
Revisting Neuromancer After Three Decades - skmurphy
https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2018/06/05/revisting-neuromancer-after-three-decades/
======
archagon
Read the book for the first time last year. I heard from some people that it
hadn't aged too well—that it should be viewed as more of a precursor to things
like _Snowcrash_ —but I really loved it. In particular, the language used to
describe drug states and events in cyberspace (such as the Kuang virus) was
just so vivid and disorienting. (Or I guess "hypnagogic", to use a Gibsonian
word.) A less talented author would have made it feel rote and computery,
whereas _this_ cyberspace felt more like a collective fever dream. And what
brilliant world-building! Every page had something strange, intense, and new,
from "the long pulse of Zion dub" to resuscitated memories of dead men to the
beehive of the Tessier-Ashpool compound. Few works are able to create that
all-encompassing sense of weirdness, where every strange thing builds on the
previous one while somehow keeping the reader focused on the story. (Last book
to successfully do that to me was the Saga series.)

It was fascinating to realize just how much of our culture is indebted to
_Neuromancer_. So many games and movies use scenes or characters taken
wholesale from the pages.

Now if only somebody would do a TV adaptation of the original!

(As an aside: after finishing the book, I really enjoyed this artist's take on
the characters. It was uncannily close to what I was already picturing in my
head:
[https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Qo4Z8](https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Qo4Z8))

~~~
phobosdeimos
I think Neuromancer aged better than a lot of sci fi. Gibson didn't go into
technical details, which is a blessing when you deal with early 80s computer
tech.

Incidentally a lot of cyberpunk feels off in 2018. Nobody seemed to forecast
the rise of China.

~~~
snowwrestler
In general, a lot of well-known cyberpunk seems to have underestimated
governments--their competence, power, longevity, and reach.

China features prominently in _The Diamond Age_ as a location, but not as a
powerful, cohesive, oppressive, incredibly successful authoritarian
government. It's sort of a laughing stock in _Snow Crash_ , and barely present
in _Neuromancer_.

Despite its reputation for being darkly cynical, I think we can look back now
and see that cyberpunk as a genre was essentially _optimistic_ about the power
of computing technology--optimistic that it would indeed radically change
power structures, society, and our relationship with governments.

Instead what we see today is not that different from this time 100 years ago:
super rich oligarchs controlling much of the economy, rising racism and
bigotry, authoritarians using new technologies to seize power and splinter
their opposition.

~~~
cfadvan
To be fair, Snow Crash has megacorps, oligarchs like L. Bob Rife and David,
racism galore (New South Africa franchlettes anyone?) and the plot is
literally all about using tech to seize power and splinter opposition. The
whole system of FOQNE’s seems massively geared to cater to populist impulses,
with the exception of Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong. It also neatly foresaw the
role of self-sustaining media frenzy, increasingly stagnant economic prospects
for most, and the resulting insularity and small-mindedness of much of
society.

It also nailed the gig economy.

------
beat
Something I think that is underrated in the criticisms of Neuromancer is how
great the non-human characters are. I'm thinking here of Wintermute (of
course), who is as cold and alien as a Lovecraftian horror. And the spider-
like patience of Wintermute spending years working on manipulating 3Jane to
madness and murder... it's terrifying and brilliant.

And the Dixie Flatline! The idea of a personality captured as a software
construct, to get all the little tics that make the personality so good at
what they do. "Case. Joeboy. Quick study." You get that sense that this is a
machine that sounds like a person, because it was a person. And toward the
end, when the Dixie Flatline asks Case to erase him when it's over? Can a
machine have existential horror to the point of longing for its own death?
Loved that.

And Armitage! Technically, not a machine... just a hollowed-out shell of a
man, filled with the sort of temporary personality Wintermute could craft,
when Wintermute's ability to comprehend humans was limited, and Corto's
madness lay trapped just below the surface, with Wintermute knowing it would
crack at the worst possible time. Another truly great science fiction alien.

------
pjc50
I often cite this as one of my favourite books, but it's also been a decade or
so since I last read it and I should see how it holds up.

However after reading another discussion of it recently, things about it are
still yet falling into place for me. Not just the viewpoint that _cyber_
meaning "control systems" is also a theme; for each character, there is
something or some means by which they are controlled. Retrospectively a lot of
this looks like PTSD; Armitage most obviously, but it's a theme of all the
characters and the world itself, including the AIs.

Looking too closely at the technology is a mistake. It's all about the
mediation of experience and the aesthetic of it, rather than the details.

------
linsomniac
I just finished the audiobook of Neuromancer a week ago, and I didn't really
enjoy it. I'm not sure if I would have enjoyed it more if I'd read it. I love
other what I think of as similar books like Snowcrash and Diamond Age. I had
high hopes for Neuromancer, which maybe that was part of it, but I just didn't
enjoy it. It kind of turned into a slog and I nearly gave up at around 90%,
but just pushed through because I was so close.

Is it just me?

~~~
atombender
I read it twice, once in the mid-1990s, then a couple of years ago. I still
love Gibson's language, and I love the ideas about AIs, but the flaws were
much more apparent the second time around.

For one, the creaky mechanics of the plot were much more transparent to me on
re-eading it. The characters rush from location to location to find the next
McGuffin, Case mostly being a passive spectator throughout. It feels like
there's a checklist of items being ticked off one by one, and Gibson is never
able to make it feel like an organic progression of events until near the end,
where a very linear easter egg hunt turns into something less predictable. The
characterizations are also weak; most of the characters, Case included, are
just chess pieces that are shuffled around for the convenience of the plot.
Gibson, in all his books, puts a certain cold distance between himself and his
characters, and Case is perhaps the most distant of them all.

I suppose Gibson's novels (well, I skipped The Peripheral and never read The
Difference Engine) have _all_ disappointed me in some way. They're enjoyable,
but I never feel like he's able to land them. I love the prose. I love his
ability to conjure a certain kind of dirty, messy future. His action set
pieces are often very rewarding and disturbing. Certain elements, like the guy
living in the cardboard box in a subway in "All Tomorrow's Parties", I find
rather haunting. But he's so often let down by lackluster character
development and plotting. Pretty much every single novel follows the same
architecture: Fabulously rich, unreliable mystery man of dubious moral
integrity (possibly being a front for a near-omniscient A.I.) hires one or
more people to find one or more McGuffins; Gibson is _really_ into behind-the-
scenes, large-scale manipulation by forces unknown, and it gets a little old.
Perhaps it is that Gibson is so good at aesthetics, but not as good at the
emotional dimension; I find Neuromancer's ending to be very aesthetically
admirable, less so emotionally, because I truly don't care that much about his
characters. And this is true about many of his novels. 70% of Count Zero is a
masterpiece. It's just that the remaining 30% is an uninspired mess. (If you
didn't like Neuromancer, there's a good chance you'd like Count Zero better,
though. It's definitely a novel where he got a little more mature about
character development and plotting.)

To this day, I find his most successful work to be his early collection of
short stories, Burning Chrome. "Fragments of a Hologram Rose", "New Rose
Hotel", and "Burning Chrome" itself are all fantastic, in ways that I felt
he's rarely been able to replicate in his novels.

~~~
eropple
I feel like the biggest criticism I can make of Gibson is that _he plots_.

Most novels have a plot. But the good ones don't let you in on it. As you say,
the characters rush around for MacGuffins, and you characterized it as
"creaky"\--that's a good word for it. I have not always been the biggest
Stephen King fan (as an author; growing up in Maine, I've always been a fan of
King-the-person) but _On Writing_ is an excellent book. I don't have my copy
right here so I can't quote what he says about plotting (paraphrased: "try not
to") but this quote from an interview with Goodreads resonates strongly with
me:

 _" I start a book like Doctor Sleep [his most recent book] knowing just two
things: the basic situation and that the story will create its own patterns
naturally and organically if I follow it fairly...and by fairly I mean never
forcing characters to do things they wouldn't do in real life...For me, the
first draft is all about story. I trust that some other part of me—an
undermind—will create certain patterns."_

So long as your beginnings and ends are only modestly far apart, short stories
(and I again agree that Burning Chrome is probably his best work) let you get
away with a lot more of this. But novella and novel-length works can't hide
the machinery of a plotted-out story as well unless you are inordinately good
at it. (And I mean, this is a ding against authors like J.R.R. Tolkien as much
as Gibson; it's not like he isn't in good company with this weakness.)

~~~
jefurii
> I feel like the biggest criticism I can make of Gibson is that he plots.

Interesting. I've seen him twice at book signings and both times he said that
he specifically does _not_ plot beforehand. He starts with characters and
"follows" them through the story. He did say he often ends up at a certain in
the novel where he has to chart out what's going on so he can finish though.
On the other hand, if I remember correctly he's said he's a fan of old-school
pulp sci-fi which has a lot of plotting and he's perfectly fine with that even
if it offends lit-crit types.

------
pmoriarty
The BBC did a great adaptation of the book to a radio play, complete with
professional voice acting, sound effects, even music: [1]

Unfortunately, it's only an abridged version. On the positive side, it's a
quick listen, and well worth it if you're a fan (or just want to get a taste).

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S89BHnaxULo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S89BHnaxULo)

~~~
jhbadger
Although listening to the introduction, they claim Case is living in the
Sprawl (the US urban East Coast). No! He lives in Chiba City, in Japan!

------
beat
Much of the importance of Neuromancer at the time of publication wasn't that
it was so technically correct or insightful, but rather that it connected
science fiction to the cultural awareness of punk rock. That seems trite and
obvious nowadays, but it was a revelation then. And although you sneer at the
technology, his _cultural_ insights were profound and remarkably predictive.

------
mailxplorer
To me, Ted Nelson's Zigzag
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigZag_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigZag_\(software\))
\- is a similiar view to Neuromancer's virtual reality. It's a shame it's not
more popular. Gzz is an excellent version of it.

~~~
prepend
If only he hadn’t copyrighted/patented it, we might be using it.

I find it interesting how frequently “just ok” software is picked up and
reaches a critical mass just because it is open. There are many good software
projects that won’t grow because of licensing because they are more useful
with network effects.

I have lots of colleagues who use R for data analysis. It wasn’t that great in
the beginning but was widely used because of openness. 5 years ago, SAS and
IBM would describe how superior they were, but it kind of missed the point.

For most of my software uses, I just need good enough.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" I find it interesting how frequently "just ok" software is picked up and
reaches a critical mass just because it is open. There are many good software
projects that won’t grow because of licensing because they are more useful
with network effects."_

UNIX itself is a great example of this. Look at the graveyard of excellent
UNIX flavors that fell by the wayside when free, open Linux came around.

With more open licensing and a different business model, any of them (instead
of Linux) might have been the dominant UNIX flavor today.

~~~
bitwize
And they would have been a bit player in the OS marketplace compared to
Windows NT.

Assuming that in this alternate timeline, the Apple-NeXT merger still happens,
the dominant Unix flavor would likely be macOS. As it is, it's still alive and
kicking and enjoying a comfortable number two spot (number one if you're
talking desktop installs).

~~~
pmoriarty
I'm talking about servers, where Linux dominates.

Sun used to dominate there, and they might have continued to do so had they
switched to open licensing, made the OS free, and maybe adopted a business
model like RedHat's.

~~~
bitwize
If it hadn't been for Linux, Windows NT would have dominated the server market
too.

------
wallflower
In case anyone was perplexed about the end of Neuromancer, this is the answer
about what was meant below from William Gibson.

> three notes, high and pure. A true name.

[http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/archive/2003_03_13_archive...](http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/archive/2003_03_13_archive.asp)

~~~
bitwize
I find his discourse on fax machines interesting. I just rewatched _Johnny
Mnemonic_ , and a fax machine plays a significant plot role in that film. At
the end, J-Bone says "Get your VCRs ready". This despite the writing being
quite on the wall for both fax machines and VCRs even in 1995.

Cyberpunk is a bit misnamed, I think, because as expressed by Gibson and his
copycats, it's distinctly hipsterish. There's a fondness for the old, a desire
to flash-freeze the zeitgeist (usually of the Beat era) so that it could live,
in some sense, forever. In _Max Headroom_ , every time we see a computer it
has an old manual typewriter (much like the one Gibson used to write
_Neuromancer_ on, because to him computers were and still somewhat are alien
invaders) for a keyboard.

Strangely, _Johnny Mnemonic_ goes overboard with the technology in other ways:
in 2015, let alone 2025, Johnny could have fenced 320 GiB of data at
considerably less personal risk by swallowing a toy balloon with Micro SD
cards in it.

------
skmurphy
Neuromancer, William Gibson’s first novel, was published in 1984. It helped to
establish the cyberpunk genre of science fiction: a dark future where
computing, communication, and artificial intelligence technologies were
dominant, complemented by significant medical advances, large inhabited
satellites in Earth orbit, and considerable drug use. I recently re-read it
and was struck by how things have turned out differently.

~~~
electricslpnsld
> Neuromancer, William Gibson’s first novel, was published in 1984. It helped
> to establish the cyberpunk genre of science fiction

Cyberpunk dates at least a decade before Neuromancer -- Brunner's Shockwave
Rider form 1974 comes to mind (and is a pretty interesting and strangely
timely read, given that it is almost 50 years old).

~~~
kasey_junk
Shockwave Rider is interesting because of how early it was and how unique at
the time. That doesn't establish a subgenre though.

Cyberpunk wasn't coined as a term until right around the same time as
Neuromancer came out and Neuromancer swept the big sci-fi awards, making it a
fair thing to say that it 'helped to establish'.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Brunner is amazing - far ahead of his time.

~~~
kasey_junk
"Stand on Zanzibar" is one of my favorite books of all times. That said, I
think the Shockwave Rider actually holds up less well than Neuromancer,
_because_ it was more tuned into the reality of software of its day.

Still a great read though.

~~~
sorokod
Now I need to go and reread the Stand on Zanzibar.

\- bookworm/assassin

------
0ld
Gibson's language is so heavy, it was almost physically hard to read the book
as a non-native speaker.

Also he was obviously not really into IT (at least when he wrote the book),
which added to the negative perception even more, and left me with very mixed
feelings afterwards.

~~~
needz
The book was released in 1984. Could it be that his descriptions of tech were
just true to the times? I imagine his stylistic embellishments were also
important in the same way older movies about technology (e.g. Hackers[0])
stylize digital events.

[0]: [https://youtu.be/Bmz67ErIRa4?t=69](https://youtu.be/Bmz67ErIRa4?t=69)

~~~
kasey_junk
It was routinely criticized as not being true to IT when it came out.

~~~
jhayward
Not that I recall, and I read it within months of release. Can you point to
some contemporaneous reviews or critiques that do so?

~~~
kasey_junk
The literary critiques & reviews were _hugely_ positive about Neuromancer, but
its a fairly common take down of the book how bad the technology pieces are.

Here is an interview with Gibson where he talks about it:
[https://www.wired.com/2012/09/interview-with-william-
gibson/](https://www.wired.com/2012/09/interview-with-william-gibson/)

(For the record he talks about it in agreement, he thinks he himself could
write a good takedown of the technology).

~~~
jhayward
Thanks for that interview link. Note that it was almost 30 years after
publication.

I suppose a critique of "not sufficiently prescient" is supported by it, but
"known at the time of publication that it got the IT wrong", which is what I
think the GP was saying, isn't.

------
jinie
The Bridge trilogy
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_trilogy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_trilogy))
has always struck me as being closer to reality than i care to think about.

------
corysama
I’ll plug the Gibson documentary _No Maps for These Territories._
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Maps_for_These_Territorie...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Maps_for_These_Territories)

Gibson is very self-deprecating throughout. He attributes people’s favorite
aspects of the _Neuromancer_ to work-arounds he used to cover his inexperience
as an author. Meanwhile, the film interleaves interviews with other sci-fi
authors who has early access to the book. They all knew the book was something
new and special immediately.

------
scruffyherder
I loved the audio book version read by Gibson. It's super hard to find, as it
seems it was only released on casette, and then only for libraries. I got
super lucky to score a copy, although I ended up digitizing it into speex. I
need to find it again and do a better FLAC rip.

The quality is terrible as I wanted to make them as small as possible....

[http://vpsland.superglobalmegacorp.com/low/neuromancer/neuro...](http://vpsland.superglobalmegacorp.com/low/neuromancer/neuromancer.html)

------
feral
> The Neuromancer AI made a copy of Case to keep its copy of dead Linda
> company:

A small detail - while it's left ambiguous, FWIW I always thought that was
Dixie, not a copy of Case.

That's why Case hears Dixie's laughter at the very end; earlier Dixie
disappears and Neuromancer says he got more than his wish; later, Case asks
where Dixie is and Wintermute/Neuromancer says its kind of hard to explain.

This makes the ending a little darker.

~~~
armitron
There is no ambiguity:

"Linda still wore his jacket; she waved, as he passed. But the third figure,
close behind her, arm across her shoulders, was himself."

It's hinted (in the next two books) that the construct merged with the AI and
is part of the Loa phenomenon.

~~~
feral
Yeah; but I thought that was Dixie in Case's 'body', presumably so Linda
thought it was Case. I.e. Dixie steals his identity in Neuromancer's virtual
world. That wouldn't preclude the merge; if anything the merge precludes the
construct being deleted.

Maybe not.

------
currymj
The book "Void Star" by Zachary Mason was published last year. A high concept
pitch for it is "Neuromancer, but all the 80s stuff is replaced with 2018
stuff". I hope the author wouldn't be offended by that -- the book is quite
original but the influence is obvious. It's worth reading.

I would basically be okay with somebody doing this again in another 30 years.

~~~
yborg
Read it recently, had some ideas, but seemed to be either a conscious crib of
Gibson's cyberpunk oeuvre or just so derivative of it that I kept comparing
scenes/characters in it to similar ones in _Neuromancer_. And Gibson is the
better writer.

------
pmoriarty
Neuromancer started it all, but I've always found _Count Zero_ to be by far
the best book in the trilogy.

~~~
armitron
I find that while Neuromancer lays on the atmosphere heavy from the beginning,
Count Zero is all about insinuations and implications. Kinda like Dune in that
regard. This doesn't take anything away, but it means that it's not as in-
your-face as Neuromancer. It's a more intuitive book.

The concepts and ideas are as iconoclastic as ever but one needs a keen eye
and ideally personal experience in order to fully appreciate them. None of the
sprawl trilogy novels are geared towards angry teenagers, they're layered with
almost transcendental meaning that works on multiple levels.

An example: The Loa "riding" as the transmigration of traditional mystical
experiences (possession/psychosis) into the digital domain. Anyone that's ever
crossed the threshold will recognize innumerable similarities in Gibson's
descriptions.

