Rating: Summary: Overall original and interesting Review: If there was one thing Neuromancer has a claim for, it's influencing a ton of other media that's been produced since it was written. I imagine movies like The Matrix as well as a vast portion of anime would not be in existence if it weren't for this book. Overall I thought everything was done well and even though cyberspace is a lot closer to reality than it was when Gibson wrote this book, the originality of his ideas still shine through. So far so good, there are a couple slight problems though. About two thirds of the way into the book I was in love with it and couldn't put it down. There was a lot of mystery/underworld/cloak and dagger-type stuff intertwined up until that point and I was very entrenched in the plot. However when it's crunch time toward the end of the book it shifts to more action-oriented sequences to further and eventually end the plotline. This may not bother most people but for me I was getting used to how the plot was developing and this change somewhat turned me off. However at the end I can't argue that I was thoroughly impressed and fulfilled. Gibson describes the coolest world you'll ever read about and if you're a sci-fi/cyberpunk fan already you'll see some familiarities of Neuromancer's locales that remind you of other worlds you've encountered in sci-fi or anime. That's because it was all done here first and it shows with style. That is the main reason you should give this book a shot. The flow of the plot is hard to pinpoint at times but in the end it's worth it given all I've cited above.
Rating: Summary: First and Still the Best! Review: Yeah, I know, Gibson, the Godfather of Cyberpunk, blah, blah, blah...Yup, the genre isn't stylish anymore. (Kind of ironic for a book that's so dependent on style for its mood.) So what? It's still _the_ killer of the genre. Intense characters, a completely believable near-future alternate reality and a staccato delivery that just can't be beat. Love Lara Croft? Wait til you meet Molly! Stop wasting time and order the book.
Rating: Summary: Futuristic Review: It's a good book, but can get a bit boring if you are not highly into Sci-Fi..... Like a futuristic crime city....bizzare, odd.... but good....
Rating: Summary: Quite the Trip Review: Neuromancer is known mainly because of its influence, and while creating an entirely new genre is nothing to scoff at, there's so much more to this book. William Gibson uses his unique universe to touch upon everything from religion, business, technology, and sex in his amzingly efficient laconic style. Everything in this book is streamlined. In fact if he had wanted to Gibson could easily have made this book at least five-hundred pages if not more. This not only has the effect of moving the story along at an incredible pace, but adds a lot of "replay value". I've read the book twice and I've picked up many more ideas the second time around, and I still plan on reading it again. Perhaps the most intriguing thing about this book are the gnostic ideals inherent in Gibson's subjects. It adds an intriguing dimension to his world. Some readers may have difficulty with the bizarre nature of Gibson's writing style and world. Perhaps the best review I've seen of this book simply states: "If you like to expand your mind with..., then read this book". They gave it one star.
Rating: Summary: Among the best SF I've ever read... Review: What the hell is wrong with people from Winfield KS?
Rating: Summary: Best Ever Review: This is by far the best novel I've ever read. The characters seem the only purposeful motion in a neon-lit gray world built on the rubble of the past, where everyone else seems caught up in the incessant electric chatter, never to wake to their own lives. It is a pervasively melancholy world Gibson establishes, with the shining exceptions of reluctant anti-heroes. This is the beginning of a world used in the Count Zero/Mona Lisa Overdrive series, and it seems to be much the same universe as Burning Chrome and Virtual Light, Idoru, and his newest explore. Language, culture, and future are Gibson's toys. Let him play.
Rating: Summary: I like it Review: I like it, even if all the characters are vile. They are, at least three dimensional. It uses Mark Twain's patented technique of getting rid of uninteresting characters by having them fall in a well looking at fireworks on the fourth of July ;-) A good plot comes out in spite of that.
Rating: Summary: Sheer magic Review: Gibson is gifted in the way most other sci-fi writers aren't. He has a habit of coming up with plots and ideas which then come true. Almost everyone else has the Star Trek mentality whereby all the aliens are actually humans - but with funny noses and bad teeth. Neuromancer is best for its dark dub-reggae atmosphere. The plot is a bit wayward, but then when you have such new writing and such depth of imagination you smply don't care. Gibson set off the whole cyber-world genre with this novel. Anyone interested in the internet and its futuristic poossibilities should look no farther than neuromancer. Brilliant.
Rating: Summary: wonderfuuul , marvelouus..... Review: This book and burning chrome are the books that got me reading again. Although I read all the time when I was younger I had stopped reading entirely by the time I became a teenager. Until, in 1986, a friend gave me Burning chrome and then Neuromancer. After that I was hooked on reading again. Gibsons poetic and extremely visual style of writing reminded me that a book can be so much more than a movie can. Unfortunatley William Gibson could never write again after these initial novas of creativity. If you've read any of his other books first, before these two, put them out of your mind because its apparently not the same William Gibson, or mabey he got hit in the head or something? If the impact of neuromancer's concepts has been dulled and seems passe now, Gibson is as much to blame for it as anyone. He has made a career out of re-hacking the ideas from his first novel all through the nineties, and he has never been poetic again. My parents loved heinlin and tolkien, And people younger than me swear that snow crash is the last word ( which i tried and despised, go figure!). But to me and many people who read this for the first time in the mid-eighties, the decade of all those great one hit wonders, nothing was finer. And even today these two books are my most cherished and favorite stories ever told.
Rating: Summary: Freefall Future Review: Neuromancer, a dystopian cyperpunk genre masterpiece has had and will continue to have great appeal to post-modern sensibilities. A multinational entity, secreted and sinister, mysteriously agrees to re-endow a radically dissaffected, functionally disabled cyberpunk cowboy with the nervous system he needs to act in their interest, as only he can, to outfox a shape-shifting, omni-ambitious transhuman in the quicksilver cyber-realm where reality and dream meld. Sound intriguing? You bet it is! This baby birthed "The Matrix"! The crafting of it is superb. Seductive, racy, mind-boggling, suggestive, and visionary, the mercurial plot redefines the term imaginative. Still, anyone enamored of the "long split sandwich roll containing a variety of fillings" will find their "hero" entirely checked out of the grim future world author William Gibson masterfully conjures; checked out, apparently, with no intention of ever returning. Instead, we get Case, the amoral protagonist, a thief, a drug addict, a murderer, a talented survivor - and a loser. Moreover, the future he inhabits is a deeply dark, fully blown cultural wasteland dominated by an ever-evolving artificial intelligence that is recondite, impersonal, archly sinister, morally bankrupt, staggeringly powerful, and intent on absolute hegemony through the development and implementation of a breathtakingly advanced cybertechnology. It is a world whose internal logic compels as normative the responses personified by the anti-hero Case. Now, a vision of the future that justifies nihilism may not alarm or distract from your pursuit. Or, perhaps you've noted how the best science fiction proves time and again to be uncannily prophetic, and you may hope to insure your future survival by procuring a peek into one possible future. In either case, this is a must read. But if you are enamored of literature that extols classical values then you must needs seek gratification elsewhere, in the wrought language of a minority of the current singer songwriters, in the fireworks of a few modern day poets, in the "sprezzatura" of a handful of modern day wordsmiths, or in the numerous non-fiction genres that abound, like biography, philosophy, or scripture. The triumph of good over evil, the exaltation of the love of truth, or strategies and suggestions as to how one may attain to a genuinely ecstatic immortality, all are themes highlighted here only by their exclusion.
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