Neuromancer (Sprawl Trilogy, #1)
author: William Gibson
name: Paul
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1984
rating: 4
read at: 2011/10/19
date added: 2011/10/19
shelves: novel, science-fiction
review:
It’s kind of amazing to me how going back and reading seminal science fiction novels long after having encountered the derivative and influenced works, I can see exactly where certain scenes, moods, and particular atmospheric flavors originated and inserted themselves into popular consciousness. There are parts of Neuromancer, especially the opening section labeled “Chiba City Blues,” that have been repeated or drawn upon so often in anime, dystopian pop art, role-playing manuals, lesser cyberpunk stories, film, television, and comic books that I felt I could practically have described them before I ever read the passages in which they first appeared. The result is something like literary deja vu, but all the more exciting because it’s like watching the birth of an idea. It’s really something to see William Gibson spidering his considerable influence across hundreds of creative minds in retrospect with what amounts to just a handful of world-building sequences.
What surprised me the most is that Neuromancer, for as much as its starting act has helped shape the collective notion of what the future could become, is not really about that dark streetside tech-wizard pathos that permeates and/or defines the genre Gibson helped establish. It is in fact just part of the window-dressing, the setting that adds context to what is really a story about artificial intelligence and the layers of desire that weave together, forming a whole society. For a taut, sub-300 page novel, there is a surprising amount of action here as principals Molly and Case hop across the Sprawl, into space, all throughout the matrix and encounter a couple of dozen major and minor players along the way.
It’s almost redundant to describe the plot if you’ve ever even heard of cyberpunk before: Case is a matrix cowboy; a hacker. A previous deal went sour leaving him unable to jack in and as the story opens he’s burned through his savings trying to get back the only life he cares to lead. With no resources and fewer chances of success, he’s descended into a self-destructive funk, suicidal by means of just letting the dark corners of the Sprawl consume him like so many others. But then he encounters Molly, a razorgirl working for a man named Armitage who offers to restore Case if he agrees to take a sensitive job. Case jumps at the chance without reservation and finds himself not just beholden to the struck bargain but physically blackmailed into seeing the job through. As the mystery of Armitage and the person pulling his strings deepens, Case and Molly find themselves chasing an AI trying to go rogue, while just trying to stay alive as the number of people who want them dead climbs rapidly.
The plot of Neuromancer is mostly about execution, especially if you’ve seen the kinds of inspired works Neuromancer spawned. Gibson is a talented writer though he has a peculiar quirk of drifting into an odd kind of poetry when describing fantastic scenes (particularly imagined technology). In part it helps to future-proof against the actual technology that has developed in fact during the 20-30 years since the book was written, but it does make what ought to be a blistering read feel very heavy and dense in places. It’s not quite a chore to get through but it isn’t compulsively readable either. And frankly, the more the AI component of the plot becomes the focus, the less unique the book begins to feel (at least, for someone who has mostly encountered all of the AI-based storytelling that has come since). Maybe unique isn’t the right word. As Neuromancer becomes less about the grim but absorbing world of matrix cowboys, extralegal deal-making, drugged-out desperation and cybernetic enhancement specialists which typify Cuberpunk and that this book enabled, the less special it begins to feel. A similar book set in a pristine future world about a software engineer who worked with an AI construct both for and against a separate AI construct trying to free itself would be roughly as interesting as the latter half of Neuromancer but what makes Gibson’s entry great is all that not-so-extraneous stage-setting.
Perhaps it only seems this way now, with SF subgenres dealing with AI seeming more or less distinct from those which appropriate the term cyberpunk. The philosophical nature of artificial intelligences is scarcely touched upon here and even, somewhat interestingly, the notions of cyberspace and connected/networked communications—while definitely pivotal to both plot and setting—aren’t exactly crafted in exhausting detail. Most of why Neuromancer works even today when some realities have eclipsed the fictional future described is that it doesn’t spend too much time trying to explain how and why it all works. Yet because those questions don’t really come into play, some interesting concepts especially in the last third of the book feel particularly unexplored.
Still, and this feels a little silly to even admit, Neuromancer is a good book because it is a cool book. There’s no reason to wonder why cyberpunk became a thing or even why the genre persists today when a lot of the cyberpunk origins aren’t science fiction any more but rather are just mundane fact: Gritty noir stylings and stories that prominently feature use and abuse of near-future tech have a cachet that is inescapably admirable, from the safety and distance of fiction. Cyberpunk as flowing through tales like Neuromancer capture the same part of the imagination that responds favorably to hard boiled detective stories and black comedies about underground boxing clubs. The dashes of futuristic seasonings that cyberpunk weaves in only increase the sense of warped glee they inspire. The Sprawl is not a nice place, Molly and Case and Maelcum and 3Jane aren’t particularly nice people, but they all have their own sense of style and purpose, whose coolness cannot be overstated.