Customer Reviews

Neuromancer

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Adapted from ISawLightningFall.blogspot.com

The first time I tried to read Neuromancer, I stopped around page 25.

I was about 15 years old and I'd heard it was a classic, a must-read from 1984. So I picked it up and I plowed through the first chapter, scratching my head the whole time. Then I shoved it onto my bookshelf, where it was quickly forgotten. It was a dense, multilayered read, requiring more effort than a hormone-addled adolescent wanted to give. But few years later, I pulled the book down and gave it another chance. This time, William Gibson's dystopic rabbit hole swallowed me whole.

Neuromancer is basically a futuristic crime caper. The main character is Case, a burnt-out hacker, a cyberthief. When the book opens, a disgruntled employer has irrevocably destroyed parts of his nervous system with a mycotoxin, meaning he can't jack into the matrix, an abstract representation of earth's computer network. Then he receives a suspiciously sweet offer: A mysterious employer will fix him up if he'll sign on for a special job. He cautiously agrees and finds himself joined by a schizophrenic ex-Special Forces colonel; a perverse performance artist who wrecks havoc with his holographic imaginings; a long-dead mentor whose personality has been encoded as a ROM construct; and a nubile mercenary with silver lenses implanted over her eyes, retractable razors beneath her fingernails and one heckuva chip on her shoulder. Case soon learns that the target he's supposed to crack and his employer and are one and the same -- an artificial intelligence named Wintermute.

Unlike most crime thrillers and many works of speculative fiction, Neuromancer is interested in a whole lot more that plot development. Gibson famously coined the word "cyberspace" and he imagines a world where continents are ruled more by corporations and crime syndicates than nations, where cultural trends both ancient and modern dwell side by side, where high-tech and biotech miracles are as ordinary as air. On one page you'll find a discussion of nerve splicing, on another a description of an open-air market in Istanbul. An African sailor with tribal scars on his face might meet a Japanese corporate drone implanted with microprocessors, the better to measure the mutagen in his bloodstream. When he's not plumbing the future, Gibson dips into weighty themes such as the nature of love, what drives people toward self-destruction and mind/body dualism. It's a rich, heady blend.

That complexity translates over to the novel's prose style, which is why I suspect my first effort to read it failed. Gibson peppers his paragraphs with allusions to Asian geography and Rastafarianism, computer programming and corporate finance. He writes about subjects ranging from drug addiction and zero-gravity physics to synesthesia and brutal back-alley violence. And he writes with next to no exposition. You aren't told that Case grew up in the Sprawl, which is the nickname for the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis, a concreted strip of the Eastern Seaboard, and that he began training in Miami to become a cowboy, which is slang for a cyberspace hacker, and that he was immensely skilled at it, et cetera, et cetera. No, you're thrust right into Case's shoes as he swills rice beer in Japan and pops amphetamines and tries to con the underworld in killing him when his back is turned because he thinks he'll never work again. You have to piece together the rest on your own.

Challenging? You bet. But it's electrifying once you get it.

I've worked by paperback copy until the spine and cover have split, until the pages have faded like old newsprint. Echoes of its diction sound in my own writing. Thoughts of Chiba City or BAMA pop into my head when I walk through the mall and hear a mélange of voices speaking in Spanish and English and Creole and German. Neuromancer is in me like a tea bag, flavoring my life, and I can't imagine what it would be like if I hadn't pressed on into page 26.

'Neuromancer' is one of a handful of books/movies that I would pick to represent the science-fiction genre. Gibson succeeds on all levels here - I enjoyed the story, the characters, the settings, the technology, everything. Gibson writes about imperfection - he doesn't gloss anything over or try to make it too pretty. The characters are flawed, and have weaknesses - just like in real life. They live in a gritty world - just like in real life. And around them all, is technology - just like in real life.

'Neuromancer' is the story of Case: a hacker-type, cyberpunk, whatever you want to call him. He makes hackers of today look like amateurs - he totally immerses himself into the machine. Washed-up and raked over the coals, he gets a chance at a come back, even if it isn't on the most pleasant of terms.

Read this book if you are a science fiction fan - if for no other reason than to see what all the hype is about. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

I'm only an occasional reader of science fiction, and I've read even less cyberpunk - perhaps that's why I can't go along with all the reviews either calling this the greatest novel ever written, or a terrible hack job...they seem to be taking things within the context of the current cyberpunk scene, a scene I'm only vaguely familiar with.

I enjoyed the book the way one might enjoy a big Hollywood movie. The characterizations and plot were shallow and taken directly from noir and pulp fictions, no doubt about it. However, for all the times I've seen noir plots, I still enjoy them. I think the author made things fun, and kept the story going along smoothly. The ending did fall a little flat, but cyberpunk as a genre seems to flop the endings, and this was at least decent.

Also, I think it's easy to appreciate the futuristic setting of the book. True, it's a largely outdated view of the future, but it's an interesting world, and it's fun to see just how much Gibson got right back in 1984. I read this when I stayed live in post-bubble Osaka, and the book's view of the fringes of an efficient high-tech society struck a chord with me.

In Neuromancer, William Gibson creates a setting that is at once fantastic and reasonable. The characters are perfectly jaded to the novel's advanced technology - plug in the toaster, jack into the matrix, ho humm. Unfortunately, when the narrator has seen it all before, he doesn't spend a lot of time describing what's happening. Gibson's narrator gives you a vague patchwork of the plot - it feels like a drunk's telling you about the movie he just watched. Further, Gibson makes no effort to tell the reader who is speaking. Gibson uses characters he doesn't introduce. Gibson rambles for so long you forget what he is writing about. Don't get me wrong - I feel that a reader should have to work with a book to understand it, but Gibson doesn't even give us a fighting chance.

It took me some time to get started into this book--the "imaginary" future Gibson has created is somewhat familiar, yet bizarre enough to leave one grasping for understanding in the beginning pages. Once engrossed, I couldn't put it down! My constant back thought as I read was the absolute awe that I felt for Gibson's ability to envision a computer world so 1990's true to life at a time when Apple had yet to create their first Mac! Gibson's description of "jacking in" to the net, and "flipping" is so close to today's "logging on" and "quick-switching" that it gave me goosebumps each time he used the terms! Gibson was truly touched by the muse of inspiration when writing "Neuromancer", and I'm sure we'll see more of his *prophecies* come to pass before the millenium. This is advised reading for all who wish to understand the potential of the internet and the World Wide Web. Just take it slow, by osmosis you'll get the scenario, and by the final chapter--you'll know the concept. You'll be awestruck too, I guarantee! Can't wait to read Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive! you

Neuromancer is the epitome and the antecedent of all cyberpunk fiction. In fact, with this book Gibson, seemingly quite accidentally, actually coined the term "cyberspace" (not to mention providing the original "matrix"). The characters are vivid and interesting, and the world that they inhabit is just as colorful, in its urbanized, futuristic way. Neuromancer is relatively brief, laudably free of some science fiction writers' tendency to expound verbosely on their philosophy of the future. Even so, Gibson's vision comes out in the writing, perhaps even more effectively. You will finish this book quickly. When you do, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive are just as well paced, continue in the same vein without becoming philosophical, and are refreshingly self-contained for science fiction sequels.

Sometime in Earth's future, Case was a computer cowboy who plugged his mind into cyberspace and navigated the vast network of the world's computers, penetrating any computer's security system for a price. But when he double-crossed his employer, the revenge inflicted robbed Case of his ability to "jack in" to cyberspace ever again. Case went to Chiba City, a center of urban decay where anything could be bought or sold, and acquired a drug habit to replace his addiction to cyberspace. One day a woman named Molly turns up in his "coffin" with a proposition. Molly is a technologically enhanced human with reflective night vision glasses implanted over her eyes and lethal blades beneath her fingernails. She is the muscle for a man named Armitage who wants the use of Case's previous cyber-skills. In return, he will correct Case's neural damage so that he can do the job. First they have to steal a construct of a deceased computer jockey. Then they fly to Istanbul to forcibly collect another member of their team, Peter Riviera, a sleazy character whose neural implants allow him to project subliminal messages into the minds of whomever he chooses. Then the team is off to a space station called Freeside where they will carry out their mission. The plan is to infiltrate the home of the secretive Tessier-Ashpool family, who own one of the world's largest and oldest conglomerates. Tessier-Ashpool is governed by its original family members who rotate in and out of cryogenic state, and by two artificial intelligences. But the purpose of the mission and the identity of their employer are mysterious and may have epic repercussions.

Published in 1984, William Gibson's "Neuromancer" may not have been the first "cyberpunk" novel, but it defined the genre and gave birth to the term. At its most basic, the story of "Neuromancer" is a classic caper plot: a mysterious and imposing character assembles a team of individuals, each with his own talent, to break into a target structure. The characters of "Neuromancer" are, in fact, stock characters in a stock plot. But so are fiction's greatest stories. "Neuromancer"'s choppy, brooding style that tells the story through the experiences of one person, Case, owes a lot to noir detective novels. Dashiell Hammett comes to mind. It is interesting to note that Dashiell Hammett's style was born of alcoholism and urban violence and corruption in the 1930's. "Neuromancer" was born of the urban decay and violence of the 1980's, which was to reach a post-War high within a few years of the novel's publication. And many of "Neuromancer"'s characters are drug addicts. History repeats itself, and it is those qualities that put the "punk" in cyberpunk. As for the "cyber" part, "Neuromancer" introduced us to "cyberspace" and was the first to describe a computer network in terms of a geometric "matrix". Although the technology to "jack in" to computer networks has not yet come to fruition, and who knows if it ever will, the interconnectedness and interdependency of "Neuromancer"'s computers is strikingly similar to the Internet today. I think that "Neuromancer"'s instant cult appeal can be attributed to two things: It makes technology sexy. Molly was one of the first cyberbabes. And she is immediately attracted to Case, who is a geeky, pallid computer hacker. And "Neuromancer" describes a future on the fringes of society where urban alienation and technological alienation have combined to create a sort of existential hell, an idea that reflected the experiences and expectations of a disillusioned Generation X. "Neuromancer" is a science fiction novel that is still appealing and thought-provoking 20 years after it was published. And it's influence on our language and on science fiction in film and print is beyond measure.

I can assure anyone who hates this book that there is no conspiracy, this is a book that I am still in awe of, several months after reading it.

I can, however, understand people not comprehending what the hell's going on. I'd read half the novel before realising what was going on...but that's not the point.

It's very difficult to describe why this book is so great. Strictly speaking, it's not "poetry" or suchlike, it's not the "originality" of his writing style....

I suppose it could be described as a sort of Japanese minimalism and American mass consumerism blend society, which is Gibson's unique vision.

Here we don't have "x flew in spaceship to y, defeats z empire", but we have the world we know today, pushed to absolute overdrive. No pristine environment, or moving descriptions of the peace of space travel - here we have the dirty, hedonistic, consumerist, urban society we have today, driven by brandnames, bright lights, and no future; in essence, the Gen X-er's future.

It's not quite like Blade Runner, where it's a more Film Noir type city. Here we have technology used, not to benefit mankind but to sell to consumers - people who live out their lives as the pawns of corporations.

There is of course the wonderful descriptions of Virtual Reality/Internet, where mankind has created a sort of spirit-world, where depressed outcasts of this society can escape from the "world of meat".

I suppose this is why I think Neuromancer is great.

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

So begins William Gibson's prophetic and apocryphal novel NEUROMANCER, the first in his SPRAWL Trilogy and arguably the most important Science Fiction novel of the Century. In a single, mind-bending work, Gibson propelled an entire generation into a new era of information perception, an era that has since woven itself strand-by-strand into the global information nexus we call the World Wide Web.

It begins with Case, a young and bitter cyberspace cowboy prowling the neon-lit streets of Chiba City, in search of his lost identity. Robbed of his talent for working the Matrix as a data thief and cyberspace pirate, his life is a bleak and desolate journey towards self-destruction. Until the day a mirror-eyed assassin offers him a second chance.

Suddenly Case is an unwitting pawn in a game whose board stretches from Chiba to the Sprawl to an orbiting pleasure colony populated by Ninja clones and Zion-worshipping Rastafarian spacers. The job: to hack the unhackable. To break the ICE around an Artificial Intelligence and release it from its own hardwired mind. But at every turn Case is haunted by the shadows of his own dark past, and pursued by a faceless enemy whose very presence can kill.

Ironically, William Gibson tapped out the wonders of NEUROMANCER on a manual typewriter, and was certain it was fated for the Out Of Print stack or a quiet cult following. But now, over ten years later and still in print, it has become a kind of cultural landmark in a sea of Information; a chrome-and-silicon avatar of everything from the World Wide Web to Virtual Reality. NEUROMANCER must not be explained or related; it must be experienced, taken in through the pores and rolled against the tongue like electric adrenaline. And there is only one way to do so.

Pick up a copy. And jack in.

Clay Douglas Major

I read this book in 1990. I was browsing a book store with my boyfriend, who picked up the book and exclaimed ``Wow, listen to this!'' upon reading the first sentence. ("The sky was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.")

He bought the book, loan it to me the next week and I never returned it. Gibson's lyric writing, his intricate plotting, his discomfort with corporate omnipresense are all worth savoring...you'll read the novel once for story, then again (and again) for text and texture.

He's also a master at capturing the way a city feels, how it crowds you and isolates you at the same time. (Manhattanites will definitely get it.)

In any event, I'm not at all involved in computers or high technology of any kind. Gibson may be the father of cyberpunk and the coiner of the word "cyberspace," but you don't need to know or care what that means to enjoy his books, particularly Neuromancer.