Neuromancer

Rating:
Summary: cyberpunk........i think.
Review: Perhaps the only thing worse than reading a bad book is reading a book that has the blaring potential to be great, but somehow falls short.

"Neuromancer" is filled with thoughts, images, and scenes which are nothing short of brilliant and ground-breaking. Written in 1984, Gibson's ability to imagine the future of technology amazes me. He doesn't craft "Star Trek" worlds--idealized, raceless, places where everybody gets along (although we all love Star Trek, one must admit that its character interaction is a little less than realistic). Neither does Gibson let his technology get out of hand--people can't travel faster than light, nobody mates with aliens, or has an epiphany about the nature of the universe. It's Earth, plain and simple (although it's obvious he wrote it in the middle of the Decade of Excess--mirrored surgical optical insets? ick.). The man who coined the term "Cyberspace" creates a complex future which is ultimately believable.

Unfortunately--and this is where the rating part comes in-- as I was reading, I found myself stopping every page or two, scratching my temple, and going "HUH?" Listen, guys, before you tell me I'm just slamming the novel because it's popular, let's put it into perspective. I'm an experienced reader. I've been able to read Kerouac, Murakami, Vonnegut, and other notoriously confusing writers' works without a hitch. For a few identifiable and probably a few more unidentifiable reasons, "Neuromancer" gave me problems.

I realize it's a matter of style more than anything; Gibson wants to set an atmosphere by using particular words, sentence structures, and chronology techniques. However, the effect is something like that of a dress produced for a fashion show--what looks great on the runway is not necessarily practical or feasible for everyday life. For short bursts, Gibson's prose is lucid, vivid, and startling. However, taken in chunks much longer than a page, the gaps in action frustrate even a patient reader. There were times when I absolutely, positively could not follow what was going on, even after stopping and rereading several times. The experience was similar to trying to solve a puzzle with a hundred pieces missing. The prose, or lack thereof, probably cut my enjoyment of the novel in half.

"Neuromancer", however, is still a ground-breaking book, with so much insight and so many redeeming qualities that I'd still reccomend any SF fan read it. I just wish that Gibson had had a better understanding of prose and literary technique to make his ideas and images _really_ shine.

Rating:
Summary: excellent
Review: an amazing work. I've reread it numerous times, and each time I appreciate it. Definatly a must read for anyone who likes science fiction, or works with technology.

Rating:
Summary: The Grandaddy that started them all
Review: All I have to say is.. woah... not a regular woah.. but a Keanu Reeves' "Woah". I loved the plot, I read the book while listening to techno music, and felt every pulse of the book, once I "jacked-in". The plot is one of the best that you'll ever read in the world! If you like "The Matrix", then you'll most definately love "Neuromancer", from the scenes of a futuristic Cyberspace, to the club scene, and to truely show the world of AI in such detail, just brings tears to my eyes.

Rating:
Summary: supercool
Review: This book was fantastic. I only wish that Gibson had kept it up in his subsequent novels (so far I've only read the next two in the trilogy, but I'm getting to his others).
The prose is what sold me, I guess. It's high-tech poetry, almost. From the opening sentence "The sky was the color of television tuned to a blank channel", Gibson creates an environment deeply rooted in technology and cyberspace. Everything about the world of the book is built around the Matrix, as he calls it. Politics are vague, as is the treatment of cyberspace, but the novel manages to grab you and pull you into its incredible prosaic depth regardless. One benefit of vagueness is it's not easily dated -- this book moves very smoothly, whereas with Sterling's "Islands in the Net", one has to take a break every few pages to laugh at his breathless descriptions of fax machines and teleconferencing. Gibson doesn't bother exposing his future -- he just dives in. This is truly sensory immersion, like in the book. You are enveloped in data, you need to sort through it for yourself.
The plot is a little loose, as other people have probably mentioned. It wasn't entirely clear to me -- who are Neuromancer and Wintermute and what do they want? Who is Case working for? I didn't really care in the end. It was so stylistically satisfying that the story just wasn't an issue. But I will read it again sometime.
Reading this, it's easy to see where Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner came from. There is heavy Japanese influence, and the themes of reality and consciousness figure strongly.

Rating:
Summary: cyberpunk........i think.
Review: Perhaps the only thing worse than reading a bad book is reading a book that has the blaring potential to be great, but somehow falls short.

"Neuromancer" is filled with thoughts, images, and scenes which are nothing short of brilliant and ground-breaking. Written in 1984, Gibson's ability to imagine the future of technology amazes me. He doesn't craft "Star Trek" worlds--idealized, raceless, places where everybody gets along (although we all love Star Trek, one must admit that its character interaction is a little less than realistic). Neither does Gibson let his technology get out of hand--people can't travel faster than light, nobody mates with aliens, or has an epiphany about the nature of the universe. It's Earth, plain and simple (although it's obvious he wrote it in the middle of the Decade of Excess--mirrored surgical optical insets? ick.). The man who coined the term "Cyberspace" creates a complex future which is ultimately believable.

Unfortunately--and this is where the rating part comes in-- as I was reading, I found myself stopping every page or two, scratching my temple, and going "HUH?" Listen, guys, before you tell me I'm just slamming the novel because it's popular, let's put it into perspective. I'm an experienced reader. I've been able to read Kerouac, Murakami, Vonnegut, and other notoriously confusing writers' works without a hitch. For a few identifiable and probably a few more unidentifiable reasons, "Neuromancer" gave me problems.

I realize it's a matter of style more than anything; Gibson wants to set an atmosphere by using particular words, sentence structures, and chronology techniques. However, the effect is something like that of a dress produced for a fashion show--what looks great on the runway is not necessarily practical or feasible for everyday life. For short bursts, Gibson's prose is lucid, vivid, and startling. However, taken in chunks much longer than a page, the gaps in action frustrate even a patient reader. There were times when I absolutely, positively could not follow what was going on, even after stopping and rereading several times. The experience was similar to trying to solve a puzzle with a hundred pieces missing. The prose, or lack thereof, probably cut my enjoyment of the novel in half.

"Neuromancer", however, is still a ground-breaking book, with so much insight and so many redeeming qualities that I'd still reccomend any SF fan read it. I just wish that Gibson had had a better understanding of prose and literary technique to make his ideas and images _really_ shine.

Rating:
Summary: Vast, jacked-in fantasy
Review: It is my understanding that Gibson coined the term "cyberspace"-and very beautifully. When I dream of cyberspace realities, I can not help but invoke fragments of William Gibson's vast, jacked-in hallucination-what you might call "virtual reality".

There was one more component to William Gibson's cyberspace-that of the spiritual-and these segments are quite beautiful.

I'm giving this book 4 "Amazon" stars because I think Gibson's "Count Zero" is even better--especially the references surrounding the artist Joseph Cornell. One can't nitpick a classic such as this--too much--although some aspects of the adolescent "cyberpunk" content are difficult to reconcile in maturity--regardless, I can acknowledge the need for these significant concepts to be made available via an accessible pubescent perspective.

This book left me craving more Gibson "cyberpunk"--and there's not much to be found. I've read Gibon's short stories--not bad. I couldn't get into "The Difference Engine" or "All Tomorrow's Parties"... I'm not feeling "Pattern Recognition" in the store either, but his blog has piqued my curiousity. I want Gibson to bring the world to its knees, in tears. Pretty please?

To discuss the book--if it's allowed by Amazon, hit me up on AIM/Yahoo "yesiliveinaustin"

Rating:
Summary: Idea-rich but weak storytelling, see below for alternatives
Review: I have a love-hate relationship with this novel. On the one hand, its got so many damn-good ideas, and it's worth reading for that alone. I won't spoil the fun of uncovering the ideas, because that's the meat of the book--unfortunately, Gibson does not prove to be as strong a storyteller as he is an idea-man. The ideas are buried between dense prose that mesmerizes one into a fugue-state. The plotting is weak at best, often leading one to think that the places visited exist solely to showcase the technologies of the story. Character motives defy analysis. It is told from the viewpoint of an anti-hero, which is not bad in itself, but you are often left wondering what the point is--does he really learn anything?

The story is really a means of exposing Gibson's ideas about future societies, computers and biological science. In that, it truly shines. Fortunately, the book is fairly short and thus it is saved from itself. Neuromancer gets very high marks for originality and subject matter, but low for the craft of storytelling.

If you are interested in this genre, then Neal Stephenson does the best job in SNOW CRASH. Bruce Sterling does an admirable job in SCHISMATRIX as well (although I'm uncertain about applying the cyberpunk label to it). Lastly, Philip K. Dick deals with similar material in DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP (the film upon which Bladerunner was loosely based). He wrote it before the emergence of the "cyberpunk" term, although critics probably would have included it had he written it during the early nineties.

Rating:
Summary: simply awesome
Review: I remember reading this for the first time in '86 or '87, and it changed my worldview. Now I just re-read it for the first time in years and was once again blown away. This is simply magnificent sci-fi and magnificent writing. There are occasional dated references, but on the whole it still stands. The sad thing is that we're not even close to realizing the world he describes. In fact it felt closer in the mid-80's than it does now. Anyway, this is a great book, truly a great book, and a must read for any sci-fi enthusiast.

Rating:
Summary: The matrix is dreaming tonight.
Review: This is a good book that has the feel of dark eighties SF movies, Akira or Metal Gear Solid. It's all here (AI, street samurai, the matrix, hackers, neon city, drugs, arcades, army type lunatics,...) and Gibson does it better than everybody else.
Gibson is very good in bringing to life strange and exotic (sub)cultures, like the cowboys and razor girls in this novel or the footageheads in 'Pattern Recognition'. The story's no slouch either.
If you're in for a dark SF thriller, you needn't look any further.

Rating:
Summary: The death of Sci-fi
Review: Necromancer is one of the best books written in the last 30 years. The only other book I liked more was 100 years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

A lot of geeks who live in their parent's basement have adopted this book as there bible. I have no idea why since they story is not really about technology. If you go beyond the surface of the story and into the language, you can see that as much as geek's fetish this book for tech, Gibson himself has a fetish for the English language and it shows. One famous author said on a radio show that this book is nothing more than that a Sam Spade novel cloaked in high tech terms. I don't think that's the case at all. The images Gibson offers the reader are pretty and disturbing. Like the musical talking head of WinterMute. This is much deeper than a Sam Spade crime story. The author who made the comments is guilty of pushing out tomes and tomes of Tolkien rip offs that now litter the shelf space of book stores.

Despite its age, the ideas still hold up well as does much of the tech side of the story. While some say this book started the cyberpunk boom I would say that I have no mouth and I must scream by Ellison is really the first cyberpunk book.

The bad thing about this book is that it spawned so many copycat authors and the whole cyberpunk movement. A shame really since this is a great book and I hate seeing is associated with 30 year olds who live in there parents basement compiling new Linux kernels all night.

I do believe that this book killed the genre of Sci-fi since no one has come along since to do anything better. This book is the reason so many authors have been turning to fantasy for that past 20 years.