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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

#251

Post by fitsumbelay »

roughly wrote: post #197
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…

Gibson is such a unique sci-fi author because his fundamental interest is fashion (he’s said this himself) - his worlds are beautiful, but completely skin deep, and he’s a master of using one word or phrase to evoke an entire world or backstory, but you scratch at what he’s written and it’s all vibes. Bruce Sterling is similar, although maybe less of a fashion native - they’re both looking at people and at trends and…

Really interesting, because his writing kinda gives you that wide-T sense, it's like the way Wu Tang rapped -- especially Raekwon, and to a lesser extend Ghostface -- where they avalanche you with all of these richly visualized and highly contrasted scenarios of this that and the other without ever go too deeply into any of them. Really does leave you awash in a lot of flavorful vibes and in 1991/1992 when I wasn't doing too much computering at all it gave me such a strong sense that sooner than later I'd be doing a lot of it

I went to one of his readings decades ago at a Borders for Pattern Recognition, I think, with no idea what he looked like at all. The first thing you notice is that he might be Buckaroo Bonzai. He speaks a little slower than most folks with a noticeable Southern drawl every few words, which I didn't expect, nor his near lifelong residency in Southern Virginia. His twitter handle as I remember it refers to the swamp he grew up near - Great Dismal. In every way his looks and history are about as antithetical to Sci fi writing as you could dream up but there you go ... genre Lord.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#252

Post by KennyBlanken »

pieds wrote: post #65
makeitdouble wrote: post #7

Overall 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…

> Neuromancer and The Matrix is from the perspective of the outsiders.

The primary difference being that in the latter, it's an allegory about being trans, written by two trans women who had not yet come out. Which makes the most superficial interpretation of the movie's themes by toxic masculine types all the more hilarious...

It's buried enough to have kept Hollywood's morality police from killing it and if memory serves they never discussed this with Reeves until well after. There still had to be concessions; I believe Switch's character was originally more androgynous or outright trans, not just a butch woman with a male partner.

> Japan never really did counter-culture as mainstream as the US does.

...what? Bosozoku (for example) has its roots in WW2 veterans who struggled to integrate back into society. Japanese manga and anime is waaaaaay more diverse and counterculture. Christ, can you imagine a comic book and cartoon in the mid/late 80's about a character who repeatedly switches genders both by accident and on purpose?

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#253

Post by jonathanlydall »

koverstreet wrote: post #164
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.

Except for Ian M. Banks, which is about spaceships :)

Most of the culture novels are around a Special Circumstances situation. The minds and other science fiction elements are largely (albeit quite richly detailed) backdrop to a human protagonist’s actions.

Despite the utopian culture, there are still very messy and complicated situations.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#254

Post by tialaramex »

gcanyon wrote: post #211
hodgesrm wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. :-)

Yeah, I was alive but I wasn't yet working in this discipline. Still though I think Gibson's work is exactly the kind of thing Lem deplores about that period of US Science Fiction. The practitioners have no idea what they're talking about, so even if they are "What if?" stories - which is the whole point of SF - their answers to the question are no better than a random man on the street. Instead of the standard good SF "Automobile => Traffic Jam" or the extraordinary "Automobile => Teenage fumblings in your dad's borrowed car" you get nonsense like Johnny Mnemonic.

I strongly prefer very hard SF, so I was never Gibson's target audience anyway, but I find it just completely misses me, I might as well be reading a bodice ripper or special forces yarn.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#255

Post by slim »

daremon wrote: post #107

I had the opposite experience with Neuromancer. I read it too many times! Sorry for the long post (translated by GPT as it was originally in Greek). In September 1993, I started my final year of high school in Greece, aiming to study Computer Science. A girl I barely knew heard I was into computers and handed me Neuromancer, the 1989 Greek edition. I still have it. I already loved science fiction, though my reading h…

I read it in 1996. and it was a t-file from a bbs. I had to sit in front of my 386sx everyday to read the text in dos edit. it took weeks. because it was in english and I was learning english at the same time. you gave me the urge to reread it now :)

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#256

Post by jonathanlydall »

fragmede wrote: post #205
KineticLensman wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'm now rereading old SF that I first read 40-to-50 years ago. I don't think I've found a single example where an SF author actually got tech right.

go back a bit further though and you'll get to Arthur c Clarke who accurately predicted geostationary communication satellites

And also a human mission to Jupiter aided by a sentient computer in the year 2001.

As I recall, his communication satellite depiction included humans living on it full time to keep it running. Also not quite how it turned out.

I have the utmost respect for him, but he was not immune to getting the future wrong like other science fiction authors.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#257

Post by rl1987 »

harimau777 wrote: post #133
makeitdouble wrote: post #7

Overall 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…

Do you know how the Japanese think of and/or talk about "Japanese Cyberpunk"; e.g. Tetsuo: The Iron Man? It's interesting to me that there is "Japanese cyberpunk" and then there is regular cyberpunk made by Japanese artists (e.g. Ghost in the Shell). Do the Japanese consider these completely separate genres? Variants of the same genre? Are most fans even aware that Westerners make the distinction?

The way I see it, works like Tetsuo is Japanese extreme cyberpunk - niche-within-a-niche kind of thing.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#258

Post by ordinaryradical »

solaire_oa wrote: post #163

> The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. > static-filled “dead channels.” I don't think Gibson was referring to static (which is bland grey and not cyberpunk at all). I think he was referring to SMPTE on a "dead channel", which is a colorful skyline reminiscent of Blade Runner. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMPTE_color_bars I agree with the author of this article that Neuromanc…

“I actually composed that first image with black and white video static of my childhood in mind, sodium silvery and almost painful, a whopping anachronism right at the very start of my career,in the imaginary future, but an invisible one, interestingly. One that revels a particular grace shared by all imaginary futures as they make their way up the timeline and into the real future where we all must go.”

You misunderstood from the first sentence. The rest of your read is similarly flawed if not worse.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#259

Post by Apocryphon »

xvilka wrote: post #39
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

An example of cyberpunk that is not dated - Hyperion Cantos[1]. It might not look like cyberpunk at the first sight but it definitely is. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos

I'd say parts of the universe and one and a half of the pilgrim's tales are cyberpunk, but a lot of it isn't tonally so.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#260

Post by Apocryphon »

keiferski wrote: post #206
roughly wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gibson is such a unique sci-fi author because his fundamental interest is fashion (he’s said this himself) - his worlds are beautiful, but completely skin deep, and he’s a master of using one word or phrase to evoke an entire world or backstory, but you scratch at what he’s written and it’s all vibes. Bruce Sterling is similar, although maybe less of a fashion native - they’re both looking at people and at trends and…

For a long time I thought I really loved the cyberpunk genre. But I kept reading story after story by different cyberpunk authors and found them mediocre and cliche at best. The closest and best I could find was J. G. Ballard, who doesn’t really qualify as cyberpunk in a strict sense. It was at that point that I realized: I’m mostly just interested in Gibson, not in whatever self-labels as in the genre.

I always wondered if Ballard is the British Philip K. Dick / Dick is the American Ballard.
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