Neuromancer
October 6th 2006 05:12
Few writers can claim to have been as pivotal to a subgenre as much as William Gibson can in regards to 'cyberpunk'. Gibson virtually invented all the stylistic hallmarks of the genre, as well as coining many terms (including 'cyberspace') that have now become part of our everyday language. His early 80s work in fiction can be regarded as prophetic in this respect.
Gibson had written various short stories and articles that set about laying down the ground work for cyberpunk - a futuristic genre of science fiction that combines high-tech computer-based science with a noirish vision of degenerate low-lives and scum-filled streets. His first full-length novel exploiting this newly-emerging genre was 'Neuromancer'.
I had to read Neuromancer when I was at university, something to do with subjectivity or some nonsense like that. We also watched 'The Matrix', as they both brushed on the same kind of ideas... the Matrix owes a lot to Neuromancer and cyberpunk in general. Neuromancer actually gets points with me because it managed to be entertaining in spite of the high amount of technical jargon and futuristic slang. Sometimes, I felt a little lost when Gibson would go into these metaphysical tracts detailing the interface between humans and cyberspace, and other science-fictiony things of that nature. Don't get me wrong, I love good sci-fi, I'm just not the biggest fan of cyberspace-based fiction.
With this in mind, the parts of Neuromancer that kept me interested (and the aspects of cyberpunk in general) are the more 'punk' parts of it... the noirish writing style, the collision of low-life characters living on the margins of society, the clever expansion of our current modern culture into futuristic possibilities (for example, in Neuromancer, caucasians get their eyes surgically modified to look asian)... these are the things that drive the narrative for me. As a result, the actual crux of the story - the sentient artificial intelligence operating within cyberspace - didn't really do much for me. It probably doesn't help that I've seen it done so many times before in other texts (and that certainly isn't the book's fault - Gibson pretty much got there first!), but I guess that's just the way it is.
I'd recommend this book to anyone looking to see the start of a modern subgenre - to see where films and shows like 'The Matrix', 'Johnny Mneumonic' and 'TechWar' all drew their themes and inspiration from. Not many writers have done what Gibson did. And not that many more will be able to forge new territory like this in the years to come.
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