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The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

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Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#91

Post by brimble »

drBonkers wrote: post #62
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…

Capitalism's greatest superpower is absorbing all critique and selling it back to consumers as a luxury good.

As in Black Mirror's "Fifteen Million Merits".

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#92

Post by omarhaneef »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #66
omarhaneef wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also true of Lord of the Rings, or watching Star Wars etc if you didn't read/watch it early on (either when it first came out to the world, or early on in your life when you were new to the genre). I won't speculate on why this is the case, but some people claim its because the innovations are copied so quickly the original becomes just another copy of itself.

Re: Lord of the Rings, while the language itself is a bit outdated and it can be quite tedious in a lot of places, it still set a benchmark that - at least as far as I'm aware - hasn't been met yet in other books in the wider fantasy genre. I've read a few, some of the serialized form, but they often feel awkward and derivative; often full of male power fantasies, coming-of-age hero's journey tropes, worldbuilding th…

I agree with your critique of many of the derivatives (without naming any in particular), but feel it also applies to the original. And while the original has some bright points, so do many of the derivatives.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#94

Post by Apocryphon »

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…

Bruce Sterling should also be remembered as a major contributor to the formation of the genre, on par with Gibson and Stephenson. Islands in the Net grounded future speculative tech in emerging real-world geopolitics, and Schismatrix took the genre into far future space, introducing the concept of cybernetics vs. biological augmentation.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#95

Post by brimble »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #54
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 think to focus on Neuromancer's use of Japanese culture is to stay at the surface level. The background of Neuromancer is one of income inequality, human destruction, and almost-absent government and community (partly caused by a ubiquitous global information network that seems to have broken everything.) We don't have brain-computer interfaces today and Chiba City isn't the center of the tech world (maybe that's S…

So many mega corps being Japanese is a product of anxiety about Japan at that time—maybe not even Gibson's anxiety, exactly, but if you were around then and projected which mega corps were gonna be prominent in your nearish-future setting, you'd really be swimming against the current if you didn't make a lot of them Japanese.

Much of the rest of it, though, isn't about Japanese culture, corporate or otherwise, but seems to me like taking AnCaps like Friedman seriously. Many elements are straight out of that kind of, ah, thought.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#96

Post by vmoore »

Cyberpunk aesthetics are mostly hidden IMHO. I saw a few Youtube videos of chip factories that make flash drives, SSDs and integrated circuits, etc and was amazed at the efficiency & precision of the robots that make them. If you want to be reminded we're living in the future, visit some of these factories, they're mind blowing.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#97

Post by willis936 »

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…

CP2077 appears shallow on the surface. Compared to Deus Ex the gameplay feels shallow. Story wise though... I'm not sure playing as a terrorist who detonated a nuke in a city and rose from the dead to finish the job is well within the "playing it safe" area of current storytelling.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#98

Post by ghostDancer »

obese44 wrote: post #85
drBonkers wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism's greatest superpower is absorbing all critique and selling it back to consumers as a luxury good.

very insightful, that is 100% your original quote

You can get it in a t-shirt probably. ;-)

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#99

Post by pmoriarty »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #24

> When Gibson penned his opening line ‘the sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel’ he merged reality and the digital in a way that seems almost prophetic today It feels like Gibson was riffing on the vibe created by John Foxx's "Metamatic" [1] in 1980 (never mind his "Ultravox!" [2] in the years before that). Maybe it was Foxx though that claimed he was channelling the mood of novels…

Blade Runner was a much more obvious influence.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#100

Post by cubano »

drBonkers wrote: post #62
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…

Capitalism's greatest superpower is absorbing all critique and selling it back to consumers as a luxury good.

Not bad, but I personally think its superpower is always being just the tiniest bit better than everything else...
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