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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

#331

Post by mjevans »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #256
fragmede wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tech broke a LOT and was HUGE back then. Think of it more in terms of value out of the utility. It was valuable enough to do it even with that cost.

Luckily tech improved a lot, so now many more things are possible for much less capitol.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#332

Post by felipeerias »

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…

Translations are a very subjective matter because the emotional punch of a story is far greater when it is speaking to you in your mother tongue.

Shakespeare is perhaps impossible to translate properly to Spanish, just like Don Quijote to English, and yet we keep doing it because even the small glimpse afforded by the translation gives you an idea of the greatness behind it.

Funnily, I’ve always found the Spanish translation of the Lord of the Rings significantly more readable than the original, perhaps because Tolkien went out of his way to write in an old form of English that is a bit too distant for me. Or maybe it is because I read the story in my youth and re-reading it is a way to recapture some of the wonder that I felt then.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#333

Post by Barrin92 »

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…

>as exhausting to read as Neuromancer

the exhaustion is the point. Gibson is great because he turned the essence of the genre, media oversaturation, into a prose style. Cyberpunk is all about everything being in your face. Things are flashing by, too fast, too dense, you're disoriented, etc.

You aren't supposed to understand or put every term under a microscope, you should feel as disoriented as the characters. One of the strongest aspects of the book is how successful he is at making you feel as if you're hooked into something running on 120% speed.

Not unlike Gene Wolfe in the Book of the New Sun, where Wolfe recombines words and invents language as the conceit is that the narrator is translating from a future work into contemporary English, having to make use of words that don't yet exist. You're not supposed to grab the dictionary and try to figure out what each term means, you're supposed to take it in as you go on.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#334

Post by mjevans »

Espressosaurus wrote: post #168
JKCalhoun wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just my opinion, but neither were .. revelatory for me. They were both just okay. I'm not really an avid reader though.

If you read Snow Crash before the age of 25 it's revelatory. If you read it after 25 it's laughably on-the-nose. In highschool it was the greatest book I ever read. Some books require the reader to be in a particular place in their lives.

I was lucky enough to have it as part of my college literature course. I had a choice of Greek classics or SciFi and, though I'm missing a TON of Greek classic context these days I do not regret reading ANY of the scifi books! IMO it's a pity I couldn't take both!

There's a lot of content in the book that reads differently years later. It's extremely easy to criticize outside of the situations present in the book.

Fiction is a good a place to consider alternate worlds, situations outside of the norm, and people with circumstances you'll never (or hope to never) encounter yourself. That makes it a great place to refine morals and reach a deeper understanding of why things might be good or bad.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#335

Post by burkaman »

DrewADesign wrote: post #210
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…

The heavily technical stuff is the reason that hard sci fi isn’t popular. Technically-minded people, even if they don’t get the specifics, are comfortable enough with technical stuff that it’s essentially decoration, and can probably intuit some things out if it through context. But non-technical people can’t just ignore what looks like a frustratingly opaque wall of gibberish, not realizing if any of it is crucial f…

Hard sci-fi can definitely be popular, The Martian and The Three-Body Problem are two examples I can immediately think of. I think the Arrival and Contact movies would also count (not sure if the books were considered popular before their film adaptations came out). There is usually a way to avoid most of the "opaque wall of gibberish" so that there is just enough for a technical-minded reader to tell that the author has put some thought into it and the science makes sense, but still little enough that a non-technical reader can enjoy the story without having to care about the scientific worldbuilding.

I think Lord of the Rings might be a good analogy. LotR is sort of "hard fantasy" in that Tolkien put a ludicrous amount of work into building an internally consistent world, as you can tell by The Silmarillion, but that book is not enjoyable to read (in my opinion). Part of the reason LotR is good is that he took out enough of the walls of text to make it fun to read. A good hard sci-fi author might have a Silmarillion-level of knowledge about their own book's setting, but be able to leave almost all of that out of the final product.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#336

Post by throw4847285 »

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…

I read an interview in the back of one of the volumes of Gundam: Origin where original series creators Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and Yoshiyuki Tomino reflected on their history in the student protest movement of the 1960s. It was a fascinating read because I didn't know anything about the Japanese New Left, and all of a sudden it made Gundam click for me in a way that it hadn't before.

It also made me realize that my knowledge of Japanese history and culture was extremely limited, but because I consumed a lot of Japanese media I vastly overstated my own knowledge. These days I try not to make sweeping statements comparing our respective countries.

I would suggest you think about what you don't know.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#337

Post by gessha »

unsigner wrote: post #305
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?)

The Bulgarian translation I read was a valiant effort by a guy who ran the Bulgarian "science fiction and fantasy BBS". (Yes, that kind of BBS, with the dial-up modems, XMODEM/YMODEM/ZMODEM etc.) (Yes, it was mostly for pirating books in the form of badly OCR-ed TXT files, and occasionally discussing them.) Apparently at some point he decided he needs to bring Gibson to the non-English speaking part of the population…

Is there a place that has stories about Bulgarian BBS?

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#338

Post by bigger_cheese »

anton-c wrote: post #91

Necromancer was cool. Never managed to get through the other cyberpunk classic Snowcrash though. Did I get the right book? Pizza delivery?

I think Snow Crash is an interesting book but I can see how people could be turned off by it. It kind of straddles a weird line where parts of it almost read like parody or an attempt to troll the audience but at the same time it explores serious concepts.

It kind of screams at you "look how absurd this is" but then plays it straight and explores the ideas seriously.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#339

Post by emmelaich »

als0 wrote: post #12

Most interesting news: https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/news/2024/02/apple-tv-announces-...

I really hope they do it well. Some of the things that were new in Neuromancer are tropes these days. e.g. the payphone ringing, in the Matrix and more relevantly in Person of Interest.

It's going to be very hard to navigate between faithfulness to the book and still have it feel fresh.

That and inherent difficulty of taking Gibson's prose to the screen. Maybe it will be by voiceover.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#340

Post by mr_toad »

anthk wrote: post #222
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…

Ahem: https://www.gregegan.net/

Greg Eagan’s SF is so hard it makes ‘hard’ SF feel like soap bubbles.
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