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A review by nelsonminar
Neuromancer by William Gibson
5.0
I read this first in high school, back when it was new and hip. I didn't like it much, I think because of the plot problems in the second half of the novel. Now I'm reading good sci-fi as a fun alternative to stuff that's "good for me" and finding it incredibly entertaining, not to mention stimulating. I really enjoy the way Gibson puts words together, creates moods with inflection. And the way Gibson catches, and in some cases predicts trends is incredible. I can't help but be amused at the few anachronisms ("the clattering of printers", for instance), but in general he gets things right on.
I've been thinking some about virtual realities, and "cyberspace", and that sort of cruft. Neuromancer's view of VR provides a nice opposition to that in Stephenson's Snow Crash. Stephensonian cyberspace is very true to the physical world - hop on a motorcycle, go into a building, chat with people. In contrast, Gibson's cyberspace is much more natural to the computer: it matches the true organization of infostructures, multidimensional and probably non-Euclidean. As a computer geek, I find Gibson's conception more appealing. I want to use the binocular vision processing hardware in my brain to increase bandwidth, but I don't want to constrain my understanding of cyberspace to 3d physical reality.
I've been thinking some about virtual realities, and "cyberspace", and that sort of cruft. Neuromancer's view of VR provides a nice opposition to that in Stephenson's Snow Crash. Stephensonian cyberspace is very true to the physical world - hop on a motorcycle, go into a building, chat with people. In contrast, Gibson's cyberspace is much more natural to the computer: it matches the true organization of infostructures, multidimensional and probably non-Euclidean. As a computer geek, I find Gibson's conception more appealing. I want to use the binocular vision processing hardware in my brain to increase bandwidth, but I don't want to constrain my understanding of cyberspace to 3d physical reality.