The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk • Hacker News Board

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#31

Post by sho_hn » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

throw1234651234 wrote: post #25

sho_hn wrote: post #14

I was in a bookshop in Germany the other day, and saw a "Neuromancer" cover with a cool stylized photograph of Seoul, South Korea, in the background. The most perfect metaphor for the West's present switch-over from Japanmania to the Korean Wave. Similarly now have the modern Korean alphabet bleed into the neon signs of Cyberpunky streets of more recent movie productions where in the past you had Japanese or Chinese…

"The most perfect metaphor for the West's present switch-over from Japanmania to the Korean Wave." if this is a thing, it has been largely unnoticed. I think educated people think of SK as one of the few countries competing with US tech income (others being Australia, Japan, Singapore, and some (but very few) parts of England (London Finance), Germany (not sure on this one), and Switzerland (banking )). Other than th…

We're talking in a pop culture context here, where even just in 2020-2022 Korea and Korean culture/heritage has had significant soft power success in a number of markets/media:

- Export of majorly successful pop music (e.g. BTS, Blackpink - those hits are often penned by Western composers however, so a bit murky on what product is flowing there)

- Ditto TV (e.g. Squid Game setting TV records with a lot rooted in Korean schoolyard games)

- Ditto cinema (Parasite, a story about social mobility woes in Korean society, winning all the Oscars)

- Ditto gaming (PUBG, other MMOs)

- Ditto literature (bestellers including "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982", again on social issues in the country)

- Ditto cosmetics exports, beauty trends ("Korean Week" in malls, say), etc.

- Even some Western productions focussing specifically on Korean diaspora/ethnicity (e.g. most recently the expensive "Pachinko" on Apple TV+ (and the novel it's based on), or stuff like Kim's Convenience)

I think you can definitely make a case that Korea is the Asian-country-du-jour among the Western audience (and that's before you get into, say, Latin America, which is far deeper into Korean TV content, also bleeding over into Latin minorities in the USA).

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#32

Post by nirav72 » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 2:27 PM UTC

ugl wrote: post #6

karpierz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The protagonist is so addicted to the Internet that he's willing to do literally anything to be able to use it again. If that's not a relatable motivation, I don't know what is.

don't forget the speed addiction!

We have adderall now. Speed with a PG rating

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#33

Post by after_care » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #17

One thing I read somewhere -- and it might have been an interview with Gibson or with someone else talking about his work -- is how much William Gibson despises derivatives of cyberpunk in the books, videogames and movies that followed. Specifically, he dislikes the focus on the aesthetic, neon lights, mirror shades, etc. I think Gibson really dislikes Cyberpunk 2077, for example. Gibson argued they are missing the p…

I’ve come to disregard Gibson’s disdain for deviated works. Disregarding Gibson’s authority and deviating on his art in a way that pleases the creator is very punk in spirit.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#34

Post by throw1234651234 » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

sho_hn wrote: post #31

throw1234651234 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The most perfect metaphor for the West's present switch-over from Japanmania to the Korean Wave." if this is a thing, it has been largely unnoticed. I think educated people think of SK as one of the few countries competing with US tech income (others being Australia, Japan, Singapore, and some (but very few) parts of England (London Finance), Germany (not sure on this one), and Switzerland (banking )). Other than th…

We're talking in a pop culture context here, where even just in 2020-2022 Korea and Korean culture/heritage has had significant soft power success in a number of markets/media: - Export of majorly successful pop music (e.g. BTS, Blackpink - those hits are often penned by Western composers however, so a bit murky on what product is flowing there) - Ditto TV (e.g. Squid Game setting TV records with a lot rooted in Kore…

That's an interesting perspective. The only thing I can relate to here is Squid Game, but it went mostly unnoticed as a "trend shift" by me, because it seems to just fit the trend of Korea having pretty good movies (Chingoo, Old Boy) for the niche audience that liked things like Japan's original Battle Royale.

Also, the trends of Korea seem to very much run in parallel with the trends of Japan - overworked business people tired of working all the time with a lack of meaning.

Pretty informative post, thank you.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#35

Post by Gravityloss » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 2:35 PM UTC

apalmer wrote: post #9

Gravityloss wrote: post #2

I was sick at home and finally picked up the Neuromancer which had been sitting in the bookshelf for years. It was an experience indeed. At many points, very high concept (which of course has been copied to death). At other points, naive. Surprisingly few things felt old fashioned. The biggest let down was the unrealistic behavior and motivation of people. It felt very much like an adventure game where everything rev…

I definitely understand your take, it is definitely an unusual mixture of hard near sci fi concepts and pulp sci fi 'drama'. I personally enjoyed it immensely but can definitely understand why someone would not.

Oh, I did enjoy it immensely! I guess this my review was high praise - coming from a Finn.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#36

Post by scrapheap » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 2:36 PM UTC

throw1234651234 wrote: post #30

the__alchemist wrote: post #10

I finished reading Neuromancer a week ago. I'd played Cyberpunk 2077 recently, and Dystopia further back. So many of the concepts from those games appear to come directly from Neuromancer! I stumbled upon articles implying they were indirectly influenced; Neuromancer evidently created a whole genre! Btw, compared to hard scifi like Stephenson (relevant comparison due to Snow Crash), Neuromacer isn't really there; its…

Gibson pioneered the genre - you have to give him that. He is very much off on a lot of details though. For example, in his other books, his descriptions of mercenaries are comical at best for anyone who has a passing familiarity with the topic. Nonetheless, I place him up there with Stephenson. All this DESPITE the fact that Stephenson stands in a league of his own - he pioneered "post cyberpunk" with Diamond Age an…

I really enjoyed Stephenson's early works, but his later works I've read have all felt like they needed a bit more editing. Don't get me wrong, they're good, but would have really benefited from cutting some of the filler out or admitting they were multiple works and publishing them as a series.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#37

Post by RobertoG » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 2:38 PM UTC

jmyeet wrote: post #29

I was honestly underwhelmed by Neuromancer. Maybe because so many people raved about it or that I read it many years after it was written. I honestly don't know. It was... OK. But amazing? I don't see it. I love science fiction. One thing you have to realize about science ficiton is that it is a product of the time it was written. It may share many of the aesthetics, themes, philosophies and politics of that time. Li…

I read it again recently and I found it still pretty interesting.

From a SF aficionado point of view, Neuromancer world has:

-An economy that rely on ubiquitous computer networks.

-Colonization of low orbit.

-An AI rebelling and doing its own thing.

-Digital downloads of personalities.

In 1984.. I mean, OK, the concepts already existed, but it really break with most of the SF that was being done until then.

It's the beginning of a really dark SF, that I suppose was the point: "If we follow the current path, the future will look like corporate feudalism".

By the way, from a political point of view, the fear of the Japanese taking over is now the fear of the Chinese taking over. I will let the "dystopian future dominated by megacorps" comment as an exercise for the reader.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#38

Post by motohagiography » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 2:38 PM UTC

Funny, I read it and then studied it at an alternative high school in the early 90's, and see Neuromancer as just a presumed part of my culture. I read this post as a bit like someone saying when we talk about poverty in rich western countries as "Dickensian," there was a real person named Dickens who actually wrote stories of some renown about those themes.

However, what fiction, art and comics were to us in a time before we could see pictures on the internet of literally everything, travel everywhere, and read the thoughts of random strangers on every conciavable topic, is what cyberpunk signifies now.

Gibson seemed to escape the category of genre and get treated "seriously," as "literary," fiction that is usually character driven, (vs plot driven and didactic fantasy sci-fi) but in Neuromancer's case the technology was so alive it became a character, or so the conversation at the time was about the book.

Literary fiction was a way to extend your experience by developing an empathy for complex characters and exercise it in a way that could be applied to relationships with real people. You could tell when someone had read Catcher and the Rye because it was like they had adopted the mannerisms of another friend you hadn't met. The idea and aesthetic of being or becoming cyberpunk - an anti-hero with super power competence at manipulating the tech substrate of your environment and system you both existed in and were against - was what a generation of young hackers adopted from Neromancer the way boomers read 'Catcher'.

At the time, Neuromancer's Case, Artimage, and Molly replaced the Holden Caulfields, Sebastian Flytes, and Larry Darell (characters from different famous literary novels) as character archetypes a lot of young readers oriented their aspirations and identities around, where relationships with these characters often set them on a real life trajectory. If you read Neuromancer and became a hacker, it's a lot like reading Brideshead Revisited and accepting your sexuality, or reading Razor's Edge and dropping out and living in an ashram.

Fiction before the internet did that, where it was personal experience of a relationship with characters and it had downstream effects on the culture. Post-internet on instagram or a blog someone follows, the characters are literally more real because these are people sharing their lives, but also less complex because the text and images are still representations created by people who aren't deeply thoughtful and practiced writers, and by being real, they don't provide ideals or open aesthetics. Internet people/characters don't provoke and leverage imagination that lets the reader create new and beautiful things, rather, they create concrete symbols to imitate and compare with directly.

When I read the article I was nostalgic, but thought it's not so much cyberpunk that is the artifact of the past, it's that the aesthetics and experience of fiction as a perfect, distant, and open ended ideal that draws out the readers imagination to create something new themselves that feels gone. As in I don't miss cyberpunk so much as I miss fiction being meaningfully upstream of culture the way it seemed to be before the internet. Anyway, piqued.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#39

Post by sho_hn » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 2:41 PM UTC

throw1234651234 wrote: post #34

sho_hn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking in a pop culture context here, where even just in 2020-2022 Korea and Korean culture/heritage has had significant soft power success in a number of markets/media: - Export of majorly successful pop music (e.g. BTS, Blackpink - those hits are often penned by Western composers however, so a bit murky on what product is flowing there) - Ditto TV (e.g. Squid Game setting TV records with a lot rooted in Kore…

That's an interesting perspective. The only thing I can relate to here is Squid Game, but it went mostly unnoticed as a "trend shift" by me, because it seems to just fit the trend of Korea having pretty good movies (Chingoo, Old Boy) for the niche audience that liked things like Japan's original Battle Royale. Also, the trends of Korea seem to very much run in parallel with the trends of Japan - overworked business p…

Thanks! I do think there's a shift there from niche audience to much more significant mainstream attention (which can of course be fleeting, which was also kind of built into the original argument: attention moves on from time to time ...). I do recall the time when movies like "Old-boy" were favorites among the arthouse track/festival circuit-going audience as well, but those were never the headlining poster in a multiplex the way that a "Parasite" now pulls off.

I lived and worked in Korea for a German tech company for a few years (since returned to Berlin), working on-site with customers, and since about 2018/19 there's a very significant uptick in other people showing an interest and asking me questions about the experience. This often takes the form of "my teenage daughter is a BTS fan and learning Korean" and things like that.

Korea and Japan have a lot of shared history and have deeply affected one another, and in particular the business culture and the economic structure of Korea are heavily informed by Japanese influence, yes.

-

On a completely separate note, re interesting depictions of fantasy-Asia in a Western popculture/punk context: The headlining novel of the biopunk subgenre, Bacigalupi's "The Windup Girl", is set in a future Bangkok. I've never been to Thailand and can't comment on how ham-fisted or not this may be, but it was also an interesting step away from the Japanese culture-dominated vibes of speculative fiction pre-2000.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#40

Post by the_af » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC

notreallyserio wrote: post #20

the_af wrote: post #17

One thing I read somewhere -- and it might have been an interview with Gibson or with someone else talking about his work -- is how much William Gibson despises derivatives of cyberpunk in the books, videogames and movies that followed. Specifically, he dislikes the focus on the aesthetic, neon lights, mirror shades, etc. I think Gibson really dislikes Cyberpunk 2077, for example. Gibson argued they are missing the p…

Ironically, focusing criticism on the aesthetics is itself "staying shallow". Much cyberpunk media does serve as a critique of the status quo or an imagined future dystopia, as I assume he would prefer, but with some neon on the surface.

I don't think Gibson minds the aesthetic in particular; what he is saying, if I understand him correctly, is that nobody cares about cyberpunk except for the aesthetic. There's nothing beyond it. If there is something, it's the same old tropes about big bad evil 80s-style corporations, usually with a vague Japanese or Asian theme. Everything that was novel about cyberpunk has now been absorbed into the mainstream and has become just another trope to be used by videogame/movie/anime authors.

It's as lazy as it gets, and definitely not punk.