June 3, 2022
Wow.
This is a wild ride. If you like Philip K. Dick’s writing and wondered what would happen if you extended his vision into the not too distant future, if you liked Bladerunner, if you liked The Matrix … and even if you like all the film and fiction that has made an attempt to be any of the above, you will love Neuromancer.
William Gibson said that while writing Neuromancer he went to see the Ridley Scott film Bladerunner and thought that his ideas for the book were hopelessly lost, that everyone would naturally assume that he had taken all of his queues from the film. I have written that Bladerunner was that most rare of accomplishments, a film that was as good or better than the book. Bladerunner was of course patterned loosely after Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick. One reason why Bladerunner was as good was because Scott’s vision was so different from Dick’s. Bladerunner was a distinctly cyberpunk vision, whereas Dick’s was dystopian but not necessarily cyberpunk.
Neuromancer has been called the definitive, benchmark novel of the cyberpunk sub-genre. Gibson takes his influences from Escape from New York, Anthony Burgess and from Phillip K. Dick, among others, but then goes to a wholly different level. It can even be said that Gibson, who in turn heavily influenced the producers of The Matrix, is a bridge between the older 60s post-modernist dystopian science fiction with the more modern, computer driven, angst ridden world weariness that has represented artists since the 80s. Neuromancer defined the genre and I could hardly go a few pages without noticing how it had influenced literature and film since.
As a book, this was excellent, I could not put it down. Gibson creates an edge, a tension that exists throughout the narrative that grabs the reader and won’t let him go. Gibson is the literary successor to Phillip K. Dick, an observer who does not skip ahead to a distant dystopian rebirth, but instead chronicles the ugly fall itself.
******* 2018 re-read
As I type these words here in June of 2018, Goodreads says that I have rated over 1400 books and have reviewed over 1300. Of these I have listed six as being my all-time favorites. After thinking about Neuromancer for years and having just re-read it, almost literally not putting it down, I am adding this to my very short list of beloved books.
The PKD allusions are still there as is the Bosch-esque attention to detail – this is a kaleidoscope of sights and sounds and ideas coming at you at ludicrous speed. There are also the references to Bladerunner and Escape from New York and this makes me think of the shared consciousness and Jungian gestalt cultural observations that Gibson was tapping into in the early eighties. What was going on in this time that made such talented artists as Ridley Scott and John Carpenter also envision such a world?
What caught my eye this time around was the noir elements to the story and Gibson’s writing, heavy but fast moving as it is, tunes into a retro style that you can almost hear Harrison Ford’s Deckard narrating as Case gets to the bottom of the twin AI mystery.
At it’s heart, this is of course THE cyberpunk novel, honorable mention to Neal Stephenson’s 1992 Snow Crash. Gibson was jacked into a time and space phenomena that was just below the subconscious and so struck a chord with so many. But it is also a timeless speculative fiction novel in the sense that it depicts human isolation and technological alienation that Yevgeny Zamyatin and E.M. Forster wrote about decades before. Necromancer’s influence on the Matrix films makes it the Godfather of post-modern techno-punk thrillers.
A must read.
*** 2022 reread –
As before I was quickly taken in to Gibson’s world and carried through the story on his tightly packed prose and then dumped unceremoniously at the end, gasping for breath and again impressed with this unique literary experience that is Neuromancer.
If this were music it would be a wall of sound, a cacophony of noise that at first seems chaotic and yet the listener is soon absorbed into the composition, identifying and distinguishing various melodies and themes within the complex score.
I think I've wondered this before but will formally wonder now and here: was Gibson inspired by the writings of John Varley? There seems to be some similarities in style and theme and if so I like Varley even more.
Case and Molly are archetypes now, the anti-hero and the tech femme fatale. Wintermute and Neuromancer are twin godfathers of the Matrix and all the stories that fall into that genre.
Cannot believe that I let four years go by between readings and this may / should be an annual reread for me.
This is a wild ride. If you like Philip K. Dick’s writing and wondered what would happen if you extended his vision into the not too distant future, if you liked Bladerunner, if you liked The Matrix … and even if you like all the film and fiction that has made an attempt to be any of the above, you will love Neuromancer.
William Gibson said that while writing Neuromancer he went to see the Ridley Scott film Bladerunner and thought that his ideas for the book were hopelessly lost, that everyone would naturally assume that he had taken all of his queues from the film. I have written that Bladerunner was that most rare of accomplishments, a film that was as good or better than the book. Bladerunner was of course patterned loosely after Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick. One reason why Bladerunner was as good was because Scott’s vision was so different from Dick’s. Bladerunner was a distinctly cyberpunk vision, whereas Dick’s was dystopian but not necessarily cyberpunk.
Neuromancer has been called the definitive, benchmark novel of the cyberpunk sub-genre. Gibson takes his influences from Escape from New York, Anthony Burgess and from Phillip K. Dick, among others, but then goes to a wholly different level. It can even be said that Gibson, who in turn heavily influenced the producers of The Matrix, is a bridge between the older 60s post-modernist dystopian science fiction with the more modern, computer driven, angst ridden world weariness that has represented artists since the 80s. Neuromancer defined the genre and I could hardly go a few pages without noticing how it had influenced literature and film since.
As a book, this was excellent, I could not put it down. Gibson creates an edge, a tension that exists throughout the narrative that grabs the reader and won’t let him go. Gibson is the literary successor to Phillip K. Dick, an observer who does not skip ahead to a distant dystopian rebirth, but instead chronicles the ugly fall itself.
******* 2018 re-read
As I type these words here in June of 2018, Goodreads says that I have rated over 1400 books and have reviewed over 1300. Of these I have listed six as being my all-time favorites. After thinking about Neuromancer for years and having just re-read it, almost literally not putting it down, I am adding this to my very short list of beloved books.
The PKD allusions are still there as is the Bosch-esque attention to detail – this is a kaleidoscope of sights and sounds and ideas coming at you at ludicrous speed. There are also the references to Bladerunner and Escape from New York and this makes me think of the shared consciousness and Jungian gestalt cultural observations that Gibson was tapping into in the early eighties. What was going on in this time that made such talented artists as Ridley Scott and John Carpenter also envision such a world?
What caught my eye this time around was the noir elements to the story and Gibson’s writing, heavy but fast moving as it is, tunes into a retro style that you can almost hear Harrison Ford’s Deckard narrating as Case gets to the bottom of the twin AI mystery.
At it’s heart, this is of course THE cyberpunk novel, honorable mention to Neal Stephenson’s 1992 Snow Crash. Gibson was jacked into a time and space phenomena that was just below the subconscious and so struck a chord with so many. But it is also a timeless speculative fiction novel in the sense that it depicts human isolation and technological alienation that Yevgeny Zamyatin and E.M. Forster wrote about decades before. Necromancer’s influence on the Matrix films makes it the Godfather of post-modern techno-punk thrillers.
A must read.
*** 2022 reread –
As before I was quickly taken in to Gibson’s world and carried through the story on his tightly packed prose and then dumped unceremoniously at the end, gasping for breath and again impressed with this unique literary experience that is Neuromancer.
If this were music it would be a wall of sound, a cacophony of noise that at first seems chaotic and yet the listener is soon absorbed into the composition, identifying and distinguishing various melodies and themes within the complex score.
I think I've wondered this before but will formally wonder now and here: was Gibson inspired by the writings of John Varley? There seems to be some similarities in style and theme and if so I like Varley even more.
Case and Molly are archetypes now, the anti-hero and the tech femme fatale. Wintermute and Neuromancer are twin godfathers of the Matrix and all the stories that fall into that genre.
Cannot believe that I let four years go by between readings and this may / should be an annual reread for me.
