Book: Neuromancer
Apr. 19th, 2010 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livAuthor: William Gibson
Details: (c) William Gibson 1984; Pub Voyager 2000; ISBN 0-586-05545-4
Verdict: Neuromancer is exciting and original.
Reasons for reading it: It's something of a classic and I was curious to know about the foundation of the cyberpunk genre.
How it came into my hands: Library
I very much enjoyed Neuromancer. It's a really exciting story, with characters I cared about even if they are very strange and not at all like me, and plenty of action and plot twists. I enjoyed the prose, though I can see why some might find it irritating. In some ways it's very traditional SF with lots of cool ideas, and enough technobabble to give an impression of a futuristic society but without much in the way of detailed world-building.
It's surprisingly undated for a near-future piece written in the 80s; there's one breathless line about "hundreds of megabytes of RAM" but in general it could easily be contemporary. That might be partly because a lot of newer books are directly influenced by it, admittedly. Its concerns are things like AIs achieving sentience and something that actually looks like a better projection of the future internet than many portrayals created by people who actually have the current internet to extrapolate from. Also lots of philosophy about what it is to be human and transhuman, with cyrogenics and uploading and that sort of thing. But it manages to avoid having the characters actually philosophize at you; the protagonist, Case, is not at all a reflective type, and the story moves along with plenty of pace, leaving the reader to make their own inferences.
It's very gory and violent, though there is a sense of detachment from that nastiness because it's presented as part of the general whizz-bang thriller dramatic scenery. Also there were some elements of the plot I didn't entirely understand; sometimes I had a slight suspicion that there wasn't much substance behind the flashy prose. Then again, it's one of those books that I read too fast because the plot was so exciting and I wanted to know what would happen next. I may come back to it at some point.
So yes, I can very much see where the hype comes from and why there are so many imitators. I know Gibson is fairly prolific; what, if anything, should I read of the rest of his oeuvre?
Details: (c) William Gibson 1984; Pub Voyager 2000; ISBN 0-586-05545-4
Verdict: Neuromancer is exciting and original.
Reasons for reading it: It's something of a classic and I was curious to know about the foundation of the cyberpunk genre.
How it came into my hands: Library
I very much enjoyed Neuromancer. It's a really exciting story, with characters I cared about even if they are very strange and not at all like me, and plenty of action and plot twists. I enjoyed the prose, though I can see why some might find it irritating. In some ways it's very traditional SF with lots of cool ideas, and enough technobabble to give an impression of a futuristic society but without much in the way of detailed world-building.
It's surprisingly undated for a near-future piece written in the 80s; there's one breathless line about "hundreds of megabytes of RAM" but in general it could easily be contemporary. That might be partly because a lot of newer books are directly influenced by it, admittedly. Its concerns are things like AIs achieving sentience and something that actually looks like a better projection of the future internet than many portrayals created by people who actually have the current internet to extrapolate from. Also lots of philosophy about what it is to be human and transhuman, with cyrogenics and uploading and that sort of thing. But it manages to avoid having the characters actually philosophize at you; the protagonist, Case, is not at all a reflective type, and the story moves along with plenty of pace, leaving the reader to make their own inferences.
It's very gory and violent, though there is a sense of detachment from that nastiness because it's presented as part of the general whizz-bang thriller dramatic scenery. Also there were some elements of the plot I didn't entirely understand; sometimes I had a slight suspicion that there wasn't much substance behind the flashy prose. Then again, it's one of those books that I read too fast because the plot was so exciting and I wanted to know what would happen next. I may come back to it at some point.
So yes, I can very much see where the hype comes from and why there are so many imitators. I know Gibson is fairly prolific; what, if anything, should I read of the rest of his oeuvre?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-22 04:29 pm (UTC)Also, I forgot to say, I really like your icon :-)