5 Responses for "Neuromancer Reviews"

1. Loren Eaton July 16th, 2010 at 10:28 am 1

   Review by Loren Eaton for Neuromancer
   Rating:
   Adapted from ISawLightningFall.blogspot.com

   The first time I tried to read Neuromancer, I stopped around page 25.

   I was about 15 years old and I’d heard it was a classic, a must-read from 1984. So I picked it up and I plowed through the first chapter, scratching my head the whole time. Then I shoved it onto my bookshelf, where it was quickly forgotten. It was a dense, multilayered read, requiring more effort than a hormone-addled adolescent wanted to give. But few years later, I pulled the book down and gave it another chance. This time, William Gibson’s dystopic rabbit hole swallowed me whole.

   Neuromancer is basically a futuristic crime caper. The main character is Case, a burnt-out hacker, a cyberthief. When the book opens, a disgruntled employer has irrevocably destroyed parts of his nervous system with a mycotoxin, meaning he can’t jack into the matrix, an abstract representation of earth’s computer network. Then he receives a suspiciously sweet offer: A mysterious employer will fix him up if he’ll sign on for a special job. He cautiously agrees and finds himself joined by a schizophrenic ex-Special Forces colonel; a perverse performance artist who wrecks havoc with his holographic imaginings; a long-dead mentor whose personality has been encoded as a ROM construct; and a nubile mercenary with silver lenses implanted over her eyes, retractable razors beneath her fingernails and one heckuva chip on her shoulder. Case soon learns that the target he’s supposed to crack and his employer and are one and the same — an artificial intelligence named Wintermute.

   Unlike most crime thrillers and many works of speculative fiction, Neuromancer is interested in a whole lot more that plot development. Gibson famously coined the word “cyberspace” and he imagines a world where continents are ruled more by corporations and crime syndicates than nations, where cultural trends both ancient and modern dwell side by side, where high-tech and biotech miracles are as ordinary as air. On one page you’ll find a discussion of nerve splicing, on another a description of an open-air market in Istanbul. An African sailor with tribal scars on his face might meet a Japanese corporate drone implanted with microprocessors, the better to measure the mutagen in his bloodstream. When he’s not plumbing the future, Gibson dips into weighty themes such as the nature of love, what drives people toward self-destruction and mind/body dualism. It’s a rich, heady blend.

   That complexity translates over to the novel’s prose style, which is why I suspect my first effort to read it failed. Gibson peppers his paragraphs with allusions to Asian geography and Rastafarianism, computer programming and corporate finance. He writes about subjects ranging from drug addiction and zero-gravity physics to synesthesia and brutal back-alley violence. And he writes with next to no exposition. You aren’t told that Case grew up in the Sprawl, which is the nickname for the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis, a concreted strip of the Eastern Seaboard, and that he began training in Miami to become a cowboy, which is slang for a cyberspace hacker, and that he was immensely skilled at it, et cetera, et cetera. No, you’re thrust right into Case’s shoes as he swills rice beer in Japan and pops amphetamines and tries to con the underworld in killing him when his back is turned because he thinks he’ll never work again. You have to piece together the rest on your own.

   Challenging? You bet. But it’s electrifying once you get it.

   I’ve worked by paperback copy until the spine and cover have split, until the pages have faded like old newsprint. Echoes of its diction sound in my own writing. Thoughts of Chiba City or BAMA pop into my head when I walk through the mall and hear a mélange of voices speaking in Spanish and English and Creole and German. Neuromancer is in me like a tea bag, flavoring my life, and I can’t imagine what it would be like if I hadn’t pressed on into page 26.

2. Travis J Smith July 16th, 2010 at 11:12 am 2

   Review by Travis J Smith for Neuromancer
   Rating:
   ‘Neuromancer’ is one of a handful of books/movies that I would pick to represent the science-fiction genre. Gibson succeeds on all levels here - I enjoyed the story, the characters, the settings, the technology, everything. Gibson writes about imperfection - he doesn’t gloss anything over or try to make it too pretty. The characters are flawed, and have weaknesses - just like in real life. They live in a gritty world - just like in real life. And around them all, is technology - just like in real life. ‘Neuromancer’ is the story of Case: a hacker-type, cyberpunk, whatever you want to call him. He makes hackers of today look like amateurs - he totally immerses himself into the machine. Washed-up and raked over the coals, he gets a chance at a come back, even if it isn’t on the most pleasant of terms.Read this book if you are a science fiction fan - if for no other reason than to see what all the hype is about. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

3. Jeff Rutsch July 16th, 2010 at 12:07 pm 3

   Review by Jeff Rutsch for Neuromancer
   Rating:
   I’m only an occasional reader of science fiction, and I’ve read even less cyberpunk - perhaps that’s why I can’t go along with all the reviews either calling this the greatest novel ever written, or a terrible hack job…they seem to be taking things within the context of the current cyberpunk scene, a scene I’m only vaguely familiar with. I enjoyed the book the way one might enjoy a big Hollywood movie. The characterizations and plot were shallow and taken directly from noir and pulp fictions, no doubt about it. However, for all the times I’ve seen noir plots, I still enjoy them. I think the author made things fun, and kept the story going along smoothly. The ending did fall a little flat, but cyberpunk as a genre seems to flop the endings, and this was at least decent.Also, I think it’s easy to appreciate the futuristic setting of the book. True, it’s a largely outdated view of the future, but it’s an interesting world, and it’s fun to see just how much Gibson got right back in 1984. I read this when I stayed live in post-bubble Osaka, and the book’s view of the fringes of an efficient high-tech society struck a chord with me.

4. Adam Scoville July 16th, 2010 at 12:55 pm 4

   Review by Adam Scoville for Neuromancer
   Rating:
   Neuromancer is the epitome and the antecedent of all cyberpunk fiction. In fact, with this book Gibson, seemingly quite accidentally, actually coined the term “cyberspace” (not to mention providing the original “matrix”). The characters are vivid and interesting, and the world that they inhabit is just as colorful, in its urbanized, futuristic way. Neuromancer is relatively brief, laudably free of some science fiction writers’ tendency to expound verbosely on their philosophy of the future. Even so, Gibson’s vision comes out in the writing, perhaps even more effectively. You will finish this book quickly. When you do, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive are just as well paced, continue in the same vein without becoming philosophical, and are refreshingly self-contained for science fiction sequels.

5. mirasreviews July 16th, 2010 at 1:44 pm 5

   Review by mirasreviews for Neuromancer
   Rating:
   Sometime in Earth’s future, Case was a computer cowboy who plugged his mind into cyberspace and navigated the vast network of the world’s computers, penetrating any computer’s security system for a price. But when he double-crossed his employer, the revenge inflicted robbed Case of his ability to “jack in” to cyberspace ever again. Case went to Chiba City, a center of urban decay where anything could be bought or sold, and acquired a drug habit to replace his addiction to cyberspace. One day a woman named Molly turns up in his “coffin” with a proposition. Molly is a technologically enhanced human with reflective night vision glasses implanted over her eyes and lethal blades beneath her fingernails. She is the muscle for a man named Armitage who wants the use of Case’s previous cyber-skills. In return, he will correct Case’s neural damage so that he can do the job. First they have to steal a construct of a deceased computer jockey. Then they fly to Istanbul to forcibly collect another member of their team, Peter Riviera, a sleazy character whose neural implants allow him to project subliminal messages into the minds of whomever he chooses. Then the team is off to a space station called Freeside where they will carry out their mission. The plan is to infiltrate the home of the secretive Tessier-Ashpool family, who own one of the world’s largest and oldest conglomerates. Tessier-Ashpool is governed by its original family members who rotate in and out of cryogenic state, and by two artificial intelligences. But the purpose of the mission and the identity of their employer are mysterious and may have epic repercussions.Published in 1984, William Gibson’s “Neuromancer” may not have been the first “cyberpunk” novel, but it defined the genre and gave birth to the term. At its most basic, the story of “Neuromancer” is a classic caper plot: a mysterious and imposing character assembles a team of individuals, each with his own talent, to break into a target structure. The characters of “Neuromancer” are, in fact, stock characters in a stock plot. But so are fiction’s greatest stories. “Neuromancer”’s choppy, brooding style that tells the story through the experiences of one person, Case, owes a lot to noir detective novels. Dashiell Hammett comes to mind. It is interesting to note that Dashiell Hammett’s style was born of alcoholism and urban violence and corruption in the 1930’s. “Neuromancer” was born of the urban decay and violence of the 1980’s, which was to reach a post-War high within a few years of the novel’s publication. And many of “Neuromancer”’s characters are drug addicts. History repeats itself, and it is those qualities that put the “punk” in cyberpunk. As for the “cyber” part, “Neuromancer” introduced us to “cyberspace” and was the first to describe a computer network in terms of a geometric “matrix”. Although the technology to “jack in” to computer networks has not yet come to fruition, and who knows if it ever will, the interconnectedness and interdependency of “Neuromancer”’s computers is strikingly similar to the Internet today. I think that “Neuromancer”’s instant cult appeal can be attributed to two things: It makes technology sexy. Molly was one of the first cyberbabes. And she is immediately attracted to Case, who is a geeky, pallid computer hacker. And “Neuromancer” describes a future on the fringes of society where urban alienation and technological alienation have combined to create a sort of existential hell, an idea that reflected the experiences and expectations of a disillusioned Generation X. “Neuromancer” is a science fiction novel that is still appealing and thought-provoking 20 years after it was published. And it’s influence on our language and on science fiction in film and print is beyond measure.