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The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

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Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#371

Post by jhbadger »

walrus01 wrote: post #309
pmoriarty wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found Snow Crash to be really childish, and not even in the same league as Neuromancer . I read Neuromancer originally in 1984 and again a few years ago, and for me it still holds up. It's not the greatest book or anything, and I found Count Zero to be much better, but apart from those two books I've yet to read anything else cyberpunkish that comes even remotely close. Before someone mentions Greg Egan or Vernor V…

Snow Crash is in many places meant to be intentionally silly and absurdist as an extrapolated, exaggerated satire on contemporary American lifestyle at the time it was written, such as in the users manual for the "Reason" railgun

And it is pretty obviously referring to 1992 current events. To modern readers L. Bob Rife is just a funny villain, but he was obviously a parody of 1992 outsider US Presidential Candidate H. Ross Perot.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#372

Post by nonesuchluck »

jhbadger wrote: post #371
walrus01 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snow Crash is in many places meant to be intentionally silly and absurdist as an extrapolated, exaggerated satire on contemporary American lifestyle at the time it was written, such as in the users manual for the "Reason" railgun

And it is pretty obviously referring to 1992 current events. To modern readers L. Bob Rife is just a funny villain, but he was obviously a parody of 1992 outsider US Presidential Candidate H. Ross Perot.

Oh. To this modern reader, L. Bob Rife was just an obvious parody of L. Ron Hubbard.

But he wasn't a Texan, so I suppose I see your angle. Interesting bit of flavor.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#373

Post by AlanYx »

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.

I don't think you're an outlier really. IMHO the problem with Snow Crash is that it hasn't aged well. I enjoyed it in the mid-90s, but I recently re-read it, and found it hard to get through (until the very end, anyway). It feels like a frozen-in-time product of the early 90s in a lot of ways, not just in terms of the technological outlook but also with respect to some of the social aspects addressed in the book. There's also very little character development; at one point, for example, a character kills another character in a bar over a threat, and at no point later on does he experience any kind of mental or moral anguish over his first experience of killing.)

Neuromancer on the other hand has aged incredibly well. The ICE tech doesn't make much sense, but the characters feel honest and real, and so many actual contemporary issues (AI ethics, transhumanism, transgender issues, mass surveillance, anonymous coordinated activism, economic oligarchs heading into space, even a tank war in Europe!) resonate throughout the book in ways that don't feel dated.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#374

Post by aspenmayer »

orev wrote: post #205
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…

> And nothing can be more conformist and anti-punk than lazily copying a now classic aesthetic and doing nothing else with it. In Pattern Recognition, the character Cayce is “allergic” to Tommy Hilfiger clothing because the style is so completely generic. Your comment makes me wonder if that was a commentary on the works derived from his initial vision in the Sprawl trilogy.

> In Pattern Recognition, the character Cayce is “allergic” to Tommy Hilfiger clothing because the style is so completely generic.

I remember this a bit differently? I thought she wore nondescript de-branded clothing specifically because she had a behavioral/neurological/information processing/sensory overload condition that caused her to have tics and flip out in the presence of excessive visual input. I remember her intentionally choosing this clothing, as it jumped out at me. And I thought she wore Levi’s, not that it matters, though they do have minimal brand motifs compared to some brands.

I didn’t finish the book, and it has been a while, so I could well be mistaken or outright wrong. I don’t remember TH being mentioned specifically.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#375

Post by tialaramex »

jhbadger wrote: post #370
tialaramex wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A crucial difference is that Gibson hasn't the faintest idea about the actual technology - he wrote the early stuff on a typewriter - whereas Stephenson has a least a rudimentary understanding. For lots of readers this doesn't make any difference, but if you actually have some idea what's going on Gibson's approach interferes with the immersion more than Stephenson's. This has some impact on predictive power too. One…

To me I think it's the opposite -- the fact that Neuromancer's technology isn't just a version of what we have makes is what makes it timeless. Kind of how Star Wars tech from 1977 seems less dated than in most SF movies because it wasn't based on real tech. Snow Crash is so obviously just 1992 technology with a coat of paint -- Stephenson obviously played MUDs and that's all his virtual world is -- a MUD. And so it…

I guess in some sense I agree that "MUDs weren't the future" but they are in fact all that anybody keeps building. Facebook's "Metaverse" is just a shitty MUD, likewise for various "Blockchain" projects that produce some sort of virtual land where you... sort of stand around. The art project I visited at the weekend with a friend had a VR environment which was too limited to really be much of a MUD, but it certainly wasn't anything more than a MUD.

Science Fiction isn't necessarily about "a version of what we have" but it is about the What If? question and fantasy stories don't address that. Unexpected consequences are the story seed in good SF. Asimov in the 1950s notes that a good SF story predicts not the automobile but the traffic jam. That's where I think Stephenson is good and Gibson has nothing to tell me.

Star Wars says Space Wizards fighting laser sword battles may not vanquish Evil and I'm like OK, cool, but so what? Diamond Age (in some sense a sequel to Snow Crash) has a bunch of interesting things to say about society, about what parenthood means, about Cultural Imperialism, and about what we/how we teach children.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#376

Post by jvanderbot »

bpiche wrote: post #275
jvanderbot wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The commentary I've read (and agree with), is that the metaverse itself just didn't hold up. The internet did not become a new reality. Instead, our own reality is melding with the internet through always-on devices and miniaturized sensors and wide wireless networks. Instead of some kind of digital lovecraftian portals hidden away in parts of realspace that connect to this magical deadly realm, the modern vision of…

Wasn't it Gibson himself who wrote this, right in the beginning of Zero History if I'm not mistaken, when Cayce is meeting with some French artist in a warehouse in the outskirts of Oakland? The artist is making an augmented reality installation of a cyber whale that you can see in real life with mirrorshades. And then the artist says 'the internet is e-ver-ting'.

Nice! I had a break in the connection and couldn't place the commentary. I'll go back and revisit that.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#377

Post by dmd »

tialaramex wrote: post #375
jhbadger wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me I think it's the opposite -- the fact that Neuromancer's technology isn't just a version of what we have makes is what makes it timeless. Kind of how Star Wars tech from 1977 seems less dated than in most SF movies because it wasn't based on real tech. Snow Crash is so obviously just 1992 technology with a coat of paint -- Stephenson obviously played MUDs and that's all his virtual world is -- a MUD. And so it…

I guess in some sense I agree that "MUDs weren't the future" but they are in fact all that anybody keeps building. Facebook's "Metaverse" is just a shitty MUD, likewise for various "Blockchain" projects that produce some sort of virtual land where you... sort of stand around. The art project I visited at the weekend with a friend had a VR environment which was too limited to really be much of a MUD, but it certainly…

(The traffic jam quote is from Frederik Pohl.)

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#378

Post by bpiche »

gnabgib wrote: post #325
bpiche wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't it Gibson himself who wrote this, right in the beginning of Zero History if I'm not mistaken, when Cayce is meeting with some French artist in a warehouse in the outskirts of Oakland? The artist is making an augmented reality installation of a cyber whale that you can see in real life with mirrorshades. And then the artist says 'the internet is e-ver-ting'.

Hollis met a Canadian artist (Chombo) in Hollywood that made a giant squid (Architeuthis) that could be seen with a visor rig... in Spook Country. They love and discuss the internet plenty.. since none of this matches what you remember, perhaps it's a reoccurring theme.

Memory bit rot, I'll have to re read the trilogy now..

Chombo says "Somebody told me that cyberspace was 'everting'. That was how she put it." (Spook Country, pp. 64). Feel like the girl he is referring to may be the one I'm thinking of. Must be Pattern Recognition.

Thanks :)

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#379

Post by distrohopper »

user_7832 wrote: post #253
EricE wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

No post body was provided.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#380

Post by tialaramex »

dmd wrote: post #377
tialaramex wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess in some sense I agree that "MUDs weren't the future" but they are in fact all that anybody keeps building. Facebook's "Metaverse" is just a shitty MUD, likewise for various "Blockchain" projects that produce some sort of virtual land where you... sort of stand around. The art project I visited at the weekend with a friend had a VR environment which was too limited to really be much of a MUD, but it certainly…

(The traffic jam quote is from Frederik Pohl.)

There's a whole chain of this thinking in SF. Asimov was the first to use the analogy in the 1950s though he never chooses the exact phrase "traffic jam":

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/10/23/traffic/

Pohl in the late 1960s acknowledges that he isn't the first to have this idea, but does actually use "traffic jam": “Somebody once said that a good science-fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam”

I rather like Heinlein who a little earlier (1966) suggests SF would have predicted something more interesting, instead of car -> traffic jam, Heinlein says good SF would have predicted car -> teenage fumblings in borrowed car.

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