Neuromancer

Rating:
Summary: It was the match from which you see the embers now..
Review: It immediately hit me like a ton of used car parts while the crunchy mountain of 1976 chevy seat covers i was standing on collapsed.

I have read it more times than I made love to my girlfriend of 20 years.

Rating:
Summary: not surprised
Review: I'm not surprised that this book is being adored by critics. Confusing and bad-written,with lousy descriptions and murky characters, this book really seems like it came from the future -where some other rules of writing aplly. "Neuromancer" is something like "Ulysses" of the sf genre. You know they call it "important", "master-piece" etc., but you also know you'll never like it because it is beyond of being readable and enjoyable.
When you read 200 pages of "Neuromancer" you still won't have a clue what is all about, who's fighting who, where, how and why? This book may pass only as a travesty of its own genre. Gibson is not innovatory writer, he's a bad writer.
If you want to read this book go ahead, but I promise you won't understand much.For masochist-type readers only!

Rating:
Summary: like a word bullet to the brain
Review: this book is not for everyone...but then again, most books are not.
if you undertake the reading of neuromancer, be prepared for a few things
first: gibson has a very descriptive writing style, which, if you are not accustomed to it, can be quite tedious to get through. he does not use the hard-science kind of description, where the innerworkings of every little thing are described, but he is rather descriptive
second: be prepared to be confused, or to re-read a little bit...there are sections of the book, where the scene shifts with no explanation, and it is not until pages later that you can derive why.
third: have an open mind. there are words that you may not understand...mildly in the anthony burgess way of using metasyntactic variables that have no real meaning, and are there as jargon which has not come into being yet.

if you can get around those things, you are in luck, as this book has a well written story...weaving in and out of some of the most fascinating landscapes imagined.
gibson shows us a possible (and for a change, not entirely post-apocolyptic) future, where the net has become a way of life, and interfacing into the net, are cyber cowboys.
case (our main charecter) was the best, or close to it...and worked for slightly less legitimate business folk, obtaining information for them (so he is a hacker), and made the mistake of double crossing them.
the burned out the parts of his nerve system he needed to jack into the matrix, so he has resorted to peddling drugs, and hustling on the streets...this is where the book begins

new and interesting charecters are added, and strange new places explored, as the narrative continues.

there is a very good reason this book picked up the big three sci-fi awards (hugo, nebula, philip k. dick), it is that good.

Rating:
Summary: Lick Forever Dog
Review: Neuromancer may be an "important" book, but I don't think it really was the first "cyberpunk" novel. That award would almost surely have to go to Alfred Bester's 'The Stars My Destination', a novel truly ahead of its time, and much better written and far more innovative than 'Neuromancer'. Still, despite all the hype, there are some interesting things here for the SF fan. Other reviews have covered every aspect of the plot--and probably ruined it for folks who ain't read it yet--so I just want to mention a way to make the novel more enjoyable. I recommend putting some mildly disturbing music on in the background as you read. Even though this is a mainstream work of fiction, I don't recommend something obvious like Nine Inch Nails. Instead, any CD by the band Godflesh would be appropriate, especially newer material that sounds less "technoish" and more like stoner rock. I combined the two--the book and the music--and it made for a pretty enjoyable, though slightly depressing, experience.

Rating:
Summary: In defence of Neuromancer.
Review: The criticisms found in the negative reviews seem to stem from such an utterly decrepit and inflexible notion of what literature should be, I am left to lament the inertia that these bigots make it their business to impart on society. Some of their brittle criticisms may have merit. However, most of them form some kind of low-brow smear campaign. For example, one should not be deterred from Neuromancer because it uses 'new words'. True Gibson uses some words we may not have seen before, but it is really quite simple to work out what they mean, and even if by some biological oversight you do not have the faculties to do so, it hardly detracts from what is a very well written and astonishingly original book.

The style in which Neuromancer is written is heavenly, heavenly in its darkness, its mutedness, the minute impressions it leaves here and there. And the burnt out wreckage of Gibson's cyber punk vistas are unsurpassed. It is remarkable how much this book achieves, little wonder therefore that it it may be a little difficult to follow in places.

Perhaps most astonishingly however, the book culminates in the creation of nothing less than a new mythology, a mythology of cyberspace. Most books are content with rehashing exisiting mythology, but Neuromancer gives us something new. And it certainly isn't presented in the horrible didactic dribble that one gets in the rather silly Snow Crash.

This is an important book, regardless of whether it is a good or bad one. Inconsequential and quibbling criticism should not be allowed to obscure this fact.

Rating:
Summary: required reading for some
Review: Many people do not like Gibsons writing style, it may be something that you either love or hate. But to appreciate this book, it is helpful to understand where Gibson was comming from. This book is not really about thechnology and it's impact on humantiy. It is essentially a post-modern extention of trends that Gibson saw in 1980's society. A world where soul is meaningless and consumerism is the absolute meaning. Technology is prevelant, but not the focus, which is evident by Gibson's refusal to tell us any details about the technology that makes up the world. He throws words and concepts around, but never describes them. He creates a confusing blur of gadgets and merchandise, which are not there for their own sake, but represent the lengths that our societies will go to to be entertained, and the lengths that the corportate world will go to to make money out of us.

Gibson's stlye is minimal at best, and confusing at worst. Confusion is prevelant in a world where concious beings are forgetting if and why they exist, and digital entities are realising that they do exist. Details are glossed over and we only ever see the surface of his world, Gibson leaves details to our imagination and presents us with fast and furious imagery. In the end it is all essentially meaningless. We don't really need to know what a sim stim is, its all throw away culture and gimiks. What is important is that we understand the emptyness of a world where marketing controlls our wants and needs, and technology exists to inject products directly into our body and minds.

If Gibson excells at anything it is his ability to see trends, to look at the world around him, and see where it will head if it is unchecked. In his projections Gibson is not a hopeful dreamer, he is a stark realist. Take away God and the Devil, take away warm humanist dreams, and what are you left with? This is what Gibson depicts.

Don't force yourself to read this book becasue it created the cyber punk genre. This book will chalenge you and make you work things out for yourself. There are no helping hands in Gibsons future, if you wish to survive you must learn fast and accept that the slightest mistake will end it all. What Gibson does give you is a rich, well thought out vision, in which you can explore concepts and discover your own reasons for being, find hope in a void, or numb yourself with the latest interactive soap opera. This book can be read over and over and you will always find something new in it. But, if you want a straightforward story that tells you what to think, then this is probably not for you.

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Summary: The Man Who Saved Science Fiction
Review: With Neuromancer, Gibson took an ailing, commercially suseptible genre, and reimagined it: shrouding it in mystery, filling each page with genre-breaking ideas, and letting it all sing out in dense, tactile detailing prose. Countless SF novelists since Gibson, from David Brin to Neil Stephenson to Dan Simmons have cribbed (some overtly, some covertly) Gibson's ideas, populating their novels with his inventions. And i'm all for it - that's what SF is about.

With Neuromancer Gibson begins his masterly way of telling a science fiction story. Rather than droning on for pages and pages about minute ways new technology works, the reader is forced to envision it for themselves based on one or two throwaway lines: "the buildings shot up into the sky, some tall enough to reach through the domes..." Domes? What kind of domes? What would they look like that high up? Rather than expand the descriptions, we, the reader, get to do it ourselves, making us complicit in the work; it's ours as well as his. IMHO, this is the reason Neuromancer (and the rest of the Sprawl trilogy) work so damn well.

The plot is nothing original, a simple quest/thriller plot in which to hang his world on. The characters, mere thumbnail outlines - cyphers through which we see his world. But in the end those deficiencies matter little, for what remains is what all the best SF is about: mystery, imagination-stretching awe - and really cool tech.

Rating:
Summary: OW! MY HEAD!
Review: Let me put it this way. I got this book in December of 2001 and I finished it around late March of 2002. Let me further add that I am a "chain-reader". While trying to read this book, I managed to finish at least five other books. In short, this book DRAGGED. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE books that try (or are) different, create strange new worlds. But Gibson's problem is that he just drops you in the middle of his world (that kinda sorta reminded me of Blade Runner, due to its darkness) and expects you to know everything. A simstim? What on earth is that? And to make matters worse, THERE'S NO GLOSSARY! Even DUNE and the WHEEL OF TIME series have glossaries and they're easy as dirt to read. In short, my head started hurting after a while because I couldn't bloody figure out what was going on. All the talk of "jacking in, jacking out" reminded me of the Matrix. Molly seemed pretty interesting at first, with her Wolverine-like retractable razorblade fingernails, but if the world she lives in can't be visualized, then it may as well not exist, leaving Molly--and the reader--in a big black void with nothing tangible to grab onto.

Perhaps if this was made into a movie everything would make sense and I could go back and read the book with a better understanding, but as it is, this book is downright confusing. But I know one thing, this book has proved that, even though it was the one to start the cyberpunk genre, doesn't necessarily mean that it's the best.

Rating:
Summary: This is IT
Review: So much has been said about this, so I'll be brief.
Whether or not this is the ORIGINAL book of the genre, which is only something debatable on vague rumors of short stories published in university papers and other such weak claims, doesn't really matter...because this is the definitive work of CP.
The Matrix. Terminator. Etc. Most everything after Neuromancer and some other Gibson works borrowed generously from them.
I would recommend this book whether you like CP or not...if you're already a CP fan, you've either read this, or you really can't say you know much about the genre. If you haven't, read it...even if you've read other cyberpunk books and didn't like them....this is the rare book that tarnscends it's category.

Rating:
Summary: Undoubtedly influencial, but annoying to read
Review: When a book introduces a new sub-genre, it obviously has ideas that are new, fresh, and exciting. However, on hindsight, Neuromancer is flawed in many ways. Clearly the whole cyberpunk genre arose from this book (just look at modern dystopic movies and computer games that borrow liberally from Gibson's language and plot points). For this reason, I would recommend the book. In addition, the story is actually quite good. Although I normally don't like or believe in futures this pessimistic, Gibson gave his world a kind of logic that allows belief.

Unfortunately, he then destroys the credibility at key points in the narrative. It is deeply irritating to me when an author sets up a self-consistent, logical (even scientific) world, and then decides (s)he likes an image or idea so much that it must be included, even if physically/scientifically impossible (Samuel Delany is the worst transgressor of this offense). I found myself rereading a number of passages in disbelief before concluding that yes, Gibson was indeed defying one law of physics while rigorously adhering to others at the same time. In addition, Gibson kept introducing new concepts and words invented from thin air, when there are perfectly acceptable words in use today. Okay, so he's trying to invent a new slang, but nowhere are the new words defined. You learn them from context, but the context may be several chapters away.

Gibson's narrative laziness crops up in his use of pronouns as well - there are passages that are simply incomprehensible because the author refers to all the characters (even those fighting each other) by pronouns. A typical passage would be something like: "She burst into the room just as she was getting up from the table." Is the person bursting into the room and the person getting up from the table the same? And if so, isn't it physically impossible to do both things at the same time? Thus, it was with mounting irritation that I approached the climax to the story.

Therefore, while I can recommend this book on an historical basis, or because it has an interesting plot (and the occasional interesting character), I do so with serious reservations due to the infuriatingly lazy writing style.