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Neuromancer, William Gibson’s first novel, was published in 1984. It helped to establish the cyberpunk genre of science fiction: a dark future where computing,

Neuromancer, William Gibson’s first novel, was published in 1984. It helped to establish the cyberpunk genre of science fiction: a dark future where computing, communication, and artificial intelligence technologies were dominant, complemented by significant medical advances, large inhabited satellites in Earth orbit, and considerable drug use. I recently re-read it and was struck by how things have turned out differently.

Cheyana 8y ago
Gibson’s future just may not have happened yet. In the ‘50s our sci-fi showed rockets landing in the same manner (in reverse) that they launched, and it’s slowly becoming a thing now. Some things, like people living in space or AI, were always obvious and easy to predict. Some things were strangely overlooked (cellphones).
- skmurphy 8y ago
  That's certainly possible. It's interesting that the developers of the Motorola Star Tac phone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_StarTAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_StarTAC said that they were inspired by the Star Trek communicators so science fiction had definitely predicted cell phones. There is an entire site devoted to tracing real inventions to their science fiction counterparts: http://www.technovelgy.com/ http://www.technovelgy.com/
  - bpiche 8y ago
    Sometimes these science fiction counterparts are called 'diagetic prototypes' or 'design fictions'. Has been a favorite topic of Mr Bruce Sterling's for a while now https://www.wired.com/2011/02/design-fiction-diegetic-prototypes/ https://www.wired.com/2011/02/design-fiction-diegetic-protot...
- mattkevan 8y ago
  “The future is already here - it’s just not evenly distributed” - William Gibson
jhbadger 8y ago
The space part of the book always seemed weirdly out of place to me given its near future run-down setting. It's unclear exactly when the novel was set, but probably within 50 years of its publication date of 1984. I can see how things like VR interfaces and even human-level AI could be early/mid 21st century things (particularly from the 1980s viewpoint), but things like cities in orbit seems more like a distant future several centuries out.
- saltcured 8y ago
  I recently watched a 1979 James Burke history show which was commemorating the 10 year anniversary of the moon landings. I was too young when this show was produced to really remember this time period clearly. This made me think about the timeline of the space age and just how short it was. That crowning moment was only about 15 years after the first satellite or 25 years after the end of WW2, when jet engines were barely known to the world. For someone like Gibson, that period was their childhood. They can be forgiven for assuming it would continue to rapidly expand. In the early 1980s, we had the space shuttles going up like clockwork and MTV was using film clips of those big moon rockets as part of their station-identification clips. By and large, people still thought of space as present and future tense. People didn't really understand it as a demonstration of massive budget redirection and military-industrial might, and that nothing had really been done to solve the physics and make space travel a consumer possibility with low marginal cost. To me, Gibson's later works try to correct that mistake. His focus shifts ever more towards the information flows, power brokers, and large-scale consumerism. He turns away from the military and space age set pieces. He treats weapons more as artifacts and surplus of a bygone era, just as this big nation-state technology must have seemed to him relics of his past.
electricslpnsld 8y ago
> Neuromancer, William Gibson’s first novel, was published in 1984. It helped to establish the cyberpunk genre of science fiction Cyberpunk dates at least a decade before Neuromancer -- Brunner's Shockwave Rider form 1974 comes to mind (and is a pretty interesting and strangely timely read, given that it is almost 50 years old).
- kasey_junk 8y ago
  Shockwave Rider is interesting because of how early it was and how unique at the time. That doesn't establish a subgenre though. Cyberpunk wasn't coined as a term until right around the same time as Neuromancer came out and Neuromancer swept the big sci-fi awards, making it a fair thing to say that it 'helped to establish'.
  - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
    Brunner is amazing - far ahead of his time.
    - kasey_junk 8y ago
      "Stand on Zanzibar" is one of my favorite books of all times. That said, I think the Shockwave Rider actually holds up less well than Neuromancer, because it was more tuned into the reality of software of its day. Still a great read though.
      - sorokod 8y ago
        Now I need to go and reread the Stand on Zanzibar. - bookworm/assassin
- atombender 8y ago
  Don't forget Alfred Bester. The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man are interesting precursors to Gibson. He also wrote a fantastic, underrated novel that is definitely his most cyberpunk: The Computer Connection (1975), also published as Extro. It's great fun, and at times paints a future even more callous about human life than Gibson ever described (the main character is arguably a serial murderer, even if he has good intentions). The book was poorly reviewed at the time, and I wouldn't mind admitting that it's "flawed", but it's still one of my favourites.
StanislavPetrov 8y ago
> I recently re-read it and was struck by how things have turned out differently. Oddly, I get the exact opposite feeling. > a dark future where computing, communication, and artificial intelligence technologies were dominant, complemented by significant medical advances, large inhabited satellites in Earth orbit, and considerable drug use. Are not computing and communications technologies dominant now? Are not the advances in AI (having recently beaten the GO world champion) and the influence of AI in our society (Cambridge Analytica, Google, ect) becoming more pronounced? Aren't we making staggering advaces in medicine (even if these medical advances can only be afforded by an elite few - another cyberpunk theme) ? Aren't the Chinese in the process of establishing a moon base with several "megacorps" planning the colonization of Mars in the near future? Isn't drug use extremely widespread (both illicit and "legally" prescribed drugs virtually ubiqituous)? I would suggest that if you look at where society was in 1984, and look where we are today, we are well down the path towards a future that looks similar to Gibson's vision in many ways - we just aren't there yet.

Cheyana 8y ago

Gibson’s future just may not have happened yet. In the ‘50s our sci-fi showed rockets landing in the same manner (in reverse) that they launched, and it’s slowly becoming a thing now. Some things, like people living in space or AI, were always obvious and easy to predict. Some things were strangely overlooked (cellphones).

skmurphy 8y ago
That's certainly possible. It's interesting that the developers of the Motorola Star Tac phone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_StarTAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_StarTAC said that they were inspired by the Star Trek communicators so science fiction had definitely predicted cell phones. There is an entire site devoted to tracing real inventions to their science fiction counterparts: http://www.technovelgy.com/ http://www.technovelgy.com/
- bpiche 8y ago
  Sometimes these science fiction counterparts are called 'diagetic prototypes' or 'design fictions'. Has been a favorite topic of Mr Bruce Sterling's for a while now https://www.wired.com/2011/02/design-fiction-diegetic-prototypes/ https://www.wired.com/2011/02/design-fiction-diegetic-protot...
mattkevan 8y ago
“The future is already here - it’s just not evenly distributed” - William Gibson

jhbadger 8y ago

The space part of the book always seemed weirdly out of place to me given its near future run-down setting. It's unclear exactly when the novel was set, but probably within 50 years of its publication date of 1984. I can see how things like VR interfaces and even human-level AI could be early/mid 21st century things (particularly from the 1980s viewpoint), but things like cities in orbit seems more like a distant future several centuries out.

saltcured 8y ago
I recently watched a 1979 James Burke history show which was commemorating the 10 year anniversary of the moon landings. I was too young when this show was produced to really remember this time period clearly. This made me think about the timeline of the space age and just how short it was. That crowning moment was only about 15 years after the first satellite or 25 years after the end of WW2, when jet engines were barely known to the world. For someone like Gibson, that period was their childhood. They can be forgiven for assuming it would continue to rapidly expand. In the early 1980s, we had the space shuttles going up like clockwork and MTV was using film clips of those big moon rockets as part of their station-identification clips. By and large, people still thought of space as present and future tense. People didn't really understand it as a demonstration of massive budget redirection and military-industrial might, and that nothing had really been done to solve the physics and make space travel a consumer possibility with low marginal cost. To me, Gibson's later works try to correct that mistake. His focus shifts ever more towards the information flows, power brokers, and large-scale consumerism. He turns away from the military and space age set pieces. He treats weapons more as artifacts and surplus of a bygone era, just as this big nation-state technology must have seemed to him relics of his past.

electricslpnsld 8y ago

> Neuromancer, William Gibson’s first novel, was published in 1984. It helped to establish the cyberpunk genre of science fiction Cyberpunk dates at least a decade before Neuromancer -- Brunner's Shockwave Rider form 1974 comes to mind (and is a pretty interesting and strangely timely read, given that it is almost 50 years old).

kasey_junk 8y ago
Shockwave Rider is interesting because of how early it was and how unique at the time. That doesn't establish a subgenre though. Cyberpunk wasn't coined as a term until right around the same time as Neuromancer came out and Neuromancer swept the big sci-fi awards, making it a fair thing to say that it 'helped to establish'.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  Brunner is amazing - far ahead of his time.
  - kasey_junk 8y ago
    "Stand on Zanzibar" is one of my favorite books of all times. That said, I think the Shockwave Rider actually holds up less well than Neuromancer, because it was more tuned into the reality of software of its day. Still a great read though.
    - sorokod 8y ago
      Now I need to go and reread the Stand on Zanzibar. - bookworm/assassin
atombender 8y ago
Don't forget Alfred Bester. The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man are interesting precursors to Gibson. He also wrote a fantastic, underrated novel that is definitely his most cyberpunk: The Computer Connection (1975), also published as Extro. It's great fun, and at times paints a future even more callous about human life than Gibson ever described (the main character is arguably a serial murderer, even if he has good intentions). The book was poorly reviewed at the time, and I wouldn't mind admitting that it's "flawed", but it's still one of my favourites.

StanislavPetrov 8y ago

> I recently re-read it and was struck by how things have turned out differently. Oddly, I get the exact opposite feeling. > a dark future where computing, communication, and artificial intelligence technologies were dominant, complemented by significant medical advances, large inhabited satellites in Earth orbit, and considerable drug use. Are not computing and communications technologies dominant now? Are not the advances in AI (having recently beaten the GO world champion) and the influence of AI in our society (Cambridge Analytica, Google, ect) becoming more pronounced? Aren't we making staggering advaces in medicine (even if these medical advances can only be afforded by an elite few - another cyberpunk theme) ? Aren't the Chinese in the process of establishing a moon base with several "megacorps" planning the colonization of Mars in the near future? Isn't drug use extremely widespread (both illicit and "legally" prescribed drugs virtually ubiqituous)? I would suggest that if you look at where society was in 1984, and look where we are today, we are well down the path towards a future that looks similar to Gibson's vision in many ways - we just aren't there yet.