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Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

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Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#211

Post by gcanyon »

hodgesrm wrote: post #122
mingus88 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prose is the art. In Blade Runner, the world is built with dense backdrops of an alien city, people walking around in strange clothes, etc. All that is imprinted on you without a single line of dialogue. With Gibson, all that world building happens with prose. It reads like poetry sometimes where what is written implies a half dozen connections to things never mentioned directly. Unpacking what lies beneath the s…

This. I recall an interview with Gibson where he said that he hung out in watering holes frequented by IT folks. He spent a lot of time picking up the atmosphere and cadence of the language, which he imitated in his works.

I was alive at that time and working in tech. That paragraph is not a good imitation of the atmosphere and cadence of the language. :-)

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#212

Post by gcanyon »

brianjlogan wrote: post #100
gcanyon wrote: post #94

It's a funny coincidence, I've never read Neuromancer, and talking with a friend of mine three days ago he said, "I thought we read Neuromancer at the same time and discussed it? You should really read it now!" I have to say, that quoted paragraph in the article is not enticing me. I'm tempted to just read the wikipedia article and maybe clarify a few things with ChatGPT and call it a day. If I'm going to work that h…

Honestly though that paragraph does have meaning to it. Simstim is a thing. Is it a quite adventurous description of it? You may not "fully" get the description at times. However I never read it and went "This is garbage." In the way that I couldn't keep reading Altered Carbon because the writing was extremely grating to me.

I didn't say it doesn't have meaning. I'm saying that I prefer simple language around complex topics, rather than the other way around. As one example, the discussion of "quality" in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance -- the language isn't difficult or opaque, but that's a concept that has stuck with me since I first read it in the '80s.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#213

Post by layer8 »

anton-c wrote: post #89
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes life so much more interesting today as compared to 50 years ago?

When's the last time you were bored? It's been ages for me. Too much going on all the time. Most people have an endless scroll one phone tap away. I was bored all the time in the 90s and early 2000s. I actively am trying to cut off the overstimulation though. I never used those types of phone apps but youtube and the net have endless content. I think if you searched you'd find other articles mentioning the lack of bo…

Not being bored doesn’t mean you’re leading an interesting life.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#214

Post by gcanyon »

mingus88 wrote: post #101
gcanyon wrote: post #94

It's a funny coincidence, I've never read Neuromancer, and talking with a friend of mine three days ago he said, "I thought we read Neuromancer at the same time and discussed it? You should really read it now!" I have to say, that quoted paragraph in the article is not enticing me. I'm tempted to just read the wikipedia article and maybe clarify a few things with ChatGPT and call it a day. If I'm going to work that h…

The prose is the art. In Blade Runner, the world is built with dense backdrops of an alien city, people walking around in strange clothes, etc. All that is imprinted on you without a single line of dialogue. With Gibson, all that world building happens with prose. It reads like poetry sometimes where what is written implies a half dozen connections to things never mentioned directly. Unpacking what lies beneath the s…

> The prose is the art

I get that, I'm just expressing my preference for ideas over writing style.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#215

Post by xyzsparetimexyz »

keiferski wrote: post #190
xyzsparetimexyz wrote: post #180

I'm a big fan of the aspects of the Sprawl world that weren't personally copied as much - the fuller domes over NYC and (this is surprisingly prominent in the book and a significant plot point) all the personal hologram tech. It's personally very boring to read about how the book and technology is dated blah blah. The vibes still feel incredibly fresh to me and that's much more important. A lot of modern books (espec…

Agreed, I re-read the book probably once a year and almost inevitably stop after the first hundred pages or so. The vibes of the future Chiba / Sprawl are what really appeal to me, not so much the VR world or the space station sci-fi stuff.

Chiba feels a little cliche now in some regards but the Sprawl section rules and is probably my favorite but. But the space station is also pretty neat and and I'm a big fan of the matrix/VR stuff AS LONG AS you recognize that it's basically a tech induced-hallucination/drug trip where you enter some shared alternative reality that only has a very tentative relationship with 1s and 0s, NOT some sort of VR headset thing.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#216

Post by ahartmetz »

navane wrote: post #47
amarcheschi wrote: post #2

If you're interested in reading about cyberpunk and why today it feels "dated" - or at least to me, how it didn't manage to reinvent itself and remains crystallized in time -, there's a wonderful article here: https://forums.insertcredit.com/t/what-was-cyberpunk-in-memo... Be advised it's quite long

It's because punk died, which is half of cyberpunk. All the cyber is corporate now. We live in cyber corp. We live in the part that Gibson found, rightfully, totally uninteresting to write about.

I don't know about that. There are very powerful corporations in Neuromancer, more like governments than corporations. They (or powerful people inside / owning them) largely drive the action in Neuromancer.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#217

Post by pjc50 »

jfengel wrote: post #140
macleginn wrote: post #50

One 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…

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.

Yes. Neuromancer is actually about drug addiction in the same way as PKD's work is, with the cyberspace being a psychedelic non physical drug. It is also about cybernetics as systems of control; you can trace the machinery of each character being driven by and struggling against external forces of control. Case, Molly, Armitage, and ultimately the AI.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#218

Post by TeaBrain »

saturneria wrote: post #70
keiferski wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cyberpunk was essentially a sub-type of counterculture, and counterculture itself has pretty much been dead for a couple decades now. When the hackers are primarily interested in VC funds, the cryptocurrency ethos overtaken by the finance industry, and the goal of every artist to “make it” as a creator, there’s basically no room for culture that explicitly wants to operate outside the system. You could probably tie t…

In the 70s/80s, the jobs that were available to you were basically what your family member could "get you in". I am of that age and I remember General Motors was a great place to work at that time. My friend "got in" after high school because his father was a union boss. For me, "getting in" to General Motors was literally impossible because I had no connections. I was into 90s cyberpunk and the problem was the ideas…

>In the 70s/80s, the jobs that were available to you were basically what your family member could "get you in"

Perhaps this may have been true for those who didn't have a university degree. Otherwise, this experience doesn't line up with anyone in my family.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#219

Post by layer8 »

mindcrime wrote: post #42

Interesting article. As somebody who is an unapologetic, raging Neuromancer fan, it's always fun to read about someone experiencing the book for the first time. The one nitpick I have about the article is just this: But even by 1984, dead channels were a thing of the past: 24-hour news had been around since 1980, and MTV had been alive and kicking since 1981 OK, while cable and 24-hour news were indeed around by 1984…

The only thing to be confused about is that the sky never looks anything like TV static (other than maybe in a snow storm, but even then not really).

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#220

Post by leoc »

pjc50 wrote: post #217
jfengel wrote: post #140

Earlier 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.

Yes. Neuromancer is actually about drug addiction in the same way as PKD's work is, with the cyberspace being a psychedelic non physical drug. It is also about cybernetics as systems of control; you can trace the machinery of each character being driven by and struggling against external forces of control. Case, Molly, Armitage, and ultimately the AI.

Cyberspace in Neuromancer is certainly not not psychedelic, but it’s also clearly to a large extent based on Tron .
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