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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

#81

Post by makeitdouble »

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…

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

I would put Akira in that bucket, but I see your point.

The way counter-culture is brought into mainstream is a lot more strategic in Japan, and the reader is expecting to do more deciphering work than in Blade Runner for instance.

E.g. Final Fantasy is overtly about fighting a Zaibatsu like corporate overlord that's depleting the vital resources of an environment. But what's promoted is gun-swords, spiky hairs and cute or sexy fighters.

Same way Reiji Matsumoto's Galaxy Express 999 is a 113 episodes long dissing of the corporate culture but it's all behind psychedelic tropes.

Those are arguably mainstream, given the money,an-hours and corporate weight invested in them and the general reception.

But none of them will put the main message up-front as much as Hunger Games would for instance, there is always a veil of flashiness that needs to be peeled to get to the substance.

(to note, SF live action is a lot harder to fund in Japan. I'd attribute that to the existence of anime which is so much more cost effective. With the budget for a live action Gundam you could make three TV series)

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#82

Post by atombender »

simpaticoder wrote: post #41

Glad I'm not the only one just getting around to reading Neuromancer in 2025! The shocking thing about the story is how very few screens there are in the world, and how ungrounded "cyberspace" is in physics. Cyberspace's mechanics are vague, and in fact are inconsistent with the other extent communication technologies. e.g. Case never seems to worry about getting a signal for his deck, and yet does worry about gettin…

> And IIRC Gibson famously doesn't use computers IRL

No, he famously didn't own a computer when he wrote Neuromancer.

“I wrote Neuromancer on a manual portable typewriter and about half of Count Zero on the same machine. Then it broke, in a way that was more or less irreparable. Bruce Sterling called me shortly thereafter and said, ‘This changes everything!’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘My Dad gave me his Apple II. You have to get one of these things!’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Automation—it automates the process of writing!’ I’ve never gone back.” [1]

[1] https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6089/the-art-of-fi...

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#83

Post by nottorp »

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…

It's probably not the jargon but the writing style. Gibson is one of the few sf/fantasy writers that doesn't feel the need to be easy to follow. Breath of fresh air if you ask me.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#84

Post by nottorp »

mnky9800n wrote: post #37
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that your article? I'm afraid I think that it badly misses the mark. Literary cyberpunk is simple; it is nothing more or less than near-future crime fiction where technology (usually speculative) is central to the plot. That's the common thread; writing style, setting characteristics, etc., are diverse. Now I know that some people are going to say, "but what of social structures and evil corporations?!" Look no fu…

Gibson isn’t the only person writing cyberpunk although he definitely gets most of the credit in internet forums. Tbh I feel like he only really has one story to tell which is about some manic pixie cyberpunk dream girl who is more daria than Elizabethtown existing alongside dudes doing things. His contribution is more about how he crafts the visuals from words like >> In the non-space of the matrix, the interior of…

Why not read both PKD and Gibson? Better use of your time than the average TV series.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#85

Post by qiine »

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…

fascinating

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#86

Post by Hoasi »

pjc50 wrote: post #60
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…

I read it in the 90s and found the opposite experience: it's evocative. It doesn't describe things, instead it gives hints and lets your imagination build its own answers.

Exactly. If anything, Gibson's evocative style reminded me of the Strugatsky brothers; while the story is different, you get this sense of looming despair all through the book.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#87

Post by Barrin92 »

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…

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

"Mainstream counter-culture" is certainly a funny turn of phrase. That's largely the problem with it, there's a great book, The Rebel Sell[1], about how American counter-culture isn't the opposite, but the actual driver of American commercial culture. The Hunger Games is not authentically creating any kind of subversive message, to be a Hunger Games rebel is mainstream. Baudrillard, who is featured in the Matrix, used to remark that the the Matrix is the kind of movie the matrix would make to think you've won. The Wachowskis who are very American did not understand S&S.

Japan's counter culture has always been much more serious because it's always been much less interested in spectacle. There's very few things that stand out as much as Oshii's Patlabor II when it comes to genuine criticism of, in that case, the role of Japan during the cold war and the ways peace tends to be fake in many ways.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rebel_Sell

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#88

Post by anton-c »

videogreg93 wrote: post #79
gsf_emergency_2 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah.. Japanese media in general has poorer "production values", but they work very hard to draw (as accurately as possible) from global source, that's reflected in their mind boggling diversity. The less strange stuff get to inspire American versions. It also seems that you have not asked any LLMs before posting this.. GTA "equivalent": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuza_(franchise)

I really don't think Yakuza games are anything like GTA besides "being in a city". Yakuza has none of the sandbox elements like GTA, the city is more like an elaborate menu to go from mission to mission/side quest/activity.

You can't even drive in most Yakuza games! They made a bad comparison.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#89

Post by anton-c »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #77
saturneria wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 70s/80s, the jobs that were available to you were basically what your family member could "get you in". I am of that age and I remember General Motors was a great place to work at that time. My friend "got in" after high school because his father was a union boss. For me, "getting in" to General Motors was literally impossible because I had no connections. I was into 90s cyberpunk and the problem was the ideas…

What makes life so much more interesting today as compared to 50 years ago?

When's the last time you were bored? It's been ages for me. Too much going on all the time. Most people have an endless scroll one phone tap away.

I was bored all the time in the 90s and early 2000s.

I actively am trying to cut off the overstimulation though. I never used those types of phone apps but youtube and the net have endless content.

I think if you searched you'd find other articles mentioning the lack of boredom, I don't think I'm an isolated incident.

Re: Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

#90

Post by gcanyon »

xg15 wrote: post #22

> People tend to vastly overestimate what will happen in 50 years and massively underestimate what will happen in the next two. I like that we now also have "Amara's Law" [1] that makes the exact opposite point: > We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. So either that "futurist" was an idiot, or this shows that with respect to future developmen…

This jumped out at me as well. I think it's fair to say that if you aggregate all predictions, there will be those who vastly over- and under-estimate progress on any given time frame, so depending on who the authors were paying attention to, both could be correct. The interesting question is whether there is, in aggregate, a tendency to over- or under-estimate on a given time frame. My money is on Amara's Law for that.
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