Neuromancer

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and visionary
Review: To the extent Gibson coined the terms "cyberspace" and "the matrix" in an era when personal computers still were about as user-friendly as angry wolverines, testifies to his vision. His writing stays taut, with electric descriptions. The first line alone sets the tone. Like James Ellroy, the king of crime fiction, Gibson pumps his narrative atop an amphetamine backbeat, taking jagged little stutters in its course to reflect a state of mind. But Gibson's writing is much smoother than Ellroy's ultra-hard-boiled telegraph lines. The feel is more like an atmospheric John McDonald, really.

Rating:
Summary: Say What?
Review: This is one of few novels that I have yet to finish. Gibson recants an uninteresting story filled to the bursting point of useless jargon. If entertainment is least on your list of priorities then this book is for you.

Rating:
Summary: The Worst Book I've Ever Read
Review: I simply don't understand the allure of "Neuromancer." Anyone involved with the publication of this book should take a refresher course in English. If William Gibson can get published, anyone can.

It isn't Gibson's story line that's necessarily bad, just his writing. His descriptive efforts are typically wasted because they are, for the most part, unintelligible. It was very hard to picture what much of anything looked like excepting, perhaps, the Sprawl. The whole novel just seemed like a first draft.

Hey, that which doesn't kill me only makes me stronger (and pickier).

Rating:
Summary: A majestically powerful vision of steel and silicon
Review: This book is, quite simply, the best science fiction book ever written. Not because it is the first cyberpunk novel, and not because it has won the Philip K. Dick, Hugo, and Nebula awards, but because it is simply a masterpiece that towers above all science fiction competitors. No, not just the ones that are placed in the cyberpunk genre, all of them. This book is very highly recommended, and is more entertaining, intelligent, and thoughtful than any other science fiction book I have read to date. Now if only they would make a movie out of it...

Rating:
Summary: songs of rust and neon
Review: It is saddening to see complaints about Neuromancer. Readers debating its genre or complaining that it doesn't make sense miss the fact that this exceeds SF. I was exited by the first paragraph of Gibson I ever read (Whole Earth Review) and have continued to enjoy his work since then. Bad SF authors tell dull stories with lasers. Good SF authors use their imagination. Gibson has used his.

He has cooked up a boulibasse (sp) of twentieth century culture, submitted it to the catalysts of time and possibility and served it up in beautiful beat influenced prose.

This seminal cyberpunk novel defies the dull limitations of mirrored shades and computerized nerd nihilism.The future may be darker than the "Jetsons" and "The shape of things to come" but it is not likely to be world of "Metropolis" and "1984". Those were all views of the future, imagined by people who saw their world taking a certain path into the future and imagined its progress.

Gibson lives in our world and sees our cultures path. His future is about corporations, globalization, information. All of which are aspects of a very likely future for us, in our time. Ironically, they are aspects of our time, which is what Gibson has always insisted he is writing about. As times change so do our views of the future. Gibson engaged his imagination and some world experience to make a projection a few steps ahead of the others.

Ultimately, however it is the beauty and poetry of his work that makes it special. He uses tools of poetry and description to summon up ghosts of emotion. Gibson doesn't really write science fiction, in some ways he does not even write speculative fiction. He writes fiction. He writes about people in situations that occur in every time. He writes "songs of time and distance" as the sculptor phrases it in "Count Zero". The lyrics of "Steely Dan" and William Burroughs mix with memories and bits of science fiction to portray an exotic world that springs forth from our own. Poetry about sunsets and meadows often don't connect for children of the internet. Descriptions of styrofoam chunks floating like icebergs in Tokyo Bay sometimes do. Gibsons world brings emotion to information and finds poetry in pollution. Retaining our humanity in the face of technology is the essential skill of the future and that is what Gibson does.

I first read Gibson because I liked Science fiction. I continue to read and reread Gibson because I like poetry.

(also try "Burning Chrome" and "Count Zero".)

Rating:
Summary: Fast-Paced Technothriller
Review: This book was by far the most entertaining book I have ever read. Even Fifteen years after its publication it is still cutting edge and new. The symbolism and stark realism in the book is beyond simple writing and aspires to poetry. This book is the pioneer of modernday Sci-Fi, at least any of the good Sci-Fi. It is not only an action packed high strung thriller it is a view of the world, our world from a different perspective. Everything inside is what's to come and what is already here. This is not a look into a dark near future but a look into our own present day lives. Bravo William Gibson... I loved it.

Rating:
Summary: a long and beautiful dive into dark future...
Review: Maybe the thing that I was a cyberpunk-fan already when I first read this novel played a part in this falling in love with Gibson I had. This is one of the greatest novels I ever read! The fictive future where "Les Miserables" try to cope with life in a world that gives a f..k about them. Read this one and fall in love;)

Rating:
Summary: Anyone calling himself a cyberpunk fan?
Review: I can tell all You good people one thing. "Neuromancer" is one of the best cyberpunk books I've ever read. And I've read a lot during my short life. I come from Poland. My country is only beginning to participate in an international life but there have always been people smuggling books into my country, especially during komunism. So don't try to tell me that Gibsons proze is to hard to read or that he uses a difficult language. I've learned english from books like "Idoru" or "Neuromancer" so all of you american cyberpunk fans can bagger off. If you don't understand Gibson - thought luck. But don't try to call yourselves cyberpunk fans. Not while I'm watching. If you are filling offended by these words contact me. We can have a chat.

Now, I want everybody to know that I personally find Gibson one of the greatest authors of the 20th century and "Neuromancer" is one of his greatest books.

Rating:
Summary: A gripping, edgy and tight narrative
Review: Gibson's tight prose reads like a surgical knife: clean and deliberate. Being completely immersive lends the text a believability completely lacking in other science fiction.

We feel, not see, Gibson's characters. In his constructed world of mega-corporations, ultra-high tech, megalopolises, and shadowy subcultures, human frailty, and strength, spring forth. The portrayal of the future here is both one to be feared and hoped for, one which may ultimately come to pass; a future populated with people whose reality is almost tangible.

Neuromancer wasn't written for the meek, the impatient, or the lazy. Gibson actively refuses to mollycoddle the reader, dropping him into a future which is at once bewildering, seductive, and contorted: both for reader and inhabitant.

Neuromancer is unquestionably one of the 5 finest science fiction novels of all time. It's vision is as appealing as it is frightening. The quality of Gibson's writing is unparalleled by any in his generation, possessing the vivacity of experience, in the clean prose that all modern authors strive towards.

Rating:
Summary: This book is overrated
Review: I tried to read this book with the thought in mind that it was the first "cyberpunk" novel. Perhaps I could then consider it to have merit based on the fact that it was a pioneering work in the genre. Unfortunately, I found it extremely difficult to muddle through, and it seemed that the plot would often go nowhere. It still gets two stars, though, because there were certain scenes where Gibson displayed his potential talent as a word artist. Just about any novel by Philip K. Dick is more entertaining than this, though.