s.penkevich's Reviews > Neuromancer

I was watching Jeopardy a few weeks ago when I first heard of Gibson (Technology for 200: “I coined the term ‘cyberspace’”) and the next morning on my commute to work I heard another allusion to the Canadian author on NPR. A few days later, someone recommended I read Neuromancer so seeing as the stars were seemingly aligning to place a Gibson novel at the top of my ‘to-read’ list, I went out and bought this novel. I am glad I did. Not only did it remind me that I needed to read more sci-fi from time to time, but it was just good fun. It recalled my high school days of first watching Ghost in the Shell, or Bladerunner or even Cowboy Bebop. While Neuromancer, which brought cyberpunk to the main stream, may have its flaws, it delivers a good punch to the mind and will definitely keep you entertained.

Gibson is clearly ahead of his time. As I learned from Jeopardy, Gibson coined the term cyberspace in a short story of his back in the early 80’s. He created futures heavily reliant on the internet and virtual reality far before either would be actualized and it is impressive how he wasn’t far off the mark. In Neuromancer, which was the first novel to win Science Fiction’s triple crown of the Hugo, Nebula, and Phillip K Dick awards in 1984, washed up hacker Case is given a second chance after a double cross lead his former employer to inject a drug that would disable him from ever jacking into cyberspace again. His second chance into cyberspace comes with a job veiled in secrecy involving a powerful AI and some sort of elaborate break-in. Teamed up with a program of a dead friends personality and a mysterious woman named Molly, who Case is able to ride along with seeing the world through her eyes as he can literally hack into her brain and become a passenger in her body (begin mind melt), Case slowly pieces the job together as the danger and stakes rise.

It may not come across as the most ‘fresh’ story, or set of ideas, but that is due to this novel being a major influence on countless books and films to come. Back in 10th grade English, I remember classmates complaining that Shakespeare was riddled with clichés. Our teacher countered this saying that it only seems cliché since Shakespeare was the one who created this cliché in the first place. The same can be said of Gibson and Neuromancer. Here you will find discussion of cyberspace and the Matrix - a full realistic programmed world where the AI program Wintermute often brings Case to have a private discussion, that pop up constantly in later sci-fi works. The anime Ghost in the Shell may have found influences in this work and has several connections, and the film The Matrix has some obvious ties to both of these. It was hard not to just picture the lobby scene from the Matrix when reading Molly’s invasion of Sense/Net. This isn’t intended to be a rip on the film, seeing as Gibson himself was quoted as saying that The Matrix was “an innocent delight I hadn't felt in a long time” and also called Neo his favorite sci-fi hero ever (Wikipedia as a source doesn’t fly in the classroom, but it’s always a good one-stop research shop). It is also amusing to note that when Gibson first saw Bladerunner in 1982, he damn near gave up on Neuromancer figuring his audience would just regard it as a rip-off. Thankfully he finished and received a much better critical reception than he anticipated. It should be interesting when they finally get around to making this into a film (imdb.com claims one is in the works for a late 2012 release, but apparently a film for this has been in some sort of works since the 80’s without any camera finally getting the ‘record’ button pushed) if the general population, especially those who aren’t well-read, will cry that it is a cheap Matrix rip-off. That would be some irony. Also, you will find the origins of many band names (the title of part 4 is The Straylight Run to name one) and other film names (if you shit your pants as a kid to Event Horizon you will find its titles origin near the end of the novel).

Gibson does an excellent job creating this cyberpunk futuristic world, complete with new drugs and drug addictions, a strange blending of futuristic weapons and old ninja weapons, space stations, weird gravitation, and many others. He completely immerses the reader in his world and does not bother with slowing it down and feeding it to you and instead just keeps ticking off his invented names and ideas and letting the reader put them together as they go. Ice, for example, first caused me to scratch my head and wonder “what the hell is ice” before realizing it is a sort of anti-virus firewall of sorts. This technique gave the novel a better feel than others I have read where the author keeps removes the reader from the world to gloat about how creative his ideas for something are by overly describing it and its uses. It is occasionally humorous how his 1980’s ideas of the internet come across compared to the actual modern day internet, although his Tron-like virtual world where you immerse yourself into a visual internet seems much more badass than the internet I am looking at right now. As a reader you have to suspend your knowledge of what the actual internet and computers are like to fully appreciate and believe in Gibson’s vision, but this is altogether not distracting and can cause some giggles like watching an old Planet of the Apes film.

The characters are a bit flat and Gibson doesn’t employ the best use of language, but we are reading sci-fi here, not The Sound and the Fury so this is forgiven. Also, the ideas are enough to keep your mind working and there are a few mind-bending moments (I loved the concept of The Flatline and when Case sees himself through Molly). The flat characters are forgiven because there is a space station full of dub-listening, ganja-smoking, shotgun-toting Rastafarians and Gibson’s use of dialect for them kept a smile across my face. I fully endorse picking this up despite its flaws. If you were a fan of anime or The Matrix, this will give you that same dorky joy (I don’t embrace my dork-joy enough anymore) and you can see the origins of many sci-fi plots and concepts. But don’t just take my word for it, I’d recommend reading Mike Sullivan’s or K.D.’s reviews (and literally any of their other reviews, always spot-on) and Time also included this on their "Top 100 of the century" list. I will definitely read another of Gibson's books in the future.
3.5/5