projects that won’t grow because of licensing because they are more useful with network effects." UNIX itself is a great example of this. Look at the graveyard of excellent UNIX flavors that fell by the wayside when free, open Linux came around. With more open licensi…

And they would have been a bit player in the OS marketplace compared to Windows NT.

Assuming that in this alternate timeline, the Apple-NeXT merger still happens, the dominant Unix flavor would likely be macOS. As it is, it's still alive and kicking and enjoying a comfortable number two spot (number one if you're talking desktop installs).

Re: Revisting Neuromancer After Three Decades

#56

Post by atombender »

eropple wrote: post #43
atombender wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it twice, once in the mid-1990s, then a couple of years ago. I still love Gibson's language, and I love the ideas about AIs, but the flaws were much more apparent the second time around. For one, the creaky mechanics of the plot were much more transparent to me on re-eading it. The characters rush from location to location to find the next McGuffin, Case mostly being a passive spectator throughout. It feels li…

I feel like the biggest criticism I can make of Gibson is that he plots . Most novels have a plot. But the good ones don't let you in on it. As you say, the characters rush around for MacGuffins, and you characterized it as "creaky"--that's a good word for it. I have not always been the biggest Stephen King fan (as an author; growing up in Maine, I've always been a fan of King-the-person) but On Writing is an excelle…

Good points. The crux of the problem is really in this distinction between plot and story.

A great plot-driven writer who manages a superb synthesis of both is Iain M. Banks. One of his less well-known books, Feersum Endjinn, is a favourite of mine. Its journey is very linear, but it's a journey, a story that happens to a character. The skeleton of the plot is under a thick skin of emotional resonance. It's a good story.

You could say that Gibson is a writer who is uninterested in plots (to the extent that he's not able to come up with an original one) but who, paradoxically, still manages to write extremely plot-driven books.

Re: Revisting Neuromancer After Three Decades

#57

Post by Sangermaine »

archagon wrote: post #17

Read the book for the first time last year. I heard from some people that it hadn't aged too well—that it should be viewed as more of a precursor to things like Snowcrash —but I really loved it. In particular, the language used to describe drug states and events in cyberspace (such as the Kuang virus) was just so vivid and disorienting. (Or I guess "hypnagogic", to use a Gibsonian word.) A less talented author would…

> I heard from some people that it hadn't aged too well

Good, you'll know who to avoid in the future.

>In particular, the language used to describe drug states and events in cyberspace (such as the Kuang virus) was just so vivid and disorienting. (Or I guess "hypnagogic", to use a Gibsonian word.) A less talented author would have made it feel rote and computery, whereas this cyberspace felt more like a collective fever dream.

It's because Gibson doesn't come from a technical background (he famously wrote Neuromancer on a typewriter and had never even seen a personal computer at the time), but was a hippie deep into the drug subculture of the time.

I think being too into the technical side of things may actually be a hindrance when writing these kinds of books, and that Neuromancer resonated so widely precisely because it wasn't hung up on the details. It didn't need the right descriptions of technology, it needed to evoke the right kind of feeling and look at the right way of interacting with technology.

Re: Revisting Neuromancer After Three Decades

#58

Post by currymj »

The book "Void Star" by Zachary Mason was published last year. A high concept pitch for it is "Neuromancer, but all the 80s stuff is replaced with 2018 stuff". I hope the author wouldn't be offended by that -- the book is quite original but the influence is obvious. It's worth reading.

I would basically be okay with somebody doing this again in another 30 years.

Re: Revisting Neuromancer After Three Decades

#59

Post by pmoriarty »

bitwize wrote: post #55
pmoriarty wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I find it interesting how frequently "just ok" software is picked up and reaches a critical mass just because it is open. There are many good software projects that won’t grow because of licensing because they are more useful with network effects." UNIX itself is a great example of this. Look at the graveyard of excellent UNIX flavors that fell by the wayside when free, open Linux came around. With more open licensi…

And they would have been a bit player in the OS marketplace compared to Windows NT. Assuming that in this alternate timeline, the Apple-NeXT merger still happens, the dominant Unix flavor would likely be macOS. As it is, it's still alive and kicking and enjoying a comfortable number two spot (number one if you're talking desktop installs).

I'm talking about servers, where Linux dominates.

Sun used to dominate there, and they might have continued to do so had they switched to open licensing, made the OS free, and maybe adopted a business model like RedHat's.

Re: Revisting Neuromancer After Three Decades

#60

Post by Sangermaine »

atombender wrote: post #29
linsomniac wrote: post #14

I just finished the audiobook of Neuromancer a week ago, and I didn't really enjoy it. I'm not sure if I would have enjoyed it more if I'd read it. I love other what I think of as similar books like Snowcrash and Diamond Age. I had high hopes for Neuromancer, which maybe that was part of it, but I just didn't enjoy it. It kind of turned into a slog and I nearly gave up at around 90%, but just pushed through because I…

I read it twice, once in the mid-1990s, then a couple of years ago. I still love Gibson's language, and I love the ideas about AIs, but the flaws were much more apparent the second time around. For one, the creaky mechanics of the plot were much more transparent to me on re-eading it. The characters rush from location to location to find the next McGuffin, Case mostly being a passive spectator throughout. It feels li…

> Fabulously rich, unreliable mystery man of dubious moral integrity (possibly being a front for a near-omniscient A.I.) hires one or more people to find one or more McGuffins;

I see this as a nod to old detective pulp novels and film noir which often have these kind of plots: a mysterious backer (sometimes a rich man, sometimes a femme fatale) sends a detective on a mission to find something or someone. Over the course of following the leads, getting in fights, etc. it becomes apparent that the thing in question is either irrelevant to the larger plot that's revealed, or that things aren't what they seem about the mission, or both.

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