Neuromancer
by William Gibson
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Book Summary Information
Author: William GibsonIntroduction: William Gibson
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-11-02
ISBN: 0441012035
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Ace Hardcover
Book Reviews of Neuromancer
Book Review: The Digital Future Frontier, from the Inventor of Cyberspace
Summary: 5 Stars
I came to this book via the Time magazine list of the 100 greatest English-language novels since 1923. I'd heard the title a few times, always positive comments on the book, but never really thought about picking it up. I bought a number of others from the Time list, and I'm working my way through the pile.
Yes, I'll cop to it; I'm a nerd, always have been. But having read my share of Asimov, Heinlein, Dick and Herbert, I've never really been that into sci-fi. In fact, this is my first sci-fi novel in very many years.
That being said, in many ways this isn't really a sci-fi novel, at least that's how I see it. It's a cool, hot, pounding story of a near-future, told with great attention to detail.
The hardest part of ingesting this book is remembering that it was written in 1984. As such, it is a visionary masterpiece, laying out 20 years ago where we were headed as a digital society, and in very many ways, exactly where we have ended up and where we likely are going.
Just a few pages in Johnny Mnemonic came instantly to mind, and I found out only by checking the next day that this was a Gibson original--go figure.
This novel is post-Blade Runner (despite Gibson's denial of its influence), and although this book give us "cyberpunk," it's arguable that Ridley Scott's classic really started it all, with the dark, rain-soaked thoroughly digitally-infested culture completing the prognosticative canon of Heinlein and Dick et al. But not to take away from Gibson in the least; he is offering up a lot here, and it all holds together extremely well.
I kept wondering throughout: why hasn't this been made a movie yet? CGI is definitely mature enough now to take on the visuals this story would require. Well, there's enough saga about that, too, with a movie all set for 2011, or then again, maybe not. Read all the gossip somewhere else.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. As a story--outside of its enduring significant cultural influence, lexicological contributions, and highly accurate vision--it reads well, quick and easy to follow. This is not a long book, and the story gets up and moves out. The story is not quite a quest, but it's a mystery that offers sex and violence, ranges quickly across a constantly fascinating physical landscape, and for those inclined, offers an incredible view of what electronic intelligence and the ephemeral realm it inhabits will become.
On the downside, the Beat-like prose with its stream of consciousness flow and unique slang, and a lot of non-standard grammatical constructs and terms could throw a reader expecting something more. Lots of sentences begin without subject or its pronoun, the narrative serving as an internal monologue; it's the same with the dialog, which to my mind is highly realistic. One reviewer has mentioned "unexplained jargon," and I can see this as a legitimate beef. Most of the jargon is very clearly defined in context immediately. There are some terms, though, that are sly cultural or technological references, and if you aren't familiar with the basis, then you really are lost, with the only hope being to see the term used again to pull its meaning.
What really made this book for me is the Jack Womack epilogue, really a short essay on how Gibson created cyberspace. It started off as a fawning note on how incredibly great Gibson is, but when I was done with its 16 pages, I'd written down Womack's name, with full intent to read some of his work. His writing is excellent, fast, direct, witty and irreverent. My intent to read Womack was sealed when he told of presenting Gibson with McCarthy's brilliant Blood Meridian, the ultimate gift of the greatest living writer's writer, from one to another.
Bottom line: This is an amazing sci-fi classic, brilliant in its now twenty-six-year-old foresight. It's not hard-core sci-fi in terms of time/space travel, aliens, laser weapons and the like, but it's got enough future vision to make up for it. It's a simple story, told in an original and compelling manner, delivering to us a still-unrealized future where artificial intelligence may be the next step in human evolution.
Summary of Neuromancer
SPECIAL 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION ?THE MOST IMPORTANT AND INFLUENTIAL SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL OF THE PAST TWO DECADES
Twenty years ago, it was as if someone turned on a light. The future blazed into existence with each deliberate word that William Gibson laid down. The winner of Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards, Neuromancer didn't just explode onto the science fiction scene?it permeated into the collective consciousness, culture, science, and technology.
Today, there is only one science fiction masterpiece to thank for the term "cyberpunk," for easing the way into the information age and Internet society. Neuromancer's virtual reality has become real. And yet, William Gibson's gritty, sophisticated vision still manages to inspire the minds that lead mankind ever further into the future.
Here is the novel that started it all, launching the cyberpunk generation, and the first novel to win the holy trinity of science fiction: the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. With Neuromancer, William Gibson introduced the world to cyberspace--and science fiction has never been the same.
Case was the hottest computer cowboy cruising the information superhighway--jacking his consciousness into cyberspace, soaring through tactile lattices of data and logic, rustling encoded secrets for anyone with the money to buy his skills. Then he double-crossed the wrong people, who caught up with him in a big way--and burned the talent out of his brain, micron by micron. Banished from cyberspace, trapped in the meat of his physical body, Case courted death in the high-tech underworld. Until a shadowy conspiracy offered him a second chance--and a cure--for a price....
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