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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

#361

Post by bmacho »

felipeerias wrote: post #332
SonOfLilit wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tra…

Translations can easily be just better than the 'original'. The translator is a better artist. Has better music inside him, knows better words (or: better words exist in the target language), maybe even shifts focus/tone, although that's the job of an editor. It is not very common to reedit books and call it a translation, but those happen too.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#362

Post by pjc50 »

pieds wrote: post #104
Findecanor wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Grand Theft Auto, ... Andor Those were made in Britain by British creators.

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…

> UK garage and rave culture took off in the UK with influences from reggae, soul and R&B. Now with the help of BBC Radio 1

I think there's an important middle step here, which is stuff that wasn't "banned" but was nevertheless not on the playlist, and the pirate radio stations whose personnel gradually went mainstream. Both from the Radio Caroline era (Jonnie Walker, rock) and Kiss FM (Trevor Nelson, UK garage). Let's not forget the government's attempts to ban the rave scene.

In comics you had 2000AD and Judge Dredd, inspired by the French Metal Hurlant.

> If you really want to argue for British dystopian science fiction movies

Not movies, but TV: Doctor Who (often dystopian), Blake's 7, the Prisoner, and the little-seen but extremely prescient Doomwatch. And of course the darkest nuclear apocalypse movie, Threads. Filmed in the parts of Thatcher-era Sheffield which looked like they had already been nuked.

UK always simply had less money and a narrower set of TV/radio gatekeepers. The diversity and inventiveness is there nonetheless. So, yes, a lot of things have to get American money and licenses in order to be made.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#363

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

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.

English is not my first language, and Tolkien's prose is one of the easiest English language texts I've ever read. Even the occasional stylizations to old scaldic verse is very easy to comprehend.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#364

Post by Kon5ole »

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…

>To this day, I still re-read it every year or two, and it never loses its magic. And I can still describe what's happening on any given page although this has faded a lot.

That's interesting! I have a similar experience but for the opposite reason. I like the book and have enjoyed reading it several times, and listened to the audiobook just before the pandemic.

I know I like it and consider it to be a good book, but every time it's like I'm reading it for the first time. I can only remember thew "mood" so to speak, nothing about when, where, who, what. Even now, just 5 years after the last time.

I think it is related to Gibson's prose, but I remember Pattern Recognition quite well despite having read that only once.

Neuromancer is just a complete blank, except I know I like it. Wonder if anyone else has had a similar experience with a book?

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#365

Post by staticman2 »

EdwardCoffin wrote: post #223
leoc wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

To the best of my knowledge Gibson has never talked about Tron being an influence. He'd already described cyberspace in his short story Burning Chrome before Tron came out. He has sometimes talked about Blade Runner and worrying when it came out that people would think his stuff was derivative of it (it wasn't), and then said he eventually got to talk with Ridley Scott about it, and it turns out both of them had simi…

Gibson tweeted about Tron a while back and said this which I had interpreted as suggesting an infuuence:

"Tron nostalgia: When I was writing Neuromancer, that was the bleeding-edge digital aesthetic. Those sparse green lines! Pong, meet Case."

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#366

Post by sevensor »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #319
sevensor wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think in Asimov, the real protagonist is always an idea, not a character. You can see this play out in the Foundation books; it’s especially clear in the Mule stories. The Foundation is one idea, the Mule is another, and they stand in opposition.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#367

Post by staticman2 »

pja wrote: post #279
KennyBlanken wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

IIRC Switch was originally conceived as having one gender in the outside "real" world but another when incarnated in the Matrix (where your own self body image defines you). Hence their name - they switched. This was all dropped at some point - the only surviving relic being the name of the character.

You're right about Switch but the other context is one of the Matrix directors said the original idea for The Matrix was a trans metaphor.

Somehow this became "the Matrix is a trans metaphor" to people with poor media literacy skills.

There was also an unfinished plot thread in The Matrix Online that a woman who emerged from a coma at the same time Neo died may or may not be a reincarnated Neo. This story setup was never concluded or followed up on.

"Fans were quick to note that "Sarah Edmontons" is an anagram for "Thomas Anderson," leading many players to believe Neo may have been reborn as Sarah after dying."

https://www.cbr.com/the-matrix-resurrections-online-female-n...

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#368

Post by daremon »

Kon5ole wrote: post #364
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…

>To this day, I still re-read it every year or two, and it never loses its magic. And I can still describe what's happening on any given page although this has faded a lot. That's interesting! I have a similar experience but for the opposite reason. I like the book and have enjoyed reading it several times, and listened to the audiobook just before the pandemic. I know I like it and consider it to be a good book, but…

It gets better: I could not finish Pattern Recognition, it was a struggle and I cannot remember anything from it!

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#370

Post by archermarks »

throwaway328 wrote: post #322
archermarks wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ursula K Leguin, 100%. The Dispossessed is about an anarchist society. Might also check out Kim Stanley Robinson and Kameron Hurley.

The Dispossessed was great! I wanted to read something by Ursula K. Le Guin for ages, and then happened to be staying in a friend's house where that book happened to be on a bookshelf. So I'd the happy experience of just giving it a go, knowing nothing. And it was very good. Hadn't heard of either of the other two authors though - thank you for sharing!

I'd recommend The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley. It's sort of a response to Starship Troopers
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