Neuromancer

Rating:
Summary: Euglogizing on a classic
Review: Although I have given this book top grade, I have to point out that not everyone will agree with me, it is not a book for your sterotypical grandmother. The authors favorite description of his work pointed out that it contains over 400 crimes, drug taking is rife adn when any normal people or figures of authority appear they are almost immeadiately killed. If you can handle that, you have no justification for not reading Neuromancer. If you have access to the internet, and anyone reading this self-evidently has, reading neuromancer will put into context what you take for granted. What shocked me was the fact Gibson talks about a worldwide network of computers (sound familiar?) but he wrote this in the early eighties. He is therefore one of the few science fiction authors that have done an Arthur C. Clarke and accurately predicted the future. The language of the book has warrented it to be studied at the highest level, but it is not above the understanding of the average person, 21st century slang is much in evidence but the book will draw you in, thrust these words upon you until you accept them as normal language. Action is extremely difficult to bring across in print to be both detailed and fast pace, Gibson achives the impossible, Neuromancer will get your heart racing so much it should carry a health warning. My advice to any free thinking, technophile is to put aside a weekend and be alone with this book. You'll forget that you don't live in the futuristic neon illuminated dangerous streets of Chiba. The power of a movie encapsulated in a book. Not to be missed. An undying classic.

Rating:
Summary: This book is a new FAVE!!
Review: The book came out in 1984 and grabbed readers in a place they never was grabbed before. The idea of the internet was loosely based on the this book. He doesn't know much about computers....but who cares? The book came out when DOS was having trouble running. The personal computer didn't exist in every home like today. Maybe now it may get some getting used to, but then it was just good old sci-fi. The book will transport you to a place that the future WILL become....so strap in, you may just learn something.....like how to survive.

Rating:
Summary: ¿perfect?
Review: I don't think anybody is wrong in this thread. You take from this book what you want, and leave the rest behind. For me this book changed the way I look at all sci/fi. Everyone will someday compare all cyber/future books to this one.

I've been out of high school(where I first found this treasure) for 10 years now, and I still talk to people about this book, just yesterday I talk to someone in an IRC, and they still knew quotes from the opening paragraph, "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel". What more needs to be said?

For those who don't like this book, you have to realise it's never going to go away, no, it didn't predict any real future's (like the soviets still being in power) But it laid the foundation for our imaginations to grow! ~~just my .02ç~~

Rating:
Summary: Gibson's Best
Review: What else need be said than to scroll down this screen and see how many people still feel this passionately about a book that was published thirteen years ago. My taste in sci-fi has changed drastically since first reading this book, but it's as good a read now as it was then. Like seeing Bladerunner for the third time. Although he came close with both 'Count Zero' and 'Mona Lisa Overdrive', I doubt Gibson can ever repeat this level of performance, but I read every new work with anticipation. No other writer I know paints a scene quite the same way. For the same reason as I hope they never make 'Bladerunner II' I pray they don't ever try to visually rape this book by trying to condensing it into a two-hour movie. And I don't want to have to start picturing Case as looking like Canoe Reeves, either.

Rating:
Summary: A classic, like 1984, Brave New World, & The Time Machine.
Review: Few books have enjoyed a more enviable reputation than William Gibson's first novel, Neuromancer-possibly the ultimate cult novel. It's the only novel ever to win the science fiction triple crown: the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick awards, science fiction's highest honors.

Early in the story Case, the hero, stares into a shop window at a display of shiriken, or ninja stars, deadly martial arts weapons that can be tossed like playing cards: "They caught the street's neon and twisted it, and it came to Case that these were the stars under which he voyaged, his destiny spelled out in a constellation of cheap chrome." Those words contain the essence of Gibson's writing style: in a single striking image, he transforms a flat metal object into a philosophical abstraction. Just as impressive is his phenomenal attention to detail. Gibson seems to know absolutely everything about metals, plastics, electronics, explosives, weapons, computers, physics, space travel, biosurgery, Japanese culture, spies, corporations, politics, governments, etc.

Yet, despite the astounding occurence of technological references that crowd every page of his novels, Gibson admits he fakes a lot of what he writes about technology. "This may be a suicidal admission, but most of the time I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to the scientific or logical rationales that supposedly underpin my books."

Nevertheless, Gibson's technological landscapes are strangely compelling creations, as in this description from Neuromancer: "Cyberspace. A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light arranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights receding. . . ."

His best characters are three dimensional and, even more important, really interesting. Here's a description of the hero: "Case was twenty-four. At twenty-two, he'd been a cowboy, a rustler, one of the best in the Sprawl. He'd been trained by the best, by McCoy Pauley and Bobby Quine, legends in the biz. He'd operated on an almost permanent adrenaline high, a byproduct of youth and proficiency, jacked into a custom cyberspace deck that projected his disembodied consciousness into the consensual hallucination that was the matrix. A thief, he'd worked for other, wealthier thieves, employers who provided the exotic software required to penetrate the bright walls of corporate systems, opening windows into rich fields of data. He'd made the classic mistake, the one he'd sworn he'd never make. He stole from his employers. He kept something for himself and tried to move it through a fence in Amsterdam. He still wasn't sure how he'd been discovered, not that it mattered now."

From there, Gibson plunges the reader deeper into the gritty underworld of a future with seemingly no future-a civilization controlled by greedy corporate structures, devoid of natural beauty because the eco systems are all failing and ordinary animals, like horses, have become extinct to be replaced with virtual constructs of the horse. Gibson's future world is akin to Ridley Scott's vision of Los Angeles in the movie, Blade Runner. It seems likely that Scott's movie, which came out two years before the novel, had heavily influenced Gibson.

The characters in Neuromancer alter their appearance with surgery and implants and alter their consciousness with simstims, a kind of movie in which the viewer participates in the experience with all five senses, similar to the feelies in Huxley's Brave New World. The following is a typical example of a Gibson character who customizes his own nervous system: "Julius Deane was one hundred and thirty-five years old, his metabolism assiduously warped by a weekly fortune in serums and hormones. His primary hedge against aging was a yearly pilgrimage to Tokyo, where genetic surgeons re-set the code of his DNA, a procedure unavailable in Chiba. Then he'd fly to Hong Kong and order the year's suits and shirts. Sexless and inhumanly patient, his primary gratification seemed to lie in his devotion to esoteric forms of tailor-worship."

Gibson introduces some fascinating new technological cultural artifact on nearly every page. But he does it so smoothly that it never seems obtrusive. If people do things like wear computer jacks surgically implanted into their skulls so they can walk around in a virtual reality directly wired to their brains, it's always because it furthers the plot in some way. Case's girlfriend and sidekick, Molly, wears mirrored glasses permanently grafted into her skin, and she has razors hidden under her nails that slide out at will when she moves into combat.

For some reason, a mysterious personage has chosen Case to lead a corporate raid that twists and turns down a labyrinth-half virtual, half real-of cosmic significance. Even without the sci-fi plot, the novel works well as a mystery, an old fashioned adventure and love story, a road epic, a suspense thriller, and as a philosophical commentary on man's relationship to God. Case's adventures ultimately take him to Stray Light, a weird, almost medieval structure floating in space like a satellite around the planet where he comes face to face with an AI (artificial intelligence). In an earlier passage, Case is in a kind of space port where he first encounters the AI, Wintermute:

He fumbled through a pocketful of lirasi, slotting the small dull alloy coins one after another, vaguely amused by the anachronism of the process. The phone nearest him rang.
Automatically he picked it up.
"Yeah?"
Faint harmonics, tiny inaudible voices rattling across some orbital link, and then a sound like wind.
"Hello, Case."
A fifty-lirasi coin fell from his hand, bounced, and rolled out of sight across Hilton carpeting.
"Wintermute, Case. It's time to talk."
It was a chip voice.
"Don't you want to talk, Case?"
He hung up.
On his way back to the lobby he had to walk the length of the ranked phones. Each rang in turn, but only once, as he passed.

Gibson's one stylistic problem seems to be a certain vagueness that occasionally obscures the story. This defect is fairly common in science fiction writers for some reason, though his friend and collaborator, Bruce Sterling, never seems guilty of it. Taken individually, each sentence in Neuromancer is carefully sculpted and diamond clear, but taken together, they can occasionally add up to a lot of murk. The novel also leaves certain questions unanswered that may or may not come clear from repeated readings. For example, we never learn why Case was selected for the job when other, possibly better, "cowboys" could have been had for much cheaper. Gibson, like some European film makers, rarely crosses the i's and dots the t's.

So far, Neuromancer hasn't been made into a movie. From almost the first page, I realized that no living director could possibly do it justice like Ridley Scott, the world's greatest science fiction movie director. But Scott says he's tired of directing sci-fi movies and refuses to make them. I'd like to see him get interested in directing it before someone inferior botches the job. Does anyone out there know him personally?

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful work of Art.
Review: First, let's get the complaints of negative reviewers out of the way. This is not a book of "predictions," so throw away the whiny nagging about how things look now (the jury's still out, by the way, and I don't see "Neuromancer" being seriously contradicted), and whether a few self-appointed arbiters of plausibility give it their stamp of approval. They have no better idea than you or I or Gibson does of what info- and bio-tech will look like in a hundred years. I don't care if Gibson ever admitted that "he knows nothing about computers." If you were looking for a factual book on computer technology, you were in the wrong aisle. Go back to your "Windows 95 Secrets" or Visual Basic primers. [If you want a truly entertaining and well-written techie book, try "Programming Perl" by Larry Wall.] Poor characterization? Again, missing the point--the book is not meant as an exploration of personal development. The characters are types, ciphers that emerge from the setting, creatures of the world Gibson constructs. They are more mythic than human, iconic, and need to be approached as such. Yes, the book's themes and ideas have been foreshadowed, e.g., by Delany, Brunner, Burroughs (William), Fritz Lang, etc. So what? This in no way detracts from Gibson's unique synthesis, vision, and consistent allegorical impulse. And the book is rife with allegory. Gibson masterfully employs our post-modern technological experience to revive older concepts that science and technology had seemingly laid to rest: ghosts, souls, the afterlife, omniscience, demons, possession, zombies, werewolves, spells--and this is by no means exhaustive--without anymore hint of metaphysical mumbo-jumbo than a DVD player or a packet sniffer. He focuses on the fluidity of reality suffused with technology, the information-tech foundations of human perceptions, consciousness and physiognomy. And through his clear, evocative writing, always sketching that one perfect detail, he reminds that, as we read, we hold in our hands the original (and still ultimate) "virtual reality system." I believe that, at some level, much of the book is a comment on the reader-writer interaction: the reader "jacks in" to the author's world; the writer "transports" the reader by tapping directly into the reader's sensory memories. If Case is passive, then, we must admit, so are we. The myriad ingenious "predictions," as fascinating and debatable as they might be, are simply means to these ends. Let's face it, the only reason why some people feel the need to so vehemently dispute Gibson's vision is because it IS so captivating and seductive, and they think they need to set the record straight (about 22nd-century technology!).

Rating:
Summary: Great book, but not perfect I admit.
Review: Those of you who slammed the book because Gibsons vision of the future does not match your own are fools. Gibsons vision is the background to the book. It is an intelligent background, with imagination and a character that had never been seen before.

The books characters ARE weak, but you shouldn't read the book for the characters. It had many good points to it. The plot is engaging and fast moving. The book carries remarkable psychological insight (and if you missed that then you haven't read the book properly). It is about ideas and what might possibly be. The book is not saying 'this is how it is gonna be', it's saying it could easily go this way, look at the way we're moving now. But on top of that the book is most definately not a warning either, it is merely a clever look at the future, that has wit, depth, intelligence and fast paced action just to keep you interested.

You should admire Gibson for his ideas. The book is crammed full of new innovative ideas, as are most of his books (none so much as Neuromancer though). It offers an action plot, with an in-depth background and piles of imagination, that also says something about us without trying to preach (his visions are suductive not repulsive).

All books have their critics, but I suggest you re-read Gibsons book and try to see what I'm saying. That is, if you WANT to try and like it.

Rating:
Summary: All style, no substance
Review: William Gibson may have fathered the "cyberpunk" style with "Neuromancer," I'll not get involved in that argument. But he has created little else with this novel. Neromancer sports clumsily created characters with little or no personality. (Unless cute speech characteristics count as personality.) Plot? For the first 1/2 of the book there is no plot...just a patchwork of picaresque scenes. Once Gibson finally decides to move the plot forward, he immediately falls into SF cliche.

I was quite disappointed with this book, as I do enjoy Neal Stephenson's and Bruce Boston's works and decided to give the "father of cyberpunk" a try.

I guess if great style is your thing (a la Tom Robbins or, dare I say :-) Robert Stone) you might get something out of this, but if real characters and an inventive plot are among the things you can't do without, pass this one by.

Rating:
Summary: Visionary
Review: Whatever you think of Gibson's writing style (I think he's terrific), this guy envisioned stuff that we are only realizing now. He basically created our present and probably our future. I only read it last year but I can imagine that had I read it 10 years ago or more I would have laughed at his vision. Now I can only cry.

Rating:
Summary: Up there with the Blade Runner...
Review: It is maybe disturbing to think that the bright light of a new dawn carries us closer each day to the reality of Neuromancer. But to Gibson's characters, this is real life. They are dealing with it to the best of their abilities, striving against unbelievable odds to do the impossible, just for the sake of self-preservation. Case, Molly and the others live into a world of no choice, spiralling into chaos and self-destruction, the end of human life and culture and the rise of the machine as part of man and man as part-machine. In this astounding novel, the anti-heroes perform heroics, the sun shines with bleak light, Earth is sprawl-slums and mega-riches, and a new life-form is born under the neon cybersun of the Matrix. Gibson's writing style is mesmerizing - one can almost smell the choking vapors in the air, taste the artificial food, see cyberspace with his own eyes, even float in zero-G labyrinths. The first time I read Neuromancer, I began at the evening news and as I got to the last chapter I realized it was light outside. Squinting against the warm rays, I was relieved. The sky was a bright blue.