William Gibson's Neuromancer...
September 17, 2023
I finished reading it...!
"Motive," the construct said. "Real motive problem, with an AI. Not human, see?"
"Well, yeah, obviously."
"Nope. I mean, it’s not human. And you can’t get a handle on it. Me, I’m not human either, but I respond like one. See?”
“Wait a sec.” Case said. “Are you sentient, or not?”
“Well, it feels like I am, kid, but I’m really just a bunch of ROM. It’s one of them, ah, philosophical questions, I guess. . ."
Within the first few chapters, it was immediately clear how formative and influential ol Willy Gibby's grimy future was for cyberpunk media. It's the same feeling I got when I checked out Getter Robo after Gurren Lagann - being able to so clearly see the threads of influence, down to "holy shit, this newer thing is LITERALLY just this older thing!" The Matrix takes its core concept and hell, the very name, from Neuromancer. Settings such as that of Cyberpunk Red/Cyberpunk 2077 more or less borrow wholesale from William Gibson's world, just with the names swapped around. Not a "console cowboy", we call those "netrunners". It's not a "simstim", it's a "braindance". My surprise when I learned that "Night City" is a location in Neuromancer, aswell...
Its world being so beautifully well-aged and immersive, going to this book, it's like the worlds built upon in newer media such as say, Edgerunners, never really left. Outside of some pretty notable anachronisms that show the book's age (cell phones do not exist at all in this universe, and "cyberspace" looks like a PS1 game!), there's a vivid vision of the future that still feels "forward" and like it's beyond us, even over 30 years later - and this is largely because of how much newer settings and stories owe to this one book.
It took a bit to find my footing - Gibson loves getting totally absorbed in descriptors and nonconventional wordflow, and on top of the worldbuilding being very "throw you in the deep end" (the best approach), and the direction of the overall narrative not being too clear for a large chunk of it, it comes off as the sort of thing that could easily buck someone unprepared. It didn't take long however before I was pulled right in - a dizzying, messy adventure of cyborg assassins and manipulative artificial intelligences. At face, it's an unassuming heist story, but beneath it, it felt like it had more than a few things to say on human nature and the role of technology - without spoilers, there's this excellent juxtaposition between the many dysfunctional and barely-fleshly humans of the story and the lively artificial intelligences that move things along. The lack of control the characters have is palpable and chilling and made for a real tense journey, with the reader trying to make as much sense out of it as everyone inside it. I'm a real bitch for a story that starts simple and slowly unfolds into something that can only be described as "beyond everyone", and this really scratched that itch.
I'll have to figure out what's next in the midst of my little cyberpunk history lesson crash course, but if anyone has any recs aswell, I'm all ears 😌