Scan barcode
A review by bahbadook
Neuromancer by William Gibson
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
hopeful
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
<strong>Poetry disguised as cyberpunk</strong>
This isn't science fiction. I mean, yes, it's science fiction in terms of plot and set dressing but this is a damn literary fiction novel in terms of prose.
You want poetry that is science fiction? Here you go. And it's not the purple prose poetry that just packs description in but makes me want to mentally check out. It's the leveled and layered poetry that doesn't describe unless it's for a point, but the descriptions that are there have about fifteen layers that require multiple close readings to figure out.
This is an intelligent book. You don't get handfed explanations most of the time. Terms are rarely explained.
Thankfully, and I can't believe I'm saying this, this is a short book. I'm not sure I'd have had the emotional attention span if it had been any longer.
But. BUT. Here's the cool thing that kept me going even when the part of me that just checks out as soon as poetry happens activated.
Cyberpunk 2077, the video game, vibes like fanfiction of this book. Now, I'm not super familiar with the cyberpunk genre. Most of my experience has been with like...Blade Runner and Gattaca. So I can't say for certain how much of it is just a staple of the genre, but there are such intense parallels going on that I'd have noticed them even if I weren't currently hyperfixating. So, if you like Cyberpunk 2077, you'll almost certainly like this book. Especially if you actually like poetry, unlike me who does not.
I could easily identify when the climax started, which is good, because that was a part of the book that had gotten very hoppy and poetic, so I didn't understand the minutae of what was going on but I got the large strokes (much like poetry).
I feel like this sounds like I didn't like the book. I did. Was it an adjustment to read because yeesh, I have to be in poetry brain mode? Yes.
Also, I just have to take a moment to laugh and say that I went to B&N a couple of days ago and in the BOGO50% science fiction section were three books I'd just read or were currently reading, including this one.
The other two were On the Way to a Small, Angry Planet, and Snow Crash, which I found to be more accessible than this one but no less good.
OH and I have to take a moment to share some of the lines from this book. Just to show what I mean about the poetry thing.
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."
(As a side note to this one, not only is this the opening line, but it's one of those lines that if I were to ask kids today what that would look like, I'm not sure they'd know)
"Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button."
“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 the 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. . . .”
This isn't science fiction. I mean, yes, it's science fiction in terms of plot and set dressing but this is a damn literary fiction novel in terms of prose.
You want poetry that is science fiction? Here you go. And it's not the purple prose poetry that just packs description in but makes me want to mentally check out. It's the leveled and layered poetry that doesn't describe unless it's for a point, but the descriptions that are there have about fifteen layers that require multiple close readings to figure out.
This is an intelligent book. You don't get handfed explanations most of the time. Terms are rarely explained.
Thankfully, and I can't believe I'm saying this, this is a short book. I'm not sure I'd have had the emotional attention span if it had been any longer.
But. BUT. Here's the cool thing that kept me going even when the part of me that just checks out as soon as poetry happens activated.
Cyberpunk 2077, the video game, vibes like fanfiction of this book. Now, I'm not super familiar with the cyberpunk genre. Most of my experience has been with like...Blade Runner and Gattaca. So I can't say for certain how much of it is just a staple of the genre, but there are such intense parallels going on that I'd have noticed them even if I weren't currently hyperfixating. So, if you like Cyberpunk 2077, you'll almost certainly like this book. Especially if you actually like poetry, unlike me who does not.
I could easily identify when the climax started, which is good, because that was a part of the book that had gotten very hoppy and poetic, so I didn't understand the minutae of what was going on but I got the large strokes (much like poetry).
I feel like this sounds like I didn't like the book. I did. Was it an adjustment to read because yeesh, I have to be in poetry brain mode? Yes.
Also, I just have to take a moment to laugh and say that I went to B&N a couple of days ago and in the BOGO50% science fiction section were three books I'd just read or were currently reading, including this one.
The other two were On the Way to a Small, Angry Planet, and Snow Crash, which I found to be more accessible than this one but no less good.
OH and I have to take a moment to share some of the lines from this book. Just to show what I mean about the poetry thing.
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."
(As a side note to this one, not only is this the opening line, but it's one of those lines that if I were to ask kids today what that would look like, I'm not sure they'd know)
"Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button."
“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 the 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. . . .”