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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

#311

Post by theodric »

Well, time to burn some karma: my wife and I listened to it in unabridged audiobook form on a drive back from Norway to the Netherlands about 10 years ago, and at the end we both agreed we weren't really sure what had happened. It seemed to meander quite a lot and got lost in its own sauce.

I understand that it's a seminal work for the cyberpunk genre, and there are certainly cool vibes scattered around it, but I don't really see a cohesive whole. Blade Runner similarly was a beautiful screensaver during which I failed to observe any significance plot. Now Snow Crash, that's another matter entirely. Great book. Compelling characters.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#312

Post by GMoromisato »

For me, reading sci-fi in the 80s and 90s, my pantheon was (in no particular order):

Philip K. Dick (Man in the High Castle)

William Gibson (Neuromancer)

Neil Stephenson (Diamond Age)

Vernor Vinge (Across Realtime)

Greg Egan (Permutation City)

Robert Reed (Sister Alice)

John Varley (Eight Worlds series)

I'm sure every generation has its pantheon--I wonder what it is for Millennials and Gen Z.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#313

Post by daremon »

ilamont wrote: post #139
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…

Wow. What a great story. An in translation, no less. The Greek translator must have been very talented. (Kind of curious now ... were the other translated editions in non-English languages as powerful? Do readers of science fiction in other languages seek out works by specific translators or publishers known to have great translations?)

He really tried IMO. Actually I wrote this story to him, the translator of the Greek edition when I happened to find him on Facebook. He told me he felt he didn't do justice to the original work and always felt a bit bad.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#314

Post by daremon »

grujicd wrote: post #247
chrisweekly wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"translated by GPT"

I believe parent was talking about translated book, not about the comment.

Yes exactly, I had this story written in Greek and used GPT to translate it. The Greek edition I read was from 1989.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#315

Post by daremon »

silenced_trope wrote: post #242
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…

Nice! Did you read the rest of the Sprawl Trilogy too? What do you think of the other books?

Yes I read them and I loved them. Not the same effect of course, as Gibson's futuristic world was already described, but good nonetheless.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#316

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

SonOfLilit wrote: post #306
ilamont wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. What a great story. An in translation, no less. The Greek translator must have been very talented. (Kind of curious now ... were the other translated editions in non-English languages as powerful? Do readers of science fiction in other languages seek out works by specific translators or publishers known to have great translations?)

Russian culture considers translated (I think) Shakespeare to surpass the original. We Israelis also had one of our more famous poets (Alterman) translate some Shakespeare but I'm not aware of the translation being considered a masterpiece on its own (personally it felt too archaic to appreciate). We have two translations of Lord of the Rings (Tolkien fans being one of the more picky bunches of book geeks here, I'll…

> Russian culture considers translated (I think) Shakespeare to surpass the original.

Can't say about Shakespeare, there are many translations, and in my eyes all of them lack something that the original has, but Russian translations of such writers as O'Henry, F.S. Fitzgerald and Jack London have some irresistible charm and familiarity that is completely absent in original English texts.

I attribute it to censorship: many talented writers couldn't actually write because of it in soviet times, and to provide for themselves they took jobs as translators.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#317

Post by makeitdouble »

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?

> Tetsuo: The Iron Man

It's not actually framed as cyberpunk: Shinya Tsukamoto positionned it as "human size kaiju".

On the perception...I think its fans are mostly outside of Japan, and it was basically reversed imported. Tsukamoto sent it to foreign film festivals first, and only brought it to domestic theaters after it won at the Rome festival. Even now in interviews it's only brought back as it's directorial debut, and a stepping stone for getting money for bigger movies.

I have the feeling the whole notion of mixing human and technology just doesn't resonate as much in a country that is way more technology friendly and doesn't see robots as much as a threat than in the west.

PS: the "action hero" genre is basically humans transforming into machines, that speaks to the wide acceptance of the concept.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#318

Post by daremon »

ilamont wrote: post #139
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…

Wow. What a great story. An in translation, no less. The Greek translator must have been very talented. (Kind of curious now ... were the other translated editions in non-English languages as powerful? Do readers of science fiction in other languages seek out works by specific translators or publishers known to have great translations?)

Generally I don't like translations. After the Internet became a thing and Amazon started shipping to Greece (probably after 2000) I never read Greek translations of English literature again.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#319

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

sevensor wrote: post #297
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…

As I’m sure you know, Gibson himself briefly worked as a fashion model. Unlike most male authors and most sci-fi authors, and especially unlike most male sci-fi authors, he describes what people are wearing with great precision and creativity. For example, Molly’s first appearance in Johnny Mnemonic has her “wearing leather jeans the color of dried blood.” I wanted to dig up a contrasting quote from Asimov, so I went…

I always felt that Asimov had good imagination and ideas, and could craft the plot well, but his actual writing skills were rather weak. He could get me curious, but I never felt any emotions when I read his books.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#320

Post by throwaway328 »

magic_hamster wrote: post #55
cherryteastain wrote: post #53

> 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…

Comparing anyone to Tolkien is massively unfair. Tolkien was a seasoned linguist and he worked on LotR for about a decade. It is going to be extremely hard to match these expectations for other authors.

There are worlds of difference between analysing the syntax and semantics of languages in a structured and scientific way, and writing "good" prose (as subjective as that is).

I guess you're just a huge fan of Tolkien?

In which case, have you read https://archive.is/20241231024916/https://www.newyorker.com/... in which Michael Moorcock calls Tokein's work:

"...a pernicious confirmation of the values of a morally bankrupt middle class".

Which I'm not saying should change your opinion on anything, I just find it's always a good exercise to find the juiciest criticism of one's darlings.

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