Neuromancer

Rating:
Summary: The book that changed the world...
Review: For those of you out there under the age of 30, it may be hard to fathom the impact of Neuromancer and the stories that preceded it (collected in "Burning Chrome"). I really am NOT exaggerating when I tell you they changed the world.

When "Neuromancer" was published, SF was a genre whose time had passed. While some good writers & old masters were laboring in the trenches & publishing to the same fans they always had, there was really no mass market conciousness of SF except as the source of bad 50's monster movies. "Neuromancer" changed that. "Neuromancer" caused an entire generation to look at computers as something cool rather than nerdy. "Neuromancer" created the concept of "cyberspace" (without which you would not currently be accessing Amazon). "Neuromancer" even gave Bill Gates the name for his fledging operating systems company. Yup, folks, this is THE book!

I very clearly remember first reading this. It was about 1 year after it was published, & I had the vaguest of notions concerning the subject. If I'd read the short stories that preceded it, they had somehow not registered in my conciousness. Page one: CHIBA CITY BLUES what a cool title! Then that famous opening paragraph "The sky was the color of a TV tuned to a blank channel." I thought I'd died & gone to literary heaven! I was convinced this was the reason I'd learned to read 15 years prior, I had been waiting all this time for "Neuromancer"!

I could sum the plot up for you. I could tell you why Gibson's writing is so technically brilliant. I could quote page after page. But why? I feel sorry for the readers who haven't experienced "Neuromancer" because you lost the opportunity to watch a book change the world. Now it's 20 years later. Don't get me wrong: THIS IS A GREAT BOOK! But you'll never experience the mind-bending rush of possibilities now that the future in the book has become a reality.

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Summary: The longest 271 pages I have ever read.
Review: Neuromancer was to be my initial foray into the cyberpunk genre. Being a fan of the film THE MATRIX and the short-lived TV series HARSH REALM I thought I might find it interesting. I saw a very entertaining episode of THE X-FILES that was penned by William Gibson, so I figured this would be as good a place to start as any.

The core of the story is good and some of the central characters are very interesting but what interesting plot points there are become lost amid pages of pretentious, overly technical, poorly written, Zen-like techobabble. Gibson does a poor job of creating setting or suspense. It took me several pages to realize that the principal characters were on a space station in Earth's orbit. I flipped back to see if I missed something only to find that I hadn't. The overall mission was unclear making it difficult for me to care if they succeeded or not.

I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed but I know good writing when I see it. Neuromancer will be both my entrance and my exit to the world of cyberspace fiction.

Rating:
Summary: in a word...immersive
Review: i picked up this novel on the recommendation of a somewhat eccentric old friend. i was not sorry i did. it is an amazing and compelling story of future noir that is beautifully detailed and at times frantic. the picture gibson paints of the future is visionary especially when you consider it was penned in the 1980's and that gibson had not owned a computer till after the novel was written. it is greasy, dark and non-sterile sci-fi. star trek idealists better stay away. those of us who enjoy a little futureshock shoudl definitely pick this one up.

Rating:
Summary: Strong book, but a bit to much focus is required
Review: This book is brilliant as all the previous reviewers can agree. Gibson does craft an amazing world, blah, blah, blah. We all know how that goes. Unfortunately, yes, this book is very hard to follow. Case, the main character, will randomly slip into dreams because he is either asleep or even more confusingly stuck in the Matrix, and "flatlined". Over all though, this book does get a point across and leads to many questions about Computers and how much faith we do put in them.

Overall though, this book has some heavy philosophy about not only a darker future, but also dealing with issues of technology, poverty and corporate expansion. If your interested in Sci-Fi, or even watched "The Matrix" and wondered where some of these ideas had come from, you should be familiar with this book.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic book - A book everyone should read
Review: This book really lets your imagination sore! The two main characters are interesting, multi-dimensional characters that you easily become enthralled with. Before reading Neuromancer I had never read a true science-fiction novel. I absolutely loved it!... You need to read it more than once to really understand it, which is okay by me... It will be a great read again. Neuromance has many exciting twists and imagery/symbolism that leaves you thinking and anticipating. I highly recommend reading this! Impressive Canadian book.

Rating:
Summary: A masterful command of the language
Review: Although he practically invented the genre, the story is typical cyberpunk: computer cowboy in a post-nation-state corporate-controlled world is forced to complete a suspenseful mission--in this case freeing an AI.

But like I said about Pattern Recognition, Gibson's gift is not so much in story-making (although the story here is still great), but in his command of the language. A very apt description of his prose in this book is "mindbending." His descriptions are psychadelic and surreal and unexpected. And his techno-culturally sensitive and clever inventions like the "Turing Police" are delicious.

It is amazing Gibson wrote this book over 20 years ago; it seems so ahead of its time. For one thing, he coined the term "cyberspace" in this book. It is also amazing how much of The Matrix is copied from its pages. And not just subtle concepts, but names like "The Matrix" and "Zion" and whatnot. I hope he's getting some royalties. I wonder if Gibson ever read Nozick and his experience machine?

Rating:
Summary: Dark, dystopian and kind of confusing...
Review: Make no mistake, this is a great novel full of interesting concepts (nothing short of incredible when you consider the time it was written), but I feel as though Gibson decided to go nuts with the language. I'm not really sure how else to describe it. He's obviously using a writing technique in which we're not supposed to understand every word he uses the first time he uses it, but he goes a little overboard.

I found the parts where he tries to paint mental images of the various settings particularly difficult to grasp. He uses his expansive pallet of grim adjectives to describe these settings, which is great, but he also likes to throw in all kinds of his own made-up words (as well as Japanese words). This normally wouldn't be a problem, it's just that he does this too often... and never with a clear explanation as to what these words mean; the reader is left to figure it out through every instance these words are used. Although I do admit, I'm not the brightest bulb in the... light... socket? (see what I mean), so I may have been a little late to catch on to these words. This all amounted to me having trouble visualizing some of the settings, as if there were gaping holes in my understanding of what I should be picturing.

However, this is Gibson's first novel, and the introduction to a sort of pseudo-trilogy, so one could argue that the confusing language is done on purpose to set up the complex and erratic nature of Neuromancer's world... and what a world it is! It's sort of post-apocalyptic if you could consider pollution and technology the apocalypse. Hackers and organizations that employ hackers reign over what appears to be near-lawlessness, and the people with the real power are so high up in the hierarchy, it's not entirely clear who they are or what their motifs may be. If you are like me, you'll finish this book not exactly sure of what you just read. You'll feel unstable, as if the book raised more questions than it answered, and you'll be forced to search for the answers in the next two books. Let me assure you, after getting through Neuromancer, the language in Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive won't trip you up as much... partly because Gibson has refined his writing skills, and partly because you will know how to deal with his style.

So if the very term "cyberpunk" makes your spine tingle, you'll definitely need take a trip through Neuromancer.

Rating:
Summary: Future as plausible
Review: "The sky was the colour of a television tuned to to a dead channel". You know you're in for a treat from that first sentence on. What's more gritty than an untuned TV (Though Gibson uses a more active descrition - someone has tuned the TV to that channel. What seems more plausible: the gleaming shiny world of the Startrek Utopia (Not thgat I don't liike the show but surely The Federation is based on The USA - running round stopping violence and dictatortships by killing the killers and mounting takeovers against the dictators); or the world where technology is splitting into infinite specialities, old objects lie broken, people get broken and drugs(more or less designer) are with us as always, no matter the efforts by the authorities (cash is outlawed) there will always be both grey and black markets and marketeers; and those that don't quite exists firmly as either. Liike poor old Jules Deane.
The middle-man, too will always have a place, it seems, if only in gritty realism street stories!

It's easy to fail to give this book it's due, these 20 odd years later. At the time it was mind blowing and I have read everything since as soon as it has been released. Not that I would like to describe myself as a "fan" of anyone - it seems somehow sad to live as a variable of some creative person's output. Plus I will never write anythging of my own that is original if I allow myself to fixate on one writer. Not that one needs to fix on any one writer with people likje Tim Winton, Iain Banks, Neal Stephenson etc. out there doing it. Still, though, Gibson has an effortless cool rarely found anywhere. Like a great cool jazz improvisor in some ways, he puts things in a way that shows his talent in what is left out as well as what is put in. Talk about a must read book (an expression I hate, but really- this is the Grandparent of so much writing around, and following Gibson's own writing evolution from This through to Pattern Recognition yields many interesting ideaoids). So, if you've not read it, what's keeping you? In fact I envy you, I'd love to be able to read this for the first time again. Go to it, there's no excuse!. And if you find the whole thing a bit Boy's own, you're wrong. Without being didactic, Gibson has a lot to say about how our world is goibg, about how a certain amount of human spirit will always out, about the absolute desolution of a life with no purpose, no love. You could also argue that the ultimate answer to the question "what if a super-computer became sentient in some form?", in this book, is that it wouldn't really affect us, our understanding of what woulod interest a sentient supercomputer is like an amt's understanding of what occupies our thoughts.Very thought provoking.

Rating:
Summary: Convoluted plot, but unique writing and characters
Review: Whether you like it or not, Neuromancer set a precedence for science fiction when it was first published in 1984. Almost 20 years later, some of the ideas and phrases used in the book have come to life, and the general atmosphere of the book has spawned countless movies, video games, and other novels.

But is the book any good? Well, in my little opinion I found the writing fresh, unique, and highly impressive. Mr. Gibson drags you through many different locations, poking your nose into every corner and nook, almost beating you over the head with description. I found this fun at times, but ultimately distracting from the core plot. I would have trimmed some of the tinsel, but by now this classic book can not be touched. I am an avid writer myself and am convinced you don't need elaborate prose or even thorough character design to make an interesting story. It's all about ideas ideas ideas for me.

The story was hard to figure out, although I think I got the main concept. I would assume if I went back and reread the novel that the story would make more sense. Maybe I am dumb, I dunno. But I can't honestly say the plot(s) knocked me off my feet.

So I recommend this book to all lovers of sci-fi mainly because it is an important book in that genre. Go ahead and give it a whirl. You know you want to.

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Summary: Gibson: The man who gave us the word "cyberspace."
Review: Before there was a web to surf, there was "cyberspace," but only in the stories of William Gibson.

This is the classic "cyberpunk" novel, the best of a genre where the lines between computers and their users gets blurry, where hackers see the systems they've invaded as if they were cities in which they were pedestrians, where personalities can be up- or downloaded, where files look like tangible objects.

It will be a while before someone "out-imagines" this twenty-year-old book.