Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

sabukaru.online

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 404 posts

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#391

Post by d13 »

nimithryn wrote: post #351
bpiche wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not using this reply to agree or disagree, I just want to share this piece of internet archeology with you. If you're interested in comparing and contrasting great cyberpunk authors, the esteemed Rudy Rucker himself did this in an interview with punk-cyber legend R U Sirius (of R U A Cyberpunk? meme fame) on his blog back in the day https://www.acceler8or.com/2012/02/cyberpunk-sfmathematics-l...

The comparison with the Beats is interesting (I know next to nothing about the Beats). Thanks for sharing!

Yes, Gibson came out of 60’s counter culture and was his style is a kind of like a pop version of William Burroughs - a writer who, in the late 70s and early 80s had an enormous and overreaching influence on younger writers.

As an interesting aside, There’s an old Canadian documentary film about Rochdale and the hippie scene in Toronto, shot around 1970, that, by pure chance, features a very young William Gibson well before he had published anything - I stumbled across this by chance in the York University film archives about 30 years ago - no idea if it’s available anywhere online and may no longer exist anymore.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#392

Post by d13 »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #364
Tr3nton wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't even finish Snow Crash. The fact the protagonist's name was "Hiro Protagonist" is a good example of the intellectual tone of the novel. Every character reminded me of Poochy from The Simpsons, an over-written "edgy" anti-hero, as compelling as an episode of Saved By The Bell. Neuromancer on the other hand I still think about, and I haven't read it in a decade.

Same, I actually tried reading Snow Crash on my kindle a month ago. I've read pretty much all of Gibson and found Snow Crash too... corny? I gave up at about the point where some autonomous dog thing died. Sci-fi is like vi / emacs preferences I guess.

I gave up at exactly the same place. Absolutely baffled why it’s constantly cited, it’s totally insipid, unimaginative, and poorly written.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#393

Post by tialaramex »

jhbadger wrote: post #390
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…

I'd argue that Gibson had the most important social prediction in cyberpunk -- one that we kind of ignore today because it became true. In Gibson's future, the real conflicts are not between national governments but between rival tech companies. Obviously Gibson made the mistake common in the 1980s that the tech companies would be Japanese rather than from US or China, but the key prediction was insightful. Later cyb…

The Vicky companies in Diamond Age are basically John Company, the British East India Company, I think it even more or less says as such, calling it John Zaibatsu. The Victorians appear to live in a plutocracy, but it's very particularly a Victorian plutocracy, we don't see any poor Vickies, the thetes living down in the LT are not Victorians and nor are the artisans on the hillside. The nature of the Mandarins is unclear, whether Doctor X is unusual in operating an actual business close to the LT, or whether actually the Middle Kingdom, too, is controlled by businesses and the Mandarins are the owners.

And as to the idea that it became true, well, here in the real world it is Russia that invaded Ukraine and not an invasion by Gazprom or whoever. The sovereign entities are still fundamentally concrete in a way that a corporation is not.

The Fists in Diamond Age may in some sense be tools of the Mandarins, but certainly the Mouse Army don't work for anybody except Princess Nell, their loyalty to her has been blended into all their learning from infancy, almost without anybody consciously intending this (Hackworth is ultimately responsible, but if/why Hackworth chooses Nell rather than his own daughter is unclear, we don't see enough of the other copies of the Primer to discern whether the other two girls could have led the Mouse Army, the novel is about Nell).

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#394

Post by ant_li0n »

EL_Loco wrote: post #367
bpiche wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That last line must be the best one in the whole book. It has remained with me for years. Thank you for sharing this.

Neuromancer's opening line is probably one of the most remembered first sentences in american fiction. Every friend of mine who read the book, most of them in the 90's, seem to remember it verbatim. Now that I think of it, do younger people know what he's talking about? I mean, at some point dead channels changed from the noisy grayscale beehive-like granulates to a still blue screen.

It's always been my understanding that a tv tuned to a dead channel was that solid grey color, like when the transmitter is powered on but there is no picture being sent. In other words, not the same thing as just setting the receiver to a frequency with no transmission (static)

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#395

Post by porbelm »

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #301
munk-a wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, honestly, outside of the main story the setting is absolutely dripping with theme and care - buggy the game may be, but poorly written it is not (in most cases - there were definitely some misses). Hell, cyberpsychosis, a pretty plot-minor series of encounters, delves into one of the more interesting considerations in the game. That a fair number of people are unable to handle the implant tech at all and lose th…

I picked it up on sale after the recent 1.5 big huge update and after something like 75 hours, I haven't really encountered any glaring bugs and have loved it. Glad I didn't pick it up at launch otherwise my opinion may have been soured.

I picked it up at launch and still shoved 120 hours into it, finishing it, before taking a break. I never experienced much more than two or three quest-breaking bugs requiring a reload; lucky I guess. Doing a replay now after 1.5 and the new stuff is good

still lotta T-poses though

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#396

Post by porbelm »

themadturk wrote: post #214
discardedrefuse wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neuromancer was a critique of the era that birthed it. Reagan might be gone, but the frameworks cemented into place back then are still the same frameworks we operate under today. Gibson may have unintentionally been predicting the future. As the world further aligns with the cyberpunk dystopia, the mainstreaming of cyberpunk aesthetic is inevitable. I'm reminded of that line in The Matrix when Neo breaks The Oracle'…

As Gibson himself has said, science fiction is a commentary on the moment in which it's written, and almost never succeeds in predicting the future. That doesn't mean it can't help shape the future (which I think Neuromancer did, at least a little). But that's a different thing.

The fun thing is I read the Sprawl and Bridge trilogies over the past year and oh my effing my how extremely accurate some of his extrapolations turned out to be. So rare and unusual, but post-2016 could not have turned out much different I guess

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#397

Post by porbelm »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #144
Loughla wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that reading, today, absolutely is punk. When the main-stream is delivered at a sixth grade level, in 15 second sound bites with talking heads or funny dances behind it. . . what is more punk that being extraordinarily well-read?

>what is more punk that being extraordinarily well-read Having recently been to several punk rock shows (read: damp basement noise fests), I'd say: having a blue collar job, being against "the system", doing copious amounts of cocaine and speed on their time off, and having their entire body blasted with tattoos such as a hand flipping you off, a trash can overflowing with garbage, and many insults. I thought this pa…

That's just a mainstream punk aesthetic though A blue collar person with tattoos that is also WELL READ instead of JUST moshing though? That's punk.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#398

Post by mrslave »

Snow Crash is funny and short. I didn't like it at first but after forcing through the first 30 pages the anarcho-libertarianism ad absurdum took hold and I was laughing my socks off. I have yet to read another Stephenson novel. Neuromancer is more intense and some of the passages are hard to follow, but I enjoyed it pretty much from the get-go. Different books. I wish there was less apparent competition between them.

Also I wish the sense of humor of Snow Crash was better understood. It really is a laugh-out-loud read and otherwise reads like a comic book (in a good way). I think some of the Americanisms irk British and Euro readers. I'm not usually one for audio books but I have heard the Snow Crash audio book carries the tone perfectly.

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#399

Post by smiley1437 »

d13 wrote: post #391
nimithryn wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comparison with the Beats is interesting (I know next to nothing about the Beats). Thanks for sharing!

Yes, Gibson came out of 60’s counter culture and was his style is a kind of like a pop version of William Burroughs - a writer who, in the late 70s and early 80s had an enormous and overreaching influence on younger writers. As an interesting aside, There’s an old Canadian documentary film about Rochdale and the hippie scene in Toronto, shot around 1970, that, by pure chance, features a very young William Gibson well…

I remember having just read Neuromancer and in the same month happened to watch that exact documentary with Gibson a nobody wandering around in Toronto

Re: The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

#400

Post by throw1234651234 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #124
gpderetta wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I think that Gibson is vastly superior to Stephenson. As for recommendations about post-cyberpunk: our own cstross has written plenty of great books (Accelerando in primis); I've liked anything that Peter Watts as written so far (Blindsight is the most famous, but the rifters saga is also good and the Sunflower cycles is excellent). Alastair Reynolds writing is very uneven, but world building is excellent…

Both Egan and Vinge have been very disappointing to me. I read them because they wrote a lot about the singularity, but found them to be extremely boring, dry and unimaginative. Stephenson's Snow Crash was also very underwhelming. I'm more of a fan of Dick, Herbert, and Lem.

I read Lem when I was young and it was a chore. I read him again when I was older and found his stuff to be pretty dated.

I couldn't even remember what Herbert wrote, even though I read Dune (not the 1000 follow ups though) recently. It made almost no impression on me. Maybe it's like War & Peace where it has been copied so much that the original doesn't seem that, well, original.

Not sure who Dick is.

The only overlap we seem to have is our dislike for Egan. I read a LOT of his short stories (recommended by fans of Lem btw), and it was just entirely boring - the only one I remember is about a health-check ring and two aliens deciding to die after being immortal for a while. Nothing new in there, no story. Basically Egan and Lem seem like the worst of Stephenson - intellectual theory with zero story. It's funny - I like relatively hard sci-fi, but I still insist on it not being a science/social theory book.

Random note - I don't think Clarke was mentioned yet. I read "Rendezvous with Rama" after all the Ouamuamua comparisons and it came off as pretty dry as well, though very well written.

To conclude, I am trying, and having a hard time reconciling why our preferences differ so much. I always think I am missing something, especially about Lem, but I can't tell what.

Post reply on HN