4 ms·

I knew someone would bring up Neuromancer and honestly I'm with the GP here. I find Gibson highly overrated. I find Neuromncer in particular extremely overrated

by cletus 7y ago

I knew someone would bring up Neuromancer and honestly I'm with the GP here. I find Gibson highly overrated. I find Neuromncer in particular extremely overrated. It's not bad. It's just nothing exceptional as a piece of writing. Now I read it many years after it came out so I suspect a lot of the fawning comes from nostalgia and those who happened to be the right age when it came out to be blown away by his ideas. There GP had it right though. Cyberpunk was a flash inn there pan and a lot less interesting once you realize it was a thinly veiled expression of xenophobia about the Japanese. Some works are exceptional because their exceptional. Others are viewed as such because they're pioneering and while credit is due for Novell ideas often the only thing holding that up later is nostalgia over what's really a pedestrian work of fiction.

EliRivers 7y ago
Cyberpunk was a flash inn there pan I disagree. Cyberpunk is now one of the principal, default sci-fi tropes.
ctdonath 7y ago
Those who live in the visionary's future do not appreciate how extraordinary that vision was at the time. So much of what you consider "normal tech" today seemed mind-blowing fantasy when predicted. In a world of 16,384-byte 4MHz computers communicating at 110 bits per second, high-res VR via multi-core multi-GHz computers networked at gigabit/s [0] was magic we didn't know how to comprehend. So much linguistic/cognitive representation was lacking that "futuristic" then sounds primitive/confused today. Once you grasp the context it was written it, you may see how insightful & innovative the works were. [0] ...used to watch cat videos and argue with strangers.
- cletus 7y ago
  So those is wrong on two fronts: we don't live in Neuromancer's future and many of the ideas you attribute to him predate him quite significantly. Technologically augmented humans? Nope. Pervasive VR? Hardly. Dystopian future? Not realty. Corporations supplanting governments? That's a stretch. There was a book from the 1950s or 1960s (the names escapes me) that looe decline in sending bits, the natural conclusion of which was that in the coming decades you would be able to share your experience in real time to anyone else the planet. Off that's not VR I don't know what is. Gibson may have popularized it in sci-fi (although I'm not entirely convinced of that) but nostalgia really seems to be trying to cast there present in Gibsob's future more than I think is justices.
TrentLarr 7y ago
>thinly veiled expression of xenophobia about the Japanese. while that is an unfortunate and awful aspect of one its central aesthetic tenants, i do not think that it is the core.
- mlyle 7y ago
  Kind of an understandable xenophobia, given rhetoric in the US in the early 80's. It's a work that fits the cultural context of the time it was written, in that respect.
jhbadger 7y ago
There was certainly an anti-Japanese streak to cyberpunk, which hasn't held up well. But what was more important was that cyberpunk predicted was a future in which the real power was held by giant international tech companies rather than governments. That is basically the world that we live in.
jdkee 7y ago
This reads like someone who did not read Neuromancer when it was released in 1984, so they fail to understand how groundbreaking it was for the time. And someone who doesn't know it was the first novel to win all three major awards of the science fiction genre. And how influential the novel (and the Sprawl trilogy) were to a broader cultural movement.
- cletus 7y ago
  This comment reads like one from sometimes who stopped at the first sentence when it became clear I don't fawn over Neuromsncer because I _literally_ said I read it years later. I also makes the point that it may well have been groundbreaking butt groundbreaking doesn't necessarily mean good fiction. Interestingly Goodreads had it are 3.9/5 and a quick scan of the 5 star reviews all seem to mention how groundbreaking it was. I can give credit for that but if you take that offer of the picture you're left with a completely forgettable work of fiction. As for those who say how her predicted the future... Did he? Did he really? We don't live in a dystopia, VR is a gimmick, corporations haven't replaced governments and enhanced humans are still a fantasy. As for the cell phone as a portable computer, the Pl prediction for that goes back to at least 1974 with The Mote in God's Eye. This thread has done nothing but affirm my view that many people get completely enraptured with and are unable to separate themselves from nostalgia.
  - e12e 7y ago
    Maybe some new readers expect something... More? I personally am a great fan - and I do think William Gibson And Bruce Sterling did a lot to cement cyberpunk as a strong genere (not alone, Vernor Vinge, Philip K Dick certainly played a big part). But the line continues back - William Gibson wrote a new foreword to Tiger, Tiger / The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. And Richard Morgan's series Altered Carbon continue forward in this vein of combining punk/pulp, dystopia and technology. Personally I grown more and more fond of Gibson's vision of escaped AIs being worshipped as Vodou legbas.

by cletus 7y ago

EliRivers 7y ago

Cyberpunk was a flash inn there pan I disagree. Cyberpunk is now one of the principal, default sci-fi tropes.

ctdonath 7y ago

Those who live in the visionary's future do not appreciate how extraordinary that vision was at the time. So much of what you consider "normal tech" today seemed mind-blowing fantasy when predicted. In a world of 16,384-byte 4MHz computers communicating at 110 bits per second, high-res VR via multi-core multi-GHz computers networked at gigabit/s [0] was magic we didn't know how to comprehend. So much linguistic/cognitive representation was lacking that "futuristic" then sounds primitive/confused today. Once you grasp the context it was written it, you may see how insightful & innovative the works were. [0] ...used to watch cat videos and argue with strangers.

cletus 7y ago
So those is wrong on two fronts: we don't live in Neuromancer's future and many of the ideas you attribute to him predate him quite significantly. Technologically augmented humans? Nope. Pervasive VR? Hardly. Dystopian future? Not realty. Corporations supplanting governments? That's a stretch. There was a book from the 1950s or 1960s (the names escapes me) that looe decline in sending bits, the natural conclusion of which was that in the coming decades you would be able to share your experience in real time to anyone else the planet. Off that's not VR I don't know what is. Gibson may have popularized it in sci-fi (although I'm not entirely convinced of that) but nostalgia really seems to be trying to cast there present in Gibsob's future more than I think is justices.

TrentLarr 7y ago

>thinly veiled expression of xenophobia about the Japanese. while that is an unfortunate and awful aspect of one its central aesthetic tenants, i do not think that it is the core.

mlyle 7y ago
Kind of an understandable xenophobia, given rhetoric in the US in the early 80's. It's a work that fits the cultural context of the time it was written, in that respect.

jhbadger 7y ago

There was certainly an anti-Japanese streak to cyberpunk, which hasn't held up well. But what was more important was that cyberpunk predicted was a future in which the real power was held by giant international tech companies rather than governments. That is basically the world that we live in.

jdkee 7y ago

This reads like someone who did not read Neuromancer when it was released in 1984, so they fail to understand how groundbreaking it was for the time. And someone who doesn't know it was the first novel to win all three major awards of the science fiction genre. And how influential the novel (and the Sprawl trilogy) were to a broader cultural movement.

cletus 7y ago
This comment reads like one from sometimes who stopped at the first sentence when it became clear I don't fawn over Neuromsncer because I _literally_ said I read it years later. I also makes the point that it may well have been groundbreaking butt groundbreaking doesn't necessarily mean good fiction. Interestingly Goodreads had it are 3.9/5 and a quick scan of the 5 star reviews all seem to mention how groundbreaking it was. I can give credit for that but if you take that offer of the picture you're left with a completely forgettable work of fiction. As for those who say how her predicted the future... Did he? Did he really? We don't live in a dystopia, VR is a gimmick, corporations haven't replaced governments and enhanced humans are still a fantasy. As for the cell phone as a portable computer, the Pl prediction for that goes back to at least 1974 with The Mote in God's Eye. This thread has done nothing but affirm my view that many people get completely enraptured with and are unable to separate themselves from nostalgia.
- e12e 7y ago
  Maybe some new readers expect something... More? I personally am a great fan - and I do think William Gibson And Bruce Sterling did a lot to cement cyberpunk as a strong genere (not alone, Vernor Vinge, Philip K Dick certainly played a big part). But the line continues back - William Gibson wrote a new foreword to Tiger, Tiger / The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. And Richard Morgan's series Altered Carbon continue forward in this vein of combining punk/pulp, dystopia and technology. Personally I grown more and more fond of Gibson's vision of escaped AIs being worshipped as Vodou legbas.