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The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

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Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#251

Post by Jiro »

pydry wrote: post #127
the_af wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "the majority of derivatives of the cyberpunk genre I've seen have all usually been cheap cash grabs with less than any real messaging behind it" Agreed, and it's important to note that the message "evil corporations are greedy and use tech in soulless and alienating ways" used to be a radical message but it's not anymore. Now it's just a trope. So I disagree with what some are saying that cyberpunk is currently us…

>Agreed, and it's important to note that the message "evil corporations are greedy and use tech in soulless and alienating ways" used to be a radical message but it's not anymore. "The Nazis are evil" is also an overused trope and is hardly radical but by reusing it it helps protect us on a civilizational level from actual nazis. Tropes can be sort of like cultural T cells. I'd rather see more "nazis are bad" and cyb…

>"The Nazis are evil" is also an overused trope and is hardly radical but by reusing it it helps protect us on a civilizational level from actual nazis.

It's enabled people like Valdimir Putin, who managed to invade a country on the grounds that it's full of Nazis.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#252

Post by the_af »

notahacker wrote: post #237
the_af wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the comment you were replying to with a "this" did mention Blade Runner. > "[Gibson] just wrote about punks and hacking in a neo-noir dystopia because Gibson thought that was a much less boring setting for a story than conservative utopias." You are not wrong, but I'd argue that it had a meaningful message beyond plain aesthetics when placed in the right context, i.e. when Neuromancer and cyberpunk were born. N…

It certainly had more novelty when it was new! But the tropes being familiar and so outdated that using some of them in future settings is positively anachronistic is part of the appeal, just like it is for most of the earlier scifi canon, and Gibson seems to have enjoyed consuming trope-heavy genre fiction far too much to be precious about people doing the same with themes he invented or popularised. Not everything…

(At this point this is a conversation which I hope we both find interesting,. Don't read anything I write as trying to counterpoint anything you say, it's not my intention)

I agree cyberpunk now is anachronistic, which has its own appeal. I did say I liked its aesthetics! It's a world that could have been, but never really was. Sort of like Stranger Things is anachronistic and I like it for it (well, the first season, anyway).

But that's the thing, isn't it? Some other commenter in this thread mentioned that cyberpunk originally was about rebellion and now it's about nostalgia. I am of course more cynical, I think many authors (of videogames, anime, etc) simply copy the looks because that's the easy part.

The nostalgia is doubly puzzling because the world described by cyberpunk is not nice, it's hopeless. It's almost like feeling nostalgia for the world described in Orwell's 1984. Not exactly though, because there's adventure and a rich cast of rogues and lowlives in cyberpunk, whereas in 1984 everything is hopeless, gray and doomed, but still... it's weird to long for any dystopia.

The Matrix: you definitely have a point. The Matrix, style-wise, was impressive when it opened! But I feel the same irritation towards the abuse of effects and tropes it brought into the cinematic world.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#253

Post by user_7832 »

EricE wrote: post #222
telchior wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right on in your first sentence. Aesthetics trump message when art reaches wide popularity. ... I swear that I used the word "trump" above unintentionally, but my example for this is Trump rallies using music from bands like Rage Against the Machine, Neil Young and R.E.M. The music contains messages that explicitly speak against the type of political power being wielded, and! the artists themselves speak up ab…

lol - if you think Trump was part of the political establishment you clearly weren't paying attention!

Anybody who was/is as rich as he was even when he started is inherently a part of the political establishment, especially so when you don't just stay low and mind your own business (see: Bezos' impact on unions in the US)

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#254

Post by officeplant »

mmaunder wrote: post #68

I’m constantly amazed at how Metaverse aficionados quote Snow Crash and and other 1990s works as cornerstones of cyberspace, when Gibson invented the term and Neuromancer was written in 1984. Gibson is the original. The passage where Case connects to the matrix (also a Gibson term) again for the first time once his nervous system is repaired is heartbreakingly beautiful. I relate to it as a young phone phreak growing…

It always confuses me when I hear much older people (I'm 34) mention Snow Crash and never Gibson's works. Younger people would be more understandable, but a handful of the tech podcasts I use for background noise at work are staffed by 50-70 year old tech folk that grew up with Gibson.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#255

Post by the_af »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #243
jrochkind1 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really recommend Bagciaglupi's "The Wind-Up Girl", which is kind of the novel expanded from The Calorie Man. It is dismal.

Great book. My friend is Thai and said he (Bagciaglupi) couldn't speak the language to save his life, but otherwise liked the book.

I read a scathing review by a Thai that accused Bacigalupi of engaging in Orientalism, which of course he was. And still, not being Thai myself, I enjoyed the novel immensely, thought its greater themes were very interesting, and I think it wasn't dismissive of Thai culture, even if it dealt in stereotypes.

I suppose Gibson is guilty of this as well, only with the Japanese instead of Thai. It doesn't bother me.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#256

Post by staindk »

pmoriarty wrote: post #43
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…

Neuromancer was groundbreaking in its time. I read it when it came out in 1984 and it blew me away. These days so much other media has been influenced by it that it doesn't look nearly as original. But just imagine reading it when there were no books or movies about: - cyberspace inhabited by AIs - neural interfaces - corporate armies - insanely rich people living in Earth orbit - genetically engineered assassins wit…

I'm quite a bit younger than you, and not entirely clued up on cyberpunk and related genres, but I'd think "Blade Runner" (1982) and its source novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (1968) brought many of the same/similar ideas to the fore a while earlier.

Neuromancer still sounds ground-breaking and I hope to read it one day.

As an aside - something interesting I just found was Gibson's thoughts on Blade Runner. He had seen the first 20 minutes of it and thought his book would be seen as a copy of the film. [1]

Edit: I uh finally read the article after spending ages in the comments and see that they mention this exact incident in there. Whoops.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20070926221513/http://www.willia...

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#257

Post by squeaky-clean »

mmaunder wrote: post #68

I’m constantly amazed at how Metaverse aficionados quote Snow Crash and and other 1990s works as cornerstones of cyberspace, when Gibson invented the term and Neuromancer was written in 1984. Gibson is the original. The passage where Case connects to the matrix (also a Gibson term) again for the first time once his nervous system is repaired is heartbreakingly beautiful. I relate to it as a young phone phreak growing…

Neuromancer isn't really my kind of scifi but Gibson's descriptions are so good and poetic I get the urge to re-read select chapters at least a few times every year.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#258

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

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…

> The biggest let down was the unrealistic behavior and motivation of people. It felt very much like an adventure game where everything revolves around the main character.

I feel it's like this for two reasons:

1) Gibson himself says that he hasn't been a very good writer making Neuromancer, and that this is one of his weaker works,

2) but then again, we see the world from the POV of the protagonist and his brain filter. Case is not a very complicated man and this is how he sees the world. He chooses to focus on these things, and he treats people around him like NPCs. (Giving a convincing perspective of a character is what good writers do, so I think Gibson wasn't a shitty writer after all.)

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#259

Post by throwanem »

jvanderbot wrote: post #249
mmaunder wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're a 38 year old metaphor. Neil Stephenson's Smartwheels don't exist either, and we still don't have "professional road surfers", but that doesn't make Snow Crash any less relevant: "Smartwheels use sonar, laser range finding and millimeter wave radar to identify mufflers and other debris. Each one consists of a hub with many tiny spokes. Each spoke telescopes into five sections. On the end is a squat foot, rubb…

I just don't like snow crash. Does that make me an outlier? The whole thing was silly and far too jrpg for my taste. I mean, stealing the whole "skitchn" thing and slapping "Smooth move, ex lax" on a car when they try to shake you is just campy. "Poor impulse control" -- just slapstick comedy at that point.

It is campy and frequently cheesy, and I think probably influenced somewhat by anime which was in the 80s and early 90s both very different from what it is now, and still in the US a very niche sort of taste in that you had to be somewhat "plugged in" even to have heard about it - it wouldn't hit more widely until the mid- to late-90s Web boom made awareness and access much more broadly available.

That's part of the fun in my view, but it's equally fair just not to like it - de gustibus etc. Or maybe it's just a timing thing; I first read it when I was young and it was new, and maybe that has as much to do as anything with why I liked it so well and still regard it fondly.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#260

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

syngrog66 wrote: post #192

I reread Neuromancer recently and it was surreal reading all the refs in it to The Matrix. literally I'm rereading Snow Crash now and you cant go 10 pages without reading about The Metaverse. and so much of its VR world reminds me of Ready Player One everything old thats good seems to get endlessly reinvented, riffed on, or just blatantly ripped off? lol

> I reread Neuromancer recently and it was surreal reading all the refs in it to The Matrix. literally

Given how time goes, I'd say it was the other way around with the references.

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