Any suggestions for sci-fi books everyone should read in 2025?
Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
151–160 of 427 posts
Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find that very believable, since Neuromancer isn't at all about computers. The computers involved are little different from what you might have seen on Star Trek. They are story engines -- except for the ones that are really just people. This is not a negative. Sci fi is always about people.
> Sci fi is always about people. I’ve heard it said (I’m sure someone can find the exact quote) that the best scifi is written when the author takes the world as it is, changes one thing, and extrapolates to the future.
I cant find the quote either but I think it was Asimov
Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
The UK certainly have had its own counterculture. In some ways more than the US. That still doesn't take away from the franchises being published (and in parts made) by US companies with US culture in them. The UK had an influence in punk music. But it was also banned by the BBC and bands were at times left to tour elsewhere. Japanese companies created most of the affordable electronic instruments. Yet, electronic mu…
So… your argument is that it’s not counterculture unless it’s mainstream culture? And that one should only credit derivative works once they become mainstream, rather than the original inspiring works because they were too obscure? I don’t think anyone is trying to “gotcha” you. You’ve just got a bad take.
I think it is actually pretty difficult to look at countries and say which ones have successful countercultures. I mean to some extent if a counterculture is successful it becomes not a counterculture, just part of the mainstream culture. On the other hand, a maximally out-of-mainstream counterculture is a totally unknown thing that we’ve never heard of as outsiders.
Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
#154Overall an interesting read. To go straight to the nitpicks: > The Matrix Trilogy, Ghost in the Shell, [...]. Except Gibson did it first. Ghost in the Shell started publication around 1989, but it's author was writing cyberpunk in 1985 (Appleseed), with already many of the themes approached in it. 1985 is a tad later than Gibson's Neuromamcer, but given the timeline to start a series with the level of details Masamun…
Gibson was obviously very inspired by Japan. The Matrix was also in part directly inspired by Ghost in the Shell, even creating The Animatrix at the same time. But Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner was told from the inside. It is about the authorities chasing down rouge elements. Neuromancer and The Matrix is from the perspective of the outsiders. Like someone else said in the comments here, cyberpunk is countercul…
[deleted]
Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
#155Overall an interesting read. To go straight to the nitpicks: > The Matrix Trilogy, Ghost in the Shell, [...]. Except Gibson did it first. Ghost in the Shell started publication around 1989, but it's author was writing cyberpunk in 1985 (Appleseed), with already many of the themes approached in it. 1985 is a tad later than Gibson's Neuromamcer, but given the timeline to start a series with the level of details Masamun…
Gibson was obviously very inspired by Japan. The Matrix was also in part directly inspired by Ghost in the Shell, even creating The Animatrix at the same time. But Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner was told from the inside. It is about the authorities chasing down rouge elements. Neuromancer and The Matrix is from the perspective of the outsiders. Like someone else said in the comments here, cyberpunk is countercul…
Fascinating how people can make "counterculture" into a contest between nation-states.
Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
#156I don't understand the success of "a scanner darkly", I had hard time to finish it so boring it was. There is almost not a story in it.
Maybe the initial setup in interesting, but then it is like a boring action less long blabla about it.
Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
#157> But even by 1984, dead channels were a thing of the past: 24-hour news had been around since 1980
My neighborhood didn't get wired for cable until 1988 and my family never had it until 1997. We had four stations and then a fifth when Fox started. It was pretty normal for people to experience dead channels if you didn't live in a city where CATV had been deployed. Even then you could tune to unused channels when the cable tuner was too primitive to maintain an active list or you miskeyed a number on a remote.
Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
#158One thing that I found remarkable about Gibson is how a-technical he was at the time: "When I wrote Neuromancer, I didn't know that computers had disc drives. Until last Christmas, I'd never had a computer; I couldn't afford one. When people started talking about them, I'd go to sleep. Then I went out and bought an Apple II on sale, took it home, set it up, and it started making this horrible sound like a farting toa…
My ignorance had allowed me to romanticize it Clearly, this helps make works of sci Fi/speculative fiction/cyberpunk and related genres relevant far into the future. If you try to extrapolate current tech 50 years into the future, you'll probably get it wrong and people reading your books during the time it's set in will think it quaint. When you have to invent new future tech, it still feels mysterious and interesti…
The trick is to invent future tech that feels organic, cohesive, and believable, and not just whatever happens to be needed for the story you’re trying to tell.
Alastair Reynolds is a modern master of this, in my opinion, with a lot of interconnected far-future “stuff” that still basically hangs together.
Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
#159> I found that Gibson’s prose felt almost identical to the placeholder Lorem Gibson text I had used—so dense with jargon and terminology that my mind kept slipping off the sentences. This is why, despite being great conceptually and story-wise, ultimately I did not like Neuromancer. Plenty of other novels have tons of in universe jargon but don't feel as exhausting to read as Neuromancer. For instance, Tolkien invent…
It's probably not the jargon but the writing style. Gibson is one of the few sf/fantasy writers that doesn't feel the need to be easy to follow. Breath of fresh air if you ask me.
Rewrite the sentence "William Gibson never met and adjective he didn't like" in the style of William Gibson:
"It was as if adjectives flocked to him—neon, recursive, glinting things—clinging like wet chrome to every noun he touched."
Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
#160One thing that I found remarkable about Gibson is how a-technical he was at the time: "When I wrote Neuromancer, I didn't know that computers had disc drives. Until last Christmas, I'd never had a computer; I couldn't afford one. When people started talking about them, I'd go to sleep. Then I went out and bought an Apple II on sale, took it home, set it up, and it started making this horrible sound like a farting toa…
Just goes to show, if you want to write romantically about something, it’s best to have little or no idea what you’re talking about, so that your imagination can take over. Shouldn’t be too hard for some people on hackernews, they do it everyday!
Zing!