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When this came out, it was a repudiation of the caricatured ideals of the early SF of the 1930s - stuff that was fifty-one years old at the time. This was the d
by egypturnash 6y ago
When this came out, it was a repudiation of the caricatured ideals of the early SF of the 1930s - stuff that was fifty-one years old at the time. This was the dream of the future everyone had, once.
This story is thirty-nine years old now. Gibson's Neuromancer is only three years younger, and it feels as laughably innocent to our future-dwelling eyes as anything he was making fun of in this story.
Time makes fools of us all.
- varjag 6y agoI dunno, it was grim then and it still is. We did end up in substantially better future, all things considered.
- helios_invictus 6y agoDid we?
- bigbubba 6y agoUnless you figure you'd be privileged enough to live in Freeside, I'd say so.
- varjag 6y agoI mean, one major character there is a World War 3 veteran who had been turned into a computer drone.
- segfaultbuserr 6y agoCyberpunk is already here, it's just not very evenly distributed, yet.
- Apocryphon 6y ago'80s cyberpunk is still grim, but I think what they failed to capture is the dissonant tone of our modern dystopia. Classic cyberpunk was all dark sprawling streets and neon-lit seedy underbellies, led by shadowy faceless corporate execs of austere zaibatsu. Whereas the malefactors of great wealth in our present did not forget the average consumer and instead manipulates our emotions with cutting-edge marketing, algorithmic analysis of our deepest desires, and use of primary colors and comfy fonts. The copy is nonthreatening or hip language. The reality is grim, but the appearance isn't. More Brave New World and less 1984. More Disney, filtered through Banksy. I think most Gibson cyberpunk failed to capture the banality of the future, because they were fixated on the romantic cowboy-gangster hackers outlaws who lived on the fringes. Among the big names, Neal Stephenson did a great job of it with Snow Crash and The Diamond Age because he remembered that the megacorps had to sell to someone at the end of the day, and had to have shiny customer-facing dross.
- pmoriarty 6y ago"what they failed to capture is the dissonant tone of our modern dystopia" I just reread Neuromancer and Count Zero, and the main thing I was struck by that Gibson didn't predict was today's omnipresent surveillance. The people in his novels don't voluntarily carry around tracking devices and recoring devices. What they read and watch isn't tracked, and neither are their preferences or the opinions they express. They tend to have much more privacy than most people do today. In this respect, I find today's society closer to 1984 than to Brave New World. It's 1984, complete with Newspeak, doublethink and Two Minutes of Hate for the boogeyman of the day, telescreens that combine televisions with security cameras and microphones what monitor what you do. It's interesting that Gibson chose not to incorporate such dystopian themes in his books, and opted for what is in many ways a more optimistic dystopia.
- Apocryphon 6y agoYou make a good point about surveillance, but I'd argue it's still more Brave New World, a dystopia built on consumerism, hedonism, and the compliance of the willingly oppressed over 1984's brutal, spartan, war economy. The citizens of Oceania may choose to buy into propaganda and nationalism, but they're also forced to by an all-powerful police state. The inhabitants of Huxley's World State certainly are subject to an oppressive state and brainwashing, but they also do so under far more comfortable circumstances. 1984 is motivated by pain, Brave New World is motivated by pleasure- I'd consider the latter to be closer to modern consumerist society. I would assume Gibson simply didn't consider the technological ramifications of ubiquitous surveillance, or it's just his setup of a decentralized oppressive world of feuding megacorps and criminal super-gangs would have less thematic use for it than 1984's setup of one (or three) totalitarian governments able to monitor everyone.
- Neputys 6y agoYou are right on the money in a way. Neuromancer was the dream of the future everyone had, once. But it's just a "what" a manipulation if you will. Gernsback Continuum shows the depth of his insight it's a "why" and "how" something way more timeless. No surprise it becomes more relevant than his other work as time goes by. It's kind of sad, to me at least it shows he could have written something way more serious but chose fame and glory during his lifetime instead of shot at immortality so to speak. Really really effing sad...
- hardwaregeek 6y agoIt's particularly funny seeing how enamored Gibson was with Japan. Very much an artifact of the 80's. Even though, truth be told, he's never been that good at writing Asian characters. I love his work but dammit for someone who stole so much from Asian aesthetic, he always relegates his Asian characters to stereotypes or the weak and ineffectual^[1]. That said, I think the bones of Neuromancer could make a great modern story. Particularly the concept of the Tessier-Ashpools being these incestuous, almost pseudo-deities due to their wealth. The wasps' nest metaphor and all. I'd also love to see Wintermute/Neuromancer connected with surveillance capitalism and our mass collecting of data. [1]: I haven't read all of Gibson's novels so please correct me if there's a novel out there with better Asian characters.
- csours 6y agoI've just re-read Jurassic Park and I'm reminded of Crichton's portrayal of Japanese characters as well. The rise of Japan in the 80s was certainly on a lot of people's minds.
- fl0wenol 6y agoI mean, he literally followed it up with Rising Sun.
- FooBarBizBazz 6y agoGibson's schtick was always to trade on stereotypes. Charitably, his books were "idea novels" about social forces. None of his characters were ever human.
- pmoriarty 6y agoGibson's novels are full of stereotypes, particularly ones that seem like they stepped out of a Noir or hardboiled detective novel, such as his assassins, mercenaries, corporate execs, crime bosses, and an assortment of street life. But it's too harsh to say every character is a stereotype or that none of his characters were ever human. Take one of the protagonists of Count Zero, Marly Krushkhova, "the disgraced former operator of a tiny Paris gallery", who hunts down the maker of the Joseph Cornell-like boxes. She's completely human, and I can't think of any stereotype she would fit in to.
- pmoriarty 6y ago"This was the dream of the future everyone had, once." In a 2014 interview[1], William Gibson said: "It hasn't ever really been a monolithic thing. The gleaming kitchens and the monorail and the flying cars, and all of that, in the 1950's coexisted with a strain of left-leaning American sociopolitically aware prose science fiction, which was being published in contrast to its political opposite -- the political opposite was called Astounding Stories and the liberal scifi magazine was called Galaxy, and the writers.. there was a little bit of crossover and they would drink together when they went to science fiction conventions but otherwise they didn't have much to do with one another." "If you look at the stories that were being published in Galaxy, they were quite dystopian and grittier and more naturalistic, and to my mind altogether more intelligent, but that's sort of a matter of taste, so it's never all one scenario, though we tend to remember it that way." [1] - at around 18 minutes in to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dlvle5YBv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dlvle5YBv4