I really liked the idea of a template text generator based on Gibson's words, so I made it: https://terrakok.github.io/loremgibson/
Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
401–410 of 427 posts
Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
#402I 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…
Great story! I also read Neuromancer for the first time in Greek translation (Αίολος), around 1995, knowing nothing about the book otherwise. It was a blind buy in a bookstore solely because I liked the cover and the short synopsis on the back. It was a book that changed my life. I remember being drenched in sweat when I finished it, and I immediately re-read it without a break. I was already at age 14 hopelessly hooked on computers, but Neuromancer completely rewired how I thought about technology (it was the first book I came across that put forth a non-anthropocentric point of view, with Technology being presented as both an addictive drug and a force in itself, bringing about its own teleology).
That book was the main impetus for me connecting to the Internet, installing Linux and getting involved with the European hacking underground of the mid to late 90s. I also periodically re-read it (now in English): the prose still seems razor-sharp and the divergent feelings are still being evoked. Plus, it's an insanely hyperstitional book: one gets the feeling that Gibson (whose non-Sprawl work pales in comparison and who has never again reached these heights) didn't just write a heist-story filled with countercultural sensibilities but channeled something greater, something that has been intricately involved with how the world we experience has evolved.
Looking back on those days, I now wish I'd read it in English for the first time. The Greek translation is not bad but it feels kind of archaic and doesn't do justice to the brilliance of Gibson's dystopian vision.
Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
#403Earlier 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…
I only read Shakespeare in the original Klingon
I only read Shakespeare in C:
Ox2b | ~0x2BRe: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
#404Of all the cyberpunk authors, Gibson, while one of the first, is probably the least interesting. Stephenson and Sterling are better writers and explore more complex ideas. Gibson has the occasional shadow of an idea that he explores with a few one dimensional characters. That said, I liked "Virtual Light". Doctorow's late cyberpunk novels like "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" are also very good.
comparing stephenson and gibson is interesting - gibson basically does no story-based exposition in a lot of his work, and stephenson can't help but dig into the nitty gritty details that support the world-building and story development to an almost obnoxious (but informative!) degree. i used to really enjoy Stephenson (especially having not gone to college- i feel like i was exposed to some interesting ideas through…
Stephenson's pre-cyberpunk first novel, Zodiac, is about an eco-warrior uncovering a chemical company pollution scheme. In Diamond Age, he talks about an air pollution crisis caused by dead nanobot swarms. From what I remember, most of his anti-corporate messaging was strongly tied to pollution but I don't even see that popping up in his later novels and I never really thought of anti-corporatism as a recuring Stephenson theme.
Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
#405Neuromancer changed my life (sounds like many others responding here). But more than that, it was the first step in William Gibson becoming my favorite author. I can't tell you the number of times I've read Neuromancer; right now I'm almost finished with my umpteenth re-read of the Blue Ant trilogy; I fear another reread of the rest of his books is not far behind.
Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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!
Ah, this pains me, because I think PR is his best book!
Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
#407[dead]
Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
#408One 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…
I don't think there's anything skin deep about Gibson. The words are in a certain style that splits a room, but the worldview, statements about the human condition, about existing in a world where power has become arbitrary an capricious? Never more relevant.
What you're missing in his writing is plausible sci-fi stuff: he doesn't care about the details of how biotech or AI will become tools of oppression, he just knows they will.
Stephenson is a good writer too, but he's pandering to an audience: the technical details are fleshed out and the good guys win an unambiguous victory via the virtues of being a nerd.
I'd like to live in Stephenson's world, but that one is made up.
Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Three Body Problem is not even remotely close to hard sci-fi. The whole notion of "sophons" is ridiculous, for example, and the more the author tries to explain how it works, the more nonsense it ends up being.
If you want another example of actual hard sci-fi, I would suggest Lem's Tales of Pirx the Pilot. To give an example, I remember it being pretty much the first sci fi book that not only pointed out that laser beams are invisible in vacuum, but actually made it a major plot point of one of the stories.
Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
Socialism is the transition stage where collective ownership of the means of production, where the working class gains state power from the capitalist class. Communism is a later stage of such abundance that money, classes and state power become redundant and are abolished. The Culture is an imagining of the latter, where many means of production become people. They thus become workers that can labour for each other…
My reading of the Culture novels is that few people produce anything at all, or do any work or labour, and nearly every is produced by the ships, orbitals, and the Minds that control them. It’s not clear who exactly decides what gets produced, but decision making seems to be largely controlled by the Minds.
I don't remember which book it was in, exactly, but there is a conversation at one point with a Culture guy who is waiting tables, including cleaning them. He explains that a lot of humans actually do this kind of stuff, or, say, constructing spaceships, as a background from their "real" job-hobby (which is usually research or art) simply because completing things makes them happier, while cheerfully acknowledging that none of human labor in Culture is meaningful in the sense that it couldn't be done better and faster by machines. But it's still meaningful in a sense of giving people meaning.