Neuromancer (Ace Science Fiction)

'Neuromancer' is the story of Case: a hacker-type, cyberpunk, whatever you want to call him. He makes hackers of today look like amateurs - he totally immerses himself into the machine. Washed-up and raked over the coals, he gets a chance at a come back, even if it isn't on the most pleasant of terms.

Read this book if you are a science fiction fan - if for no other reason than to see what all the hype is about. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

I enjoyed the book the way one might enjoy a big Hollywood movie. The characterizations and plot were shallow and taken directly from noir and pulp fictions, no doubt about it. However, for all the times I've seen noir plots, I still enjoy them. I think the author made things fun, and kept the story going along smoothly. The ending did fall a little flat, but cyberpunk as a genre seems to flop the endings, and this was at least decent.

Also, I think it's easy to appreciate the futuristic setting of the book. True, it's a largely outdated view of the future, but it's an interesting world, and it's fun to see just how much Gibson got right back in 1984. I read this when I stayed live in post-bubble Osaka, and the book's view of the fringes of an efficient high-tech society struck a chord with me.

Published in 1984, William Gibson's "Neuromancer" may not have been the first "cyberpunk" novel, but it defined the genre and gave birth to the term. At its most basic, the story of "Neuromancer" is a classic caper plot: a mysterious and imposing character assembles a team of individuals, each with his own talent, to break into a target structure. The characters of "Neuromancer" are, in fact, stock characters in a stock plot. But so are fiction's greatest stories. "Neuromancer"'s choppy, brooding style that tells the story through the experiences of one person, Case, owes a lot to noir detective novels. Dashiell Hammett comes to mind. It is interesting to note that Dashiell Hammett's style was born of alcoholism and urban violence and corruption in the 1930's. "Neuromancer" was born of the urban decay and violence of the 1980's, which was to reach a post-War high within a few years of the novel's publication. And many of "Neuromancer"'s characters are drug addicts. History repeats itself, and it is those qualities that put the "punk" in cyberpunk. As for the "cyber" part, "Neuromancer" introduced us to "cyberspace" and was the first to describe a computer network in terms of a geometric "matrix". Although the technology to "jack in" to computer networks has not yet come to fruition, and who knows if it ever will, the interconnectedness and interdependency of "Neuromancer"'s computers is strikingly similar to the Internet today. I think that "Neuromancer"'s instant cult appeal can be attributed to two things: It makes technology sexy. Molly was one of the first cyberbabes. And she is immediately attracted to Case, who is a geeky, pallid computer hacker. And "Neuromancer" describes a future on the fringes of society where urban alienation and technological alienation have combined to create a sort of existential hell, an idea that reflected the experiences and expectations of a disillusioned Generation X. "Neuromancer" is a science fiction novel that is still appealing and thought-provoking 20 years after it was published. And it's influence on our language and on science fiction in film and print is beyond measure.

So begins William Gibson's prophetic and apocryphal novel NEUROMANCER, the first in his SPRAWL Trilogy and arguably the most important Science Fiction novel of the Century. In a single, mind-bending work, Gibson propelled an entire generation into a new era of information perception, an era that has since woven itself strand-by-strand into the global information nexus we call the World Wide Web.

It begins with Case, a young and bitter cyberspace cowboy prowling the neon-lit streets of Chiba City, in search of his lost identity. Robbed of his talent for working the Matrix as a data thief and cyberspace pirate, his life is a bleak and desolate journey towards self-destruction. Until the day a mirror-eyed assassin offers him a second chance.

Suddenly Case is an unwitting pawn in a game whose board stretches from Chiba to the Sprawl to an orbiting pleasure colony populated by Ninja clones and Zion-worshipping Rastafarian spacers. The job: to hack the unhackable. To break the ICE around an Artificial Intelligence and release it from its own hardwired mind. But at every turn Case is haunted by the shadows of his own dark past, and pursued by a faceless enemy whose very presence can kill.

Ironically, William Gibson tapped out the wonders of NEUROMANCER on a manual typewriter, and was certain it was fated for the Out Of Print stack or a quiet cult following. But now, over ten years later and still in print, it has become a kind of cultural landmark in a sea of Information; a chrome-and-silicon avatar of everything from the World Wide Web to Virtual Reality. NEUROMANCER must not be explained or related; it must be experienced, taken in through the pores and rolled against the tongue like electric adrenaline. And there is only one way to do so.

Pick up a copy. And jack in.

Clay Douglas Major

He bought the book, loan it to me the next week and I never returned it. Gibson's lyric writing, his intricate plotting, his discomfort with corporate omnipresense are all worth savoring...you'll read the novel once for story, then again (and again) for text and texture.

He's also a master at capturing the way a city feels, how it crowds you and isolates you at the same time. (Manhattanites will definitely get it.)

In any event, I'm not at all involved in computers or high technology of any kind. Gibson may be the father of cyberpunk and the coiner of the word "cyberspace," but you don't need to know or care what that means to enjoy his books, particularly Neuromancer.

I can, however, understand people not comprehending what the hell's going on. I'd read half the novel before realising what was going on...but that's not the point.

It's very difficult to describe why this book is so great. Strictly speaking, it's not "poetry" or suchlike, it's not the "originality" of his writing style....

I suppose it could be described as a sort of Japanese minimalism and American mass consumerism blend society, which is Gibson's unique vision.

Here we don't have "x flew in spaceship to y, defeats z empire", but we have the world we know today, pushed to absolute overdrive. No pristine environment, or moving descriptions of the peace of space travel - here we have the dirty, hedonistic, consumerist, urban society we have today, driven by brandnames, bright lights, and no future; in essence, the Gen X-er's future.

It's not quite like Blade Runner, where it's a more Film Noir type city. Here we have technology used, not to benefit mankind but to sell to consumers - people who live out their lives as the pawns of corporations.

There is of course the wonderful descriptions of Virtual Reality/Internet, where mankind has created a sort of spirit-world, where depressed outcasts of this society can escape from the "world of meat".

I suppose this is why I think Neuromancer is great.

Neuromancer may come across as a bit dated now, but as other reviewers have noted, that's probably because it created the cliches it now seems to reflect. I don't know where he gets his ideas, but I think Gibson is a stone solid genius.

Rather, Neuromancer should be approached and appreciated for what it is: excellent Sci-Fi noir. It's the Blade Runner of such novels; with tight narration hinting at a complete and inspired world just beneath the surface. And the early book does a good job of expositing this reality. Its focus deteriorates later on, when the author seems to be straining to convey the enormity of his fantasy world in a still-sensible fashion, and the plot elements spin out of control like overly ambitious anime (another inheritor of the noir/cyberpunk genre).

In the end, it's the characters that redeem it. Molly in particular, seems the most inspired denizen of such a mercenary hyperfuture. And the Rastafarians of Zion and the Dixie construct show Gibson understands that readers' interest in futuristic sci-fi depends on making it as complex and detailed as the present day. Sure, it was ahead of its time, and is now part of the evolution of the genre. But the real reason Neuromancer is worth a look is because it's foremost a story. A very good story.

I found the parts where he tries to paint mental images of the various settings particularly difficult to grasp. He uses his expansive pallet of grim adjectives to describe these settings, which is great, but he also likes to throw in all kinds of his own made-up words (as well as Japanese words). This normally wouldn't be a problem, it's just that he does this too often... and never with a clear explanation as to what these words mean; the reader is left to figure it out through every instance these words are used. Although I do admit, I'm not the brightest bulb in the... light... socket? (see what I mean), so I may have been a little late to catch on to these words. This all amounted to me having trouble visualizing some of the settings, as if there were gaping holes in my understanding of what I should be picturing.

However, this is Gibson's first novel, and the introduction to a sort of pseudo-trilogy, so one could argue that the confusing language is done on purpose to set up the complex and erratic nature of Neuromancer's world... and what a world it is! It's sort of post-apocalyptic if you could consider pollution and technology the apocalypse. Hackers and organizations that employ hackers reign over what appears to be near-lawlessness, and the people with the real power are so high up in the hierarchy, it's not entirely clear who they are or what their motifs may be. If you are like me, you'll finish this book not exactly sure of what you just read. You'll feel unstable, as if the book raised more questions than it answered, and you'll be forced to search for the answers in the next two books. Let me assure you, after getting through Neuromancer, the language in Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive won't trip you up as much... partly because Gibson has refined his writing skills, and partly because you will know how to deal with his style.

So if the very term "cyberpunk" makes your spine tingle, you'll definitely need take a trip through Neuromancer.

I just finished reading NEUROMANCER yesterday, and to be honest, I am still stunned...

Like many others who have read Gibson's complex, dark and seductive tale, I at first found myself stumbling over his use of language. I remained intrigued, however, by his descriptive methods as well as the intricate way he weaves a plot. Gibson is a master of mood, and it is mood that runs away with the reader's imagination.

For an example, his development of NEUROMANCER's characters has been widely critisized as flat and generally lacking in depth. This hasty judgment is false, however, and is probably the result of reading years of science fiction works that spell out every nuance about a character and force feed them into the reader. What Gibson achieves, through a minimalistic approach, is a fusion between the story's disturbing, yet compelling mood and the essense of his main characters. His characters are "flat" and "cliche" because THAT IS WHO THEY ARE!

Allow me to expound upon this... Imagine that you, for a brief moment, are Case (the main hero/anti-hero of the book).

A burnt-out shell of a man living within a burnt-out shell of civilization. You "live", if that's what you can call it, day to day, haunted and pursued by the memories of who you WERE and what you COULD HAVE BEEN. Your talent, your identity and your soul has been stripped away -- all because you took one wrong step. No longer able to jack-in to the matrix and feel your consciousness freed from your fleshy prison. No longer able to cut through Cyberspace with the precision of a surgeon and intensity of a kamikaze. You are a nobody, a drug-addicted fixer with a death wish. No longer caring; slowly suffocating in a world filled with the jackyls and parasites of humanity, who are ready to feast on your corpse the minute you fall. You don't even carry a weapon anymore... You have given up and are in many ways already dead. All that remains is for someone to kill the "meat"...

What more is there to say? This IS it!! You know who Case is because you, the reader, can FEEL it. That is the magic of Gibson's writing. He doesn't go into the intimate details of Case's torture in Memphis because there is no need to. Just as there is no need to encapsule the characters in neat little packages and paint them in bright technocolor, making them "easy to swallow" for the reader. They are bleak and minimal just as the world they live in is bleak and minimal.

Just as some of the most frightening horror films are the ones that don't show the gore -- leaving it up to the viewer to imagine (which is often far more gruesome), so too does Gibson leave you with just enough so that you can feel the consuming emptiness of his characters.

In addition to this, Gibson does a fantastic job with the plot of the book. At times it is a head-first dive at a hundred miles an hour, and other times is crawls with the primal anticipation and potential energy of a spider, slowly descending upon the prey within its web. This plot isn't made for "Short-Attention-Span-Theatre", and only those suffering from Attention Defecit Disorder or expecting this book to be a Cyberpunk module (often the same people) need fear it.

The characters are driven by forces that are often as ambiguous as there own nature, and this tactic is perfect in capturing the essense of the book. Gibson doesn't bore the reader with 200 extra pages to "define" why the characters act as they do. Instead he hints at it through their personalities, sparse backgrounds and conversations. The essense of who they are and why they do what they do seeps slowly into the reader's skin through the derm that is Gibson.

That is what makes this book a classic on so many levels. The reader is just another character along for the ride instead of being forced into omnipotence.

BEWARE OF OTHER REVIEWS BY PEOPLE WHO DON"T HAVE THE FACTS STRAIGHT!!!

Gibson stated that he knew nothing about computers or the internet before he wrote NEUROMANCER. While some have said that "this certainly shows" in his writing, these short-sighted individuals have failed to realize that barely any of this technology existed at the time. Almost NO ONE knew anything about it!!

Secondly, people have critisized Gibson's status as a "visionary". Here too, these individuals don't comprehend that this title was not self-proclaimed. It has been the result of 20/20 hindsight vision from a late 80's to late 90's perspective! This book was written in 1984!! Cut the guy some slack!!! He never claimed to "predict the future", but his future is a dark possibility rooted in our own present. That is the essense of his foresight into the fusion of advanced technologies and the corrupting nature of humanity.

Finally, one person who reviewed this book on Amazon.com claimed that the only reason this book got published was because of Gibson's "name" and his prestige as a writer. This was his first book!! Obviously that isn't a likely scenario. The reason it was published can be ascertained by reading the first sentence of the book!

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

To any one who is a serious science fiction reader, or any one who has ever wanted to pick up just one book to get the feel of the genre -- READ THIS BOOK. It IS a classic, and I feel that it will only get better with each read...

This is the REAL story of the Matrix.

Neuromancer is akin to Dune and Lord of the Rings. LOTR is the epitome of fantasy epics, Dune is the best Sci-Fi universe, and Neuromancer represents the best version of a possible future of weak government and powerful mega-corporations.

While not as grand in scale as Dune or as epic as LOTR, Neuromancer is just as brilliant!

Unfortunately, it's heavily burdened by prose that has a tendency to blur your eyes and make you shake your head in an effort to pay attention to what you're reading.

Most of the novel, in fact, suffers from an inability to make the reader care about what's happening. Gibson seems more committed to using three adjectives in a row and spewing simile after simile than capturing the reader's interest. I suppose you could call this "film noir" style, but for me, it just didn't work.

Coupled with a severe lack of information about what's going on and a numb, detached approach to its limited third person point of view, it's really hard to turn the next page and reach the end of this short novel that feels like it's three times longer than some of the monstrous tomes I've read.

The story itself is difficult to care about. It revolves around the machinations of a powerful artificial intelligence, but it's hard to understand what the point of the whole thing is, even after you've reached the last dissatisfying sentence. Sure, I understood the story, I just didn't understand why I was supposed to care.

Part of this apathy comes from a fundamental lack of characterization. The point of view is very 'cold'--that is, you don't get much inside the head of Case, and when you do, his thoughts are almost always analytical. When the sole viewpoint character doesn't feel any emotion for 90% of the story, it's kind of hard to feel emotion yourself. It's especially irritating that the novel is structured as a character story about Case's loss of his ability to 'jack in' and his death wish, and yet he never seems to care about much of anything (or Gibson fails to tell us about it if he does).

It seems to me that the appeal of this book is more for those who want to experience a well-developed milieu and pretty surface coating, as it has little power or significance as a story.

If you're looking for a detailed and skillfully constructed world, packaged in wordy description, or you want to see the roots of the cyberpunk genre, this novel is for you. If you're looking for an interesting, powerful story with deep characters, you won't find it here.

The lost and somewhat illucid character of Case, alongwith the tussle-ready Molly, speak of a street sense learned the hard way. My favorite clip is where Molly slaps a captive who was causing trouble in his own weird way and tells him something like "...I can hurt you real bad, and not leave a mark on you...I LIKE to do that...". The book will grab and pull and color your emotions, making it a very quick and enjoyable read. Too quick, you ask me. I have reread it several times, and plan on doing so again. Palimpsest-like, the scenarios of the book truly reveal themselves through the minutiae of repitition. To me the book explains a lot, and says "Prepare...prepare for what we ourselves have wrought.

The worldwide AI race began around 1983, and was already fairly old news by time this book was written, but because of the scantiness of information on that subject, along with the myriad military applications inherent in AI, anyone must know that the reality far surpasses the false front of the technology brokers everywhere in the world. I was able to glean a little more about AI from this book, Though not as much as from "The God Project", and some others. The best is Feigenbaum and McCorducks "The Fifth Generation: Japans Computer Challenge to the world", 1983.

Gibson touches on the funny similarity between possible definitions of the term AI, and even goes so far as to stipulate it as "Alien Intelligence, as well as Artificial Intelligence.

The book is great, and will take you through a long flight or other trip with no problem at all. Definitely NOT a waste of time.

I am 15 and Australian, and I have read a lot of SF, but this novel was just something else. I've only read it once, and I wish that I could experience it again for the first time (cliche, I know). It was just such an amazing revelation. I don't have words to describe how this book made me feel, so I won't try. I suppose others who have read it know what I mean anyway.

I've read reviews that say it's "cliched and hokey". I guess everyone's entitled to an opinion, but I think that these people weren't looking to be taught something.There's a darkness, a feeling of dread and utter helplessness in this book that completely enveloped me, and I truly think that it has changed the way I look at the world and our future.

The slashing insight of this story is such that I just can't comprehend that it was written the year I was born. William Gibson is a prophet of the new world, and his predictions are frightening.

He's 50, I'm 15. I better not let him generation-gap me.

The truth is a bit different. When I first read this book back in High School, I walked away with the standard impression: characters who seem somewhat static, a plot that starts strong and gets messy at the end, but a cool setting with neat gizmos.

Now, after eight years, it looks even more appealing. Case is a character straight out of Raymond Chandler, or (for the more alert out there) William S Burroughs. This book is far more Burroughs than Asimov.

Read the interview with Gibson in "Chaos & Cyberculture", and you will get a remarkably different view of this book. The character "Finn" is a reference to a certain Joyce book... the street prophets are a great extrapolation on where the religious right of today will end up, and the drug culture is not looked upon as a bad thing as it is in the real world, but merely another aspect of the constantly fragmenting and diverging counter cultures that exist in the text.

All great books have some degree of character growth, and this is no exception. But Case has his growth quietly, in a pretty subtle manner during ... with a certain female in the text, as he comes to accept his own flesh (since many "cowboys" look on their bodies with disdain).

This book is about more than a grungy future with cool gizmos. You just have to take the time to see it all.

Gibson's stlye is minimal at best, and confusing at worst. Confusion is prevelant in a world where concious beings are forgetting if and why they exist, and digital entities are realising that they do exist. Details are glossed over and we only ever see the surface of his world, Gibson leaves details to our imagination and presents us with fast and furious imagery. In the end it is all essentially meaningless. We don't really need to know what a sim stim is, its all throw away culture and gimiks. What is important is that we understand the emptyness of a world where marketing controlls our wants and needs, and technology exists to inject products directly into our body and minds.

If Gibson excells at anything it is his ability to see trends, to look at the world around him, and see where it will head if it is unchecked. In his projections Gibson is not a hopeful dreamer, he is a stark realist. Take away God and the Devil, take away warm humanist dreams, and what are you left with? This is what Gibson depicts.

Don't force yourself to read this book becasue it created the cyber punk genre. This book will chalenge you and make you work things out for yourself. There are no helping hands in Gibsons future, if you wish to survive you must learn fast and accept that the slightest mistake will end it all. What Gibson does give you is a rich, well thought out vision, in which you can explore concepts and discover your own reasons for being, find hope in a void, or numb yourself with the latest interactive soap opera. This book can be read over and over and you will always find something new in it. But, if you want a straightforward story that tells you what to think, then this is probably not for you.

Well, people who are not good at reading, and you can usually identify them first through spelling errors, hated the book. People who are really into the "alternate worlds" thing think it's super cool. I find both of these positions to be ignorant and one-sided. One is just as bad as the other. The jargon was, to me, not too difficult to figure out, and I think it worked better than, or at least as well as (in its own way), the indecipherable slang of "A Clockwork Orange," by Anthony Burgess. The point here is, the slang of Gibson's world IS technical jargon. Hmm. There's an idea. Gibson has given us a world that, despite his stumblings and fumblings in telling the story (which English majors like myself might--MIGHT--be willing to consider a stylistic choice on the part of the author, to add to the sense of darkness and confusion), seems REAL. It is a very, very human world, and this is a very human novel. It is about identity in a world with no higher purposes than gratification of needs and desires; even you churchgoers out there might get the idea sometimes in the back of your mind that even religion serves only to gratify and soothe, to take our attention away from the essential horror and loneliness of the human condition. What is the motivation of any character in this novel? Gratification of desire, extension of life, money, etc. The "cyberpunk" elements of the book are, to me, incidental to what is at its core a poem about solitude, impermanence, and the shifting sands of human life. What is the last line of the book?

"He never saw Molly again."

This is not a good book, or a bad one. It is what Hemingway might have called a "true book"--one that touches a fundamental truth about the circumstances in which we find ourselves, here on this ball of dust and water, fighting our all-too-short battles against the relentless parade of entropy, and its child, loss. The good is good, and the bad is bad, yin is yin and yang is yang, but remember the symbol of the two opposites--one is defined by the other, and neither has the advantage.

Gibson's world is imaginative, his prose taut, his imagery vivid, his attitude a cocky swagger shoved in your face. So what's not to like?

Its very surfeit of style, is what. In fact, there's so much style that it overwhelms the substance. This, I suspect, is what his detractors can't stand. This book is smothered in style, from the various settings all reeking of decay to the punk fashion in the characters' dress to the throw-away jargon and mannered ennui that inform their speech to the staccato fragments that comprise Gibson's prose. Gibson's decision to enthrone style turns this book into the literary equivalent of a high fashion strut. Those who love it admire its flaunt, its poise, its very excess. Those who hate it despise it for the same reasons. Shouldn't science fiction be more intellectual fare?

I suppose it depends on your tolerance for excess. While Gibson overdoses on style, he doesn't vacate substance. His dystopian vision is as disturbing as Brave New World or 1984 (the very year this book was published). Neuromancer cautions us against corporatism, rampant consumerism, the seduction of immortality and the hive mind. It also speculates about artificial intelligence, bio-techno symbiosis, universal information matrices and the nature of reality. Such a substantive collection of themes is nothing to sneer at. But this book doesn't deserve the boatload of awards that it garnered either.

Personally, I have little tolerance for excess. I value restraint over indulgence, introspection over flamboyance. Brilliance shines brightest when freed from artifice. There is brilliance in this book, but it is buried under the mass of all that cool posturing.

Ultimately, this book is worth reading, not least for its numerous firsts. But discerning readers must steel themselves against its cynical, oh-so-hip nihilism.

It's easy to fail to give this book it's due, these 20 odd years later. At the time it was mind blowing and I have read everything since as soon as it has been released. Not that I would like to describe myself as a "fan" of anyone - it seems somehow sad to live as a variable of some creative person's output. Plus I will never write anythging of my own that is original if I allow myself to fixate on one writer. Not that one needs to fix on any one writer with people likje Tim Winton, Iain Banks, Neal Stephenson etc. out there doing it. Still, though, Gibson has an effortless cool rarely found anywhere. Like a great cool jazz improvisor in some ways, he puts things in a way that shows his talent in what is left out as well as what is put in. Talk about a must read book (an expression I hate, but really- this is the Grandparent of so much writing around, and following Gibson's own writing evolution from This through to Pattern Recognition yields many interesting ideaoids). So, if you've not read it, what's keeping you? In fact I envy you, I'd love to be able to read this for the first time again. Go to it, there's no excuse!. And if you find the whole thing a bit Boy's own, you're wrong. Without being didactic, Gibson has a lot to say about how our world is goibg, about how a certain amount of human spirit will always out, about the absolute desolution of a life with no purpose, no love. You could also argue that the ultimate answer to the question "what if a super-computer became sentient in some form?", in this book, is that it wouldn't really affect us, our understanding of what woulod interest a sentient supercomputer is like an amt's understanding of what occupies our thoughts.Very thought provoking.

Case is a rogue computer hacker and drug addict living in the seemingly dirty and downtrodden enclaves of great cities past. His glorious life of stealing information was cut short when he messed with the wrong people who burnt him out of cyberspace. His life now consists of minor wheelings and dealings until he is recruited for his reputable hacking panache by an irregular group of people looking for the ultimate score; giving him a second chance. The story follows Case around the world and through cyberspace as he "jacks in" to the matrix to manipulate computers to his advantage, not quite knowing the full purpose of the deal. Along the way he meets and avoids an array of different and interesting characters; some trying to help and some to hinder.

I found Gibsons language difficult to follow at times and found myself confused at other stages as he jumped about from situation to situation. The story is dark and his descriptions of everyday life in the "Sprawl" are intoned with a bleak disdain for the purpose of existance, allowing you to feel more compassion for some characters than others.

Overall, I was intrigued; enjoying the obvious uniqueness of this books idea, the complex world and Gibsons intelligent imagination, but I think that I may have missed the point of its meaning.

I give this book 3.5 to 4 stars, but I can understand why so many rate it higher. Maybe I should read it again.