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A review by bklassen
Neuromancer by William Gibson
adventurous
challenging
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
I don’t think it can be overstated enough how brilliant and ahead of its time this book is. Gibson had never seen or used a computer before, and his book came out around the same time as Blade Runner, which means he and Ridley Scott (who based the movie off of Philip K Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) had parallel ideas about a cyberpunk world and what it would look like.
I will say that Gibson nails the atmosphere – everything described and even the language gave off a dystopian futuristic world full of cybernetic enhancements, computer visualization, unique slang, and so much drug use.
It is such a well thought out world to its detriment, at least for me. The world at times became super vague, the plot became confusing due to its abstractness, and character motivation was confusing because there is little to no character development in this book. Someone pointed out that sci fi is not often known for super well fleshed out characters or deep development, and Neuromancer certainly does just that.
It felt like reading A Clockwork Orange or Dune with its own language that does not slow down or explain things for you, so if you’re willing to put in the effort, you can get a lot out of this book. I personally did not vibe with the book and especially didn’t really connect with the rather flat characters, so I did not feel very motivated to put a ton of effort into grasping the lingo or visualizing cyberspace. Also the women in this book feel not quite like women. It is all very odd.
But Gibson definitely gets points for style, and major points for his legacy. I mean, the dude put words like “cyberspace” and “the matrix” out into the world and inspired pretty much every other piece of Cyberpunk media out there. Also street samurai and console cowboy are objectively cool terms.
I will say that Gibson nails the atmosphere – everything described and even the language gave off a dystopian futuristic world full of cybernetic enhancements, computer visualization, unique slang, and so much drug use.
It is such a well thought out world to its detriment, at least for me. The world at times became super vague, the plot became confusing due to its abstractness, and character motivation was confusing because there is little to no character development in this book. Someone pointed out that sci fi is not often known for super well fleshed out characters or deep development, and Neuromancer certainly does just that.
It felt like reading A Clockwork Orange or Dune with its own language that does not slow down or explain things for you, so if you’re willing to put in the effort, you can get a lot out of this book. I personally did not vibe with the book and especially didn’t really connect with the rather flat characters, so I did not feel very motivated to put a ton of effort into grasping the lingo or visualizing cyberspace. Also the women in this book feel not quite like women. It is all very odd.
But Gibson definitely gets points for style, and major points for his legacy. I mean, the dude put words like “cyberspace” and “the matrix” out into the world and inspired pretty much every other piece of Cyberpunk media out there. Also street samurai and console cowboy are objectively cool terms.