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Neuromancer

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Defines a genre

Neuromancer defines a genre. After reading it in college I immediately purchased every other cyberpunk novel that I could find and, unfortunately, none of them could live up my expectations after reading Neuromancer. Books like this are few and far between. Do not pass this book by, this is truly a classic.

Historic Si-Fi that began "cyberpunk"

This is one of the first "cyberpunk" books that really gets into a gritty version of the superconnected potential future.
Gibson is seen as the father of the cyberpunk genre, although he quickly divorced himself from the actual name since the space quickly filled up with a LOT of junk. What separates this from most of the stuff that follows is that there is an actual plot and some real penetration to the relationships of the characters.

If you remember that this was written in the early 1980's you can really appreciate Gibson's vision. He was very careful to not use too many actual numbers (like when he mentions that someone took the main characters RAM and sold it on the black market) which could have quickly dated the story. Think about it, back in 1983 it would have been crazy to think that portable computers could hold more than 4 GB and now that is commonplace. I still laugh when I watch Jonny Mnemonic and he brags about storing 2 GB of memory in his brain. I have more than that on my keychain.

Anyway, this is not casual si-fi. Gibson goes pretty deep into the science and the plot lines can get very confusing. I would recommend it for any si-fi fan but enjoy it for what it is. I don't think it would translate into a movie very well. There are just too many things that would date it when they locked the tech to what is available, and the relationships couldn't be developed in a 2 hour timeframe.

Bradman

...a ton of fabulous details, a sweeping plot, and a strange jittery energy that propels the reader straight to the ending

Henry Dorsett Case, called "Case", was once a star hacker. However, after stealing from an employer, in punishment they damaged his nervous system with a mycotoxin that renders him unable to interface and continue his work as a "console cowboy". Unable to do what he was once so good at, he becomes a self-destructive thug in Japan until his downwards spiral is halted by Molly, a "street samurai" with blades in her fingers and mirrored sunglass insets over her eyes, and Armitage. They offer Case the opportunity to be a cowboy again, if only he does what they say... Only, the scheme is a lot larger than Case could ever guess.

NEUROMANCER is a difficult novel for me to discuss. In many ways, I enjoyed the novel immensely, but in others, I became very frustrated. Of course, I immediately felt incredibly guilty for being frustrated with the novel, because it's considered classic. Not to mention Gibson is credited with anticipating and legitimizing the entire genre of cyberpunk. I can see why. NEUROMANCER has a ton of fabulous details, a sweeping plot, and a strange jittery energy that propels the reader straight to the ending.

What annoyed me was that even as I was racing through the book, I felt as if the world of the book was somehow blurring around me, becoming indistinct and hard to define and understand. I'm not entirely sure if this was because of the short, jumpy sections and chapters--or if it was because Case spends a good portion of the book under the influence of one drug or another--or if it's because Case himself doesn't have a very good grasp of what's going on a lot of the time... Well, I'm just not sure. But this aspect frustrated me, especially because I wanted to absorb the world of the book the more I found out and the more I read, but instead got the opposite effect. In a way, I felt like I was swept along without a handhold a lot of the time.

That aside, there were a lot of things that intrigued me and pleased me about NEUROMANCER. That "jittery energy" I mentioned? I've never quite felt that from a book before. I felt like I was along for the ride, hitting every bump along the way, and somehow experiencing the same haze of mystery and confusion that Case has to deal with.

I'm not quire sure how Gibson accomplishes that. It probably has to do with his hold over language. Entering NEUROMANCER was a little difficult for me perhaps because there's an entirely new vocabulary one must learn to understand the story. It's easy enough to sort out AI, coffin, razorgirl, street samurai, console cowboy, and ICE, but then I ended up second-guessing myself a lot of the novel. Did I really know what he meant by ICE? Console cowboy? And then there are a bunch of little jokes I'd have missed completely had I not just had a philosophy class that covered functionalism and minds/computers. A lot of the dialogue about the intelligence of computers/AI or Turing is enhanced unbelievably with a little background in that section of philosophy. That's something I'd have completely missed otherwise--and who knows what I did miss?

I suppose another drawback for me was the characters. Case and Molly are both incredibly interesting. In fact, I particularly loved Molly. However, I don't feel like I got to know either of them at all in the story. I am, for better or worse, a very character-driven reader. This story definitely was not character-oriented, but instead plot-driven. When a story is so driven by the plot, even if information is given about the characters and their motivations, they can still remain enigmas or mere pieces being moved about a game board rather than people. This was my greatest disappointment, because I really wanted to understand Case and Molly, but by the end of the book I had no better grasp on their characters than I did before.

Rating a classic is always hard. On one hand, it's hard to ignore what the book has done for the genre, but on the other hand, I really had some trouble enjoying the novel completely. In the end, I have to evaluate the novel on my own, personal enjoyment level and how impressed I was by disregarding all outside factors.

Amazing Book!

This book is one of the most entertaining and well written books I have ever read. Gibson uses imagery that blows me away in it's creativity and power. It's a very detail oriented book, so weak readers will not like it.

a Case study.

A rare science fiction book in which plot, style, and characterization work together. The ostensible story is the attempt of an advanced computer system, Wintermute, to free and improve itself, but the real theme is the dehumanizing effect of technology, as shown as Wintermute's human servants. One is an amnesiac who has literally been reprogrammed by a computer, a complete role reversal. Molly has gotten herself "enhanced" with the claws and eyes of a cat: human turning into animal. But the real showpiece is the third servant, Case. The story is mostly told from his point of view and reflects his near-dead personality.

The beauty of nature in Japan, theme of countless poets, is invisible to Case, as shown in the famous opening line comparing the night sky to "the color of television tuned to a dead channel". Case lives in the present moment with little interest in the future or the past; ergo the narration is full of events popping out of nowhere and startling both Case and the reader. Since he has no intellectual curiosity (other than the information that he steals) we only get perfunctory explanations of why anything happens, and often Molly or Wintermute need to explain things to him for the sake of the reader. It's not clumsiness on Gibson's part; it's a triumphant attempt to render a dehumanized personality, a true Case study.