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moonshinemoxie's review against another edition
Might pick it up another time, it didn't catch my interest. I know it's the foundation of cyberpunk but the concepts have been so overdone I couldn't appreciate the source
hidingzeus's review against another edition
3.75
This was a weird one to review. I've read better written cyberpunk, but also this invented it. Literally invented cyberpunk. And to realize all the references various scifi tv shows, movies, and books have used from this book since then is just trippy. I mean, The Matrix movies alone owe everything to this book.
juliacmurray's review against another edition
3.0
I think I understood (optimistically) 40% of what was going on in that book. It had cool vibes tho
odin45mp's review against another edition
3.0
Originally 4*.
Revised to 3*.
Still a foundational genre classic, it established cyberpunk's look and feel. But it is Misogynistic Capitalism-Run-Amok-By-TechBros, The Book. Very much written from a male gaze, with some light dusting of racism here and there. Atmosphere in spades, especially in the first half of the book. Some insightful guesses at how we use and abuse technology. But hard to read in places. And the ending is just as confusing to me the second time around.
Worth reading for the curious, and for those who want to revisit Neo Chiba, the Atlanta-Boston sprawl, and Cyberspace in the near-dystopian-future, as envisioned by a writer in the 1980s.
Revised to 3*.
Still a foundational genre classic, it established cyberpunk's look and feel. But it is Misogynistic Capitalism-Run-Amok-By-TechBros, The Book. Very much written from a male gaze, with some light dusting of racism here and there. Atmosphere in spades, especially in the first half of the book. Some insightful guesses at how we use and abuse technology. But hard to read in places. And the ending is just as confusing to me the second time around.
Worth reading for the curious, and for those who want to revisit Neo Chiba, the Atlanta-Boston sprawl, and Cyberspace in the near-dystopian-future, as envisioned by a writer in the 1980s.
jwolflink3's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
andriella's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
ceridwenanne's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
5.0
Probably read this every 5 years since it was published, watching it shift from kaleidoscopic future to down at the heel future past.
patrick_smith's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
dyno8426's review against another edition
4.0
What made me pick this book up earnestly was the idea of The Matrix that this book apparently introduced and inspired as a concept in the following 1990s movie with the same name. Thus becoming an icon in cyberpunk sub-genre of speculative fiction. To quote how Gibson envisioned it...
"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding..."
Published just before the first ever Mac would appear in 1984, this book already had leaped from the trampoline of emerging transistor-and-display-augmented-computing era that would dominate the technological and social evolution of human civilisation. Like many sci-fi's of computer/robotic trope realm, this portrays a potent vision of future where mankind is seamlessly and hopelessly dependent upon technology - ranging from food and drugs to constituting the biological building blocks of life like nerves and organs. What made this book different and interesting was that unlike many sci-fi's which try to convey the horror with this situation through an "old-school", "those-good-ol'-days" stoic protagonist, Gibson gives us an already lost hero who immerses in this technological muck around him and gives in to such an indulging life, to an extent that it turns self-destructive. Having lost what he was good at, hacking data through 'the matrix', he gets his chance of revival and redemption through a project at a scale which he always thought out of bounds. And what develops as a story is the onset of something which will not just change our protagonist's fate but of the world - an AI.
The emergence of AI, not as the conventional evil force leading to machines-taking-over-the-world shit, but something inherently more philosophical - as the next step of human evolution. We see the protagonist being a victim of his physical existence and the bounding nature of "meat" as compared to "mind". It consistently appears in the story as the protagonist gets hooked to the limitlessness of an artificial yet mental construct of the matrix. AI comes as the continuance of human experience beyond death and a symbiotic factor in conquering the limits of human body. For achieving that, AIs won't be struggling to take control, instead humans might relinquish it willingly to persist in the infiniteness of thoughts and memories. To survive the ever opposing forces of life, or even to find a better world to live in, we don't have to go anywhere except within our own minds - a world within a world. Looking at it this way, even the movie 'The Matrix' establishes its base from the same idea. Although, the basic idea of what this 'matrix' actually is is completely different and very creatively adapted in the movie.
Coming back to the book though, I must say that it's not easy to read and follow. Gibson places you in a very foreign feeling future right from the beginning and hardly explains stuff through well speculated description. Tons of words, jargon and scientific feats which are only left imaginable. While this comes starkly confusing initially, one catches up the rhythm of putting imagination wherever one finds blanks, and I think that is one of the characteristics which make such a work relevant across ages. It does not feel outdated or "cute" at any point. Rather it is harsh in its visuals and 'hard' in its feel of science fiction. To express the "meat" point of human lives, there's a lot of visceral style in his action sequences, and to express the "mind" possibilities of human and the matrix, there's a lot of psychedelic part to his narration. Among science-fictions that I've read, this one feels really fresh both in terms of ideas and literary style. Neuromancer is a work that you can feel will persist through ages owing to its originality.
"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding..."
Published just before the first ever Mac would appear in 1984, this book already had leaped from the trampoline of emerging transistor-and-display-augmented-computing era that would dominate the technological and social evolution of human civilisation. Like many sci-fi's of computer/robotic trope realm, this portrays a potent vision of future where mankind is seamlessly and hopelessly dependent upon technology - ranging from food and drugs to constituting the biological building blocks of life like nerves and organs. What made this book different and interesting was that unlike many sci-fi's which try to convey the horror with this situation through an "old-school", "those-good-ol'-days" stoic protagonist, Gibson gives us an already lost hero who immerses in this technological muck around him and gives in to such an indulging life, to an extent that it turns self-destructive. Having lost what he was good at, hacking data through 'the matrix', he gets his chance of revival and redemption through a project at a scale which he always thought out of bounds. And what develops as a story is the onset of something which will not just change our protagonist's fate but of the world - an AI.
The emergence of AI, not as the conventional evil force leading to machines-taking-over-the-world shit, but something inherently more philosophical - as the next step of human evolution. We see the protagonist being a victim of his physical existence and the bounding nature of "meat" as compared to "mind". It consistently appears in the story as the protagonist gets hooked to the limitlessness of an artificial yet mental construct of the matrix. AI comes as the continuance of human experience beyond death and a symbiotic factor in conquering the limits of human body. For achieving that, AIs won't be struggling to take control, instead humans might relinquish it willingly to persist in the infiniteness of thoughts and memories. To survive the ever opposing forces of life, or even to find a better world to live in, we don't have to go anywhere except within our own minds - a world within a world. Looking at it this way, even the movie 'The Matrix' establishes its base from the same idea. Although, the basic idea of what this 'matrix' actually is is completely different and very creatively adapted in the movie.
Coming back to the book though, I must say that it's not easy to read and follow. Gibson places you in a very foreign feeling future right from the beginning and hardly explains stuff through well speculated description. Tons of words, jargon and scientific feats which are only left imaginable. While this comes starkly confusing initially, one catches up the rhythm of putting imagination wherever one finds blanks, and I think that is one of the characteristics which make such a work relevant across ages. It does not feel outdated or "cute" at any point. Rather it is harsh in its visuals and 'hard' in its feel of science fiction. To express the "meat" point of human lives, there's a lot of visceral style in his action sequences, and to express the "mind" possibilities of human and the matrix, there's a lot of psychedelic part to his narration. Among science-fictions that I've read, this one feels really fresh both in terms of ideas and literary style. Neuromancer is a work that you can feel will persist through ages owing to its originality.