Stephen's Reviews > Neuromancer
Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1)
by
Eureka!...Hallelujah!...I've had a wondrous epiphany!
I finally get it...I have seen the light and understanding has dawned. Gibson’s manifest brilliance has revealed itself to me and I am left humbled and quivering in AWE.
After a rocky, tumultuous courtship that oscillated between respect and frustration through my first two readings of Neuromancer, number 3 became the CHARMing, rapturous awakening into a hopelessly devoted, head over heals love affair that I’m confident will last a lifetime. Now, with the ebullient fervor of the newly converted, I feel compelled to give testimony and proselytize the glory that is William Gibson’s singular masterpiece.
To begin...a small history.
INITIAL THOUGHTS:
My first exposure to this book was late in the 1990‘s, long after it had already spent over a decade as the magical source of all things cyberpunk. I came to it after having read several of its prolific spawn and decided it was time to visit the source code.
My first mistake...for “Neuromancer” is not the first cyberpunk novel or at least, that is not all it is...not even close. I viewed the novel within the narrow confines of the world that it had created and completely missed its true magic. I saw the novel through the fog of my faulty preconceptions.
I believed Neuromancer to be a jargon-heavy, inside joke by the techno-savvy and the computer literate as they thumbed their nose at the tech-tarded luddites who couldn’t see the pending future that lay before them. I saw this as a novel for the cyberspacially erudite, and those not coded for the new paradigm were to be left behind in the trash heap of history along with the abacus and the printed word.
For those who have had a similar reaction to this book, you...I...we were so, so, SO wrong.
It missed the point entirely. Neuromancer didn’t preach to the creators of the new, new thing...it wasn’t even, at its core, about technology...at least not in the instructional manual, code-writing sense of the word. William Gibson was more techno-stupid than techno-proficient and his interpretation of the interpretation of the future was the vision of an artist not an engineer. In fact, the few areas where Gibson had any knowledge about what he was writing are the areas that have become the most anachronistic.
What Gibson did see...with a clarity and exactitude that would make Nostradamus green with envy, was the path on which humanity was travelling. Increased dependance on technology, increased detachment among individuals and a blurring of lines between nations. And all of this led to that central, crystalizing vision of cyberspace, artificial intelligence and the world wide web.
And now we come to the reason why this book belongs among the MOST IMPORTANT WORKS OF LITERATURE ever created. Gibson’s inspired, non-technical vision of the future was the lightning that created the fire of inspiration for the generation that then made his vision come to pass. The teenagers and bidding technophiles of the 1980’s saw the “fictional elements” of Gibson’s novel and said, “holy shit, wouldn’t that be cool"...and proceeded to make it so.
From Neuromancer's memorable first words, “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel” to the final, mind-shattering conclusion of the mystery of Winter Mute...this novel is probably the greatest example of life imitating art that literature has ever known and our world would be profoundly different, for good or for ill, in the absence of this amazing work.
....WOW, sorry for waxing on so long, but like I said, I am the newly converted.
PLOT SUMMARY:
Our protagonist, Case, is an amoral, ex-cyber cowboy (i.e., hacker) whose former bosses destroyed his ability to enter the matrix (i.e., cyberspace) as a punishment for his stealing from them.
That is the "hero" of our little tale.
After this brief intro and some layered world-building involving Chiba City, Case finds himself recruited by a group of criminals who agree to “cure him” in exchange for working with them on a complex caper involving aspects of cyberspace hacking and real world breaking and entering. That is really the basic set up (though it gives you less than a hint of the real flavor of the book). The heist/hack is really comprised of two primary “jobs” that are both connected to a burgeoning artificial intelligence known as Winter Mute. That is really a bare bones description of the plot, but there are so many well crafted summaries floating around that I wanted to stick mainly with commentary.
MORE THOUGHTS:
Gibson’s prose is like nothing I have read before and it took me a while to come to grips with that statement. Gibson’s writing is poetry, not jargon. It's personal, internal and emotional, not cold and externally descriptive. It's the dark, fevered dream of a world where humanity and technology have been inextricably fused together with results both miraculous and profane. His prose is slick and jagged like a serrated knife; beautiful, breezy and hard-edged. His verse is color of gunmetal and electricity and the texture of anger spilling on a meadow of dashed hope and unearned rewards. It is as much about mood as it is about message. Here’s an example:
6.0 stars. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!
Winner: Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
Winner: Nebula Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
Winner: Philip K. Dick Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
Nominee: John W. Campbell Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
Nominee: Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
Nominee: Locus Award for Best First Novel
Nominee: British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel
by
![1413439](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1311616811p2/1413439.jpg)
Stephen's review
bookshelves: award-nominee-campbell, award-nominee-hugo, award-winner-hugo, multiple-award-nominee, multiple-award-winners, award-nominee-nebula, award-winner-nebula, award-nominee-philip-k-dick, award-winner-philip-k-dick, award-nominee-british-sf, locus-all-time-science-fiction-poll, award-nominee-locus, cyber-punk-prep-and-post, science-fiction, world-in-the-shitter, audiobook, 6-star-books, all-time-favorites
Oct 12, 2008
bookshelves: award-nominee-campbell, award-nominee-hugo, award-winner-hugo, multiple-award-nominee, multiple-award-winners, award-nominee-nebula, award-winner-nebula, award-nominee-philip-k-dick, award-winner-philip-k-dick, award-nominee-british-sf, locus-all-time-science-fiction-poll, award-nominee-locus, cyber-punk-prep-and-post, science-fiction, world-in-the-shitter, audiobook, 6-star-books, all-time-favorites
Read 3 times. Last read November 25, 2011 to November 27, 2011.
![Photobucket](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1380318108i/689516.jpg)
Eureka!...Hallelujah!...I've had a wondrous epiphany!
I finally get it...I have seen the light and understanding has dawned. Gibson’s manifest brilliance has revealed itself to me and I am left humbled and quivering in AWE.
After a rocky, tumultuous courtship that oscillated between respect and frustration through my first two readings of Neuromancer, number 3 became the CHARMing, rapturous awakening into a hopelessly devoted, head over heals love affair that I’m confident will last a lifetime. Now, with the ebullient fervor of the newly converted, I feel compelled to give testimony and proselytize the glory that is William Gibson’s singular masterpiece.
To begin...a small history.
INITIAL THOUGHTS:
My first exposure to this book was late in the 1990‘s, long after it had already spent over a decade as the magical source of all things cyberpunk. I came to it after having read several of its prolific spawn and decided it was time to visit the source code.
My first mistake...for “Neuromancer” is not the first cyberpunk novel or at least, that is not all it is...not even close. I viewed the novel within the narrow confines of the world that it had created and completely missed its true magic. I saw the novel through the fog of my faulty preconceptions.
I believed Neuromancer to be a jargon-heavy, inside joke by the techno-savvy and the computer literate as they thumbed their nose at the tech-tarded luddites who couldn’t see the pending future that lay before them. I saw this as a novel for the cyberspacially erudite, and those not coded for the new paradigm were to be left behind in the trash heap of history along with the abacus and the printed word.
For those who have had a similar reaction to this book, you...I...we were so, so, SO wrong.
It missed the point entirely. Neuromancer didn’t preach to the creators of the new, new thing...it wasn’t even, at its core, about technology...at least not in the instructional manual, code-writing sense of the word. William Gibson was more techno-stupid than techno-proficient and his interpretation of the interpretation of the future was the vision of an artist not an engineer. In fact, the few areas where Gibson had any knowledge about what he was writing are the areas that have become the most anachronistic.
What Gibson did see...with a clarity and exactitude that would make Nostradamus green with envy, was the path on which humanity was travelling. Increased dependance on technology, increased detachment among individuals and a blurring of lines between nations. And all of this led to that central, crystalizing vision of cyberspace, artificial intelligence and the world wide web.
And now we come to the reason why this book belongs among the MOST IMPORTANT WORKS OF LITERATURE ever created. Gibson’s inspired, non-technical vision of the future was the lightning that created the fire of inspiration for the generation that then made his vision come to pass. The teenagers and bidding technophiles of the 1980’s saw the “fictional elements” of Gibson’s novel and said, “holy shit, wouldn’t that be cool"...and proceeded to make it so.
From Neuromancer's memorable first words, “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel” to the final, mind-shattering conclusion of the mystery of Winter Mute...this novel is probably the greatest example of life imitating art that literature has ever known and our world would be profoundly different, for good or for ill, in the absence of this amazing work.
....WOW, sorry for waxing on so long, but like I said, I am the newly converted.
PLOT SUMMARY:
Our protagonist, Case, is an amoral, ex-cyber cowboy (i.e., hacker) whose former bosses destroyed his ability to enter the matrix (i.e., cyberspace) as a punishment for his stealing from them.
They damaged his nervous system with a wartime Russian mycotoxin. Strapped to a bed in a Memphis hotel, his talent burning out micron by micron, he hallucinated for thirty hours. The damage was minute, subtle, and utterly effective. For Case, who'd lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall.Since his involuntary exile from the matrix, Case has become self-destructive and suicidal and is hell bent on shuffling off this mortal coil but is unwilling or unable to accomplish the task himself.
A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and he'd still see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void… The Sprawl was a long strange way home over the Pacific now, and he was no console man, no cyberspace cowboy. Just another hustler, trying to make it through. But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he'd cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule in some coffin hotel, his hands clawed into the bedslab, temperfoam bunched between his fingers, trying to reach the console that wasn't there.in his "i wanna die" despondency, Case has been taking the most dangerous scores, the biggest risks, all along waiting for someone to put him out of his “meat-trapped” misery.
That is the "hero" of our little tale.
After this brief intro and some layered world-building involving Chiba City, Case finds himself recruited by a group of criminals who agree to “cure him” in exchange for working with them on a complex caper involving aspects of cyberspace hacking and real world breaking and entering. That is really the basic set up (though it gives you less than a hint of the real flavor of the book). The heist/hack is really comprised of two primary “jobs” that are both connected to a burgeoning artificial intelligence known as Winter Mute. That is really a bare bones description of the plot, but there are so many well crafted summaries floating around that I wanted to stick mainly with commentary.
MORE THOUGHTS:
Gibson’s prose is like nothing I have read before and it took me a while to come to grips with that statement. Gibson’s writing is poetry, not jargon. It's personal, internal and emotional, not cold and externally descriptive. It's the dark, fevered dream of a world where humanity and technology have been inextricably fused together with results both miraculous and profane. His prose is slick and jagged like a serrated knife; beautiful, breezy and hard-edged. His verse is color of gunmetal and electricity and the texture of anger spilling on a meadow of dashed hope and unearned rewards. It is as much about mood as it is about message. Here’s an example:
The drug hit him like an express train, a white-hot column of light mounting his spine from the region of his prostate, illuminating the sutures of his skull with x-rays of short-circuited sexual energy. His teeth sang in their individual sockets like tuning forks, each one pitch-perfect and clear as ethanol. His bones, beneath the hazy envelope of flesh, were chromed and polished, the joints lubricated with a film of silicone. Sandstorms raged across the scoured floor of his skull, generating waves of high thin static that broke behind his eyes, spheres of purest crystal, expanding...The anger was expanding, relentless, exponential, riding out behind the betaphenethylamine rush like a carrier wave, a seismic fluid, rich and corrosive.Yeah, I am a big, big fan. In case I wasn't clear about that before, I don’t want you to think I was being wishy-washy. Before i wrap up, here is one more example of the visual, visceral nature of Gibson’s verse:
Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you'd break the fragile surface tension of the black market; either way, you were gone, with nothing left of you but some vague memory in the mind of a fixture like Ratz, though heart or lungs or kidneys might survive in the service of some stranger with New Yen for the clinic tanks.A unique, important and truly amazing reading experience and it only took me three tries to realize it. DOH!!!!
6.0 stars. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!
Winner: Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
Winner: Nebula Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
Winner: Philip K. Dick Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
Nominee: John W. Campbell Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
Nominee: Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
Nominee: Locus Award for Best First Novel
Nominee: British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel
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Reading Progress
Finished Reading
Finished Reading
October 12, 2008
– Shelved
November 25, 2011
–
Started Reading
November 27, 2011
–
Finished Reading
Comments Showing 1-50 of 57 (57 new)
message 1:
by
Dave
(new)
-
rated it 1 star
Oct 21, 2011 10:22AM
![Dave Jones](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1286566818p1/4375479.jpg)
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![Mike Vasich](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1442531867p1/2555509.jpg)
![Apatt](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1349239948p1/2457095.jpg)
![Stephen](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1311616811p1/1413439.jpg)
Your welcome, Mike. As you can probably tell, this time the book just blew me away.
![Stephen](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1311616811p1/1413439.jpg)
Thanks, Apatt. That is very nice of you to say.
![Stephen](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1311616811p1/1413439.jpg)
Thanks, Mike. If you have a chance, listen to the audio book which has a great intro by Gibson and a superb afterword by Jack Womack. Really good stuff.
Is there a way to add this review to my "read" and "favorites_shelf" ;) fantastic review Stephen. I can't way to give this book a go.
![Stephen](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1311616811p1/1413439.jpg)
Thanks, Wesley. I really hope you like this. As I mentioned in my review, it took me 3 times to really fall for this one but it was well worth the early frustration.
![Jim](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1340192527p1/695116.jpg)
Tried to read it a few years ago & didn't like it at all. What was once so new & shiny has been overdone? Maybe it was the technical stuff that was so wrong. Maybe I should have pushed on a little further & would have gotten back into it. No, I think I'll just keep my great memories. It was a super thrill & should be remembered that way.
![Stephen](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1311616811p1/1413439.jpg)
I have had that same experience with books I read when I was younger and then found they didn't hold up to a later re-read. I agree that it is best to keep the fond memories when you can.
For me, this was the reverse. I liked in a "kinda sorta" way the first time I read it and now it's in all time favorite.
![Richard Derus](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1624978086p1/3920693.jpg)
I didn't like the book when I read it in the 80s because I wasn't a visionary, and I was extremely impatient with the descriptiveness that clanked and clunked. I will revisit it, since your response is so wildly at variance with mine, and I have learned to trust your taste.
![Stephen](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1311616811p1/1413439.jpg)
I hope I didn't cause any permanent water damage.
![Stephen](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1311616811p1/1413439.jpg)
Thanks...it took me a few tries to find the magic, but I am glad I stuck with it.
I just got this on audiobook as soon as I'm done with my current 2, it will be good-to-go.
![Stephen](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1311616811p1/1413439.jpg)
![Gary](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1451824431p1/1378222.jpg)
![Stephen](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1311616811p1/1413439.jpg)
Thanks, Mark. After finally drinking the Gibson kool-aid, my infatuation was running pretty deep when I wrote that.
![Stephen](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1311616811p1/1413439.jpg)
Thanks, Gary. I have a lot of catching up to do with Gibson as I had not previously been overly enthused with this book and so hadn't read anything else by him. Now that I have "seen the light" I am looking forward to reading more from him.
![Dave Jones](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1286566818p1/4375479.jpg)
Thanks, Apatt. That is very nice of you to say."
I agree. Your reviews are highly readable, easy-to-understand, and entertaining. That is much more than I can say for this book, however. Ever consider a career as a sci-fi writer? ;-)
![Stephen](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1311616811p1/1413439.jpg)
It's good, I can't believe this was published in 1984, meaning it was written earlier. Not knowing and if some technological references were blocked I would have deemed this written in the last 12-15 years max. Good stuff, I think this is the year of Science Fiction for me.
![Stephen](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1311616811p1/1413439.jpg)
Yes I did and I'm glad for it. I got to hear the intro and the afterward interview as well. I think this was made in 2004 from what I gathered. Absolutely wonderful. It's completely streamlined to the point that you could put a publish date of July 1rst 2014 and it works just fine. Exception being a the talk of a modem here and there but still at the core of it this was ahead of being ahead of its time.
![Lawyer](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1603672493p1/3025547.jpg)
![Stephen](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1311616811p1/1413439.jpg)
Thanks, Mike. It really, really is. This is one of those books I really struggled with because I loved the language and the glimpses of story but it took a while for it all to gel.
Thanks for the invite to Pulp Fiction. I just joined. Sounds like a group I might really like.
![Jim](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1668721790p1/1237540.jpg)
(guess I could go check)
(Count Zero - "to read")
Anyway, I liked them all pretty well.
Your review reminds me of my reaction(s) to 1984. I first read that at age 15 and read again at age 25. That last time, I had a enough more experience, that the novels end really (REALLY) shook me up - scary like hell.
Look for my "friend request".
Best
Jim Susky
![Badger](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1382806023p1/25060724.jpg)
![Jonathan](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1659847470p1/30927692.jpg)
![Pantha](https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_25x33-ccd24e68f4773d33a41ce08c3a34892e.png)
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![Rob](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1316132904p1/6321685.jpg)
![Sean Donnelly](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1490574758p1/51378336.jpg)
As I too first read this years ago and missed the point entirely.
I even found it kind of trite and somewhat redundant in the overdone world of post apocalyptic blade runner, meets Skynet versus an overly cliche group of annoying hipster hackers / anime knockoffs that eventually led to the arguably horrible 3rd Matrix movie,
[Case in point = the Zion rave celebration that almost made Return of the Jedi's ewok celebration Victory party somewhat forgivable.
SOMEWHAT]
again missing the point that Gibson not only covered this ground first, but he kind of created the cliche in the first place.
Phew. I digress.
Why hasn't someone like David Fincher adapted this into a watchable movie ???
![Dan](https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_25x33-ccd24e68f4773d33a41ce08c3a34892e.png)
![Tim](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1333975862p1/1816541.jpg)