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The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk

bpiche 4y ago
gh0st, if you're watching this, I'm still looking for the rabbit hole.
mrslave 4y ago
Snow Crash is funny and short. I didn't like it at first but after forcing through the first 30 pages the anarcho-libertarianism ad absurdum took hold and I was laughing my socks off. I have yet to read another Stephenson novel. Neuromancer is more intense and some of the passages are hard to follow, but I enjoyed it pretty much from the get-go. Different books. I wish there was less apparent competition between them. Also I wish the sense of humor of Snow Crash was better understood. It really is a laugh-out-loud read and otherwise reads like a comic book (in a good way). I think some of the Americanisms irk British and Euro readers. I'm not usually one for audio books but I have heard the Snow Crash audio book carries the tone perfectly.
motohagiography 4y ago
Funny, I read it and then studied it at an alternative high school in the early 90's, and see Neuromancer as just a presumed part of my culture. I read this post as a bit like someone saying when we talk about poverty in rich western countries as "Dickensian," there was a real person named Dickens who actually wrote stories of some renown about those themes. However, what fiction, art and comics were to us in a time before we could see pictures on the internet of literally everything, travel everywhere, and read the thoughts of random strangers on every conciavable topic, is what cyberpunk signifies now. Gibson seemed to escape the category of genre and get treated "seriously," as "literary," fiction that is usually character driven, (vs plot driven and didactic fantasy sci-fi) but in Neuromancer's case the technology was so alive it became a character, or so the conversation at the time was about the book. Literary fiction was a way to extend your experience by developing an empathy for complex characters and exercise it in a way that could be applied to relationships with real people. You could tell when someone had read Catcher and the Rye because it was like they had adopted the mannerisms of another friend you hadn't met. The idea and aesthetic of being or becoming cyberpunk - an anti-hero with super power competence at manipulating the tech substrate of your environment and system you both existed in and were against - was what a generation of young hackers adopted from Neromancer the way boomers read 'Catcher'. At the time, Neuromancer's Case, Artimage, and Molly replaced the Holden Caulfields, Sebastian Flytes, and Larry Darell (characters from different famous literary novels) as character archetypes a lot of young readers oriented their aspirations and identities around, where relationships with these characters often set them on a real life trajectory. If you read Neuromancer and became a hacker, it's a lot like reading Brideshead Revisited and accepting your sexuality, or reading Razor's Edge and dropping out and living in an ashram. Fiction before the internet did that, where it was personal experience of a relationship with characters and it had downstream effects on the culture. Post-internet on instagram or a blog someone follows, the characters are literally more real because these are people sharing their lives, but also less complex because the text and images are still representations created by people who aren't deeply thoughtful and practiced writers, and by being real, they don't provide ideals or open aesthetics. Internet people/characters don't provoke and leverage imagination that lets the reader create new and beautiful things, rather, they create concrete symbols to imitate and compare with directly. When I read the article I was nostalgic, but thought it's not so much cyberpunk that is the artifact of the past, it's that the aesthetics and experience of fiction as a perfect, distant, and open ended ideal that draws out the readers imagination to create something new themselves that feels gone. As in I don't miss cyberpunk so much as I miss fiction being meaningfully upstream of culture the way it seemed to be before the internet. Anyway, piqued.
Gravityloss 4y ago
I was sick at home and finally picked up the Neuromancer which had been sitting in the bookshelf for years. It was an experience indeed. At many points, very high concept (which of course has been copied to death). At other points, naive. Surprisingly few things felt old fashioned. The biggest let down was the unrealistic behavior and motivation of people. It felt very much like an adventure game where everything revolves around the main character. EDIT: To clarify, I liked the book very much.
- karpierz 4y ago
  The protagonist is so addicted to the Internet that he's willing to do literally anything to be able to use it again. If that's not a relatable motivation, I don't know what is.
  - ugl 4y ago
    don't forget the speed addiction!
    - idontwantthis 4y ago
      I think he got addicted to speed so he wouldn’t have to dream about the internet as much
    - nirav72 4y ago
      We have adderall now. Speed with a PG rating
      - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
        I don't think that's a very kind thing to say about the medications for people for who ADHD medications like amphetamines and methylphenidates have meant a huge improvement in quality of life.
        InitialLastName 4y ago
daedalus_f 4y ago
I love neuromancer and its sequels, and like this blogs aesthetic, but good god the tracking makes it hard to read.
- wanda 4y ago
  Reader view? The reader view really highlights how short the article is, now that I'm looking at it. I think tracking is letter spacing right? It is pretty rough. I think you can enforce fonts and at least in Firefox and Safari you can add custom CSS to help with that sort of thing. I don't think Chrome offers the same feature without an extension.
q_andrew 4y ago
The Sprawl trilogy and its fashion/world is formed a lot by politics. Gibson himself says that Neuromancer is an exaggerated critique of Reaganomics and the problems it exasperated (or, at the very least, failed to address). The rampant drug abuse, sovereign corporations, the ever increasing gap of poverty and technology -- I think a lot of derivative media adopts these elements to look cool (without actually understanding their context or meaning).
- ethbr0 4y ago
  I'd imagine looking back, a lot of Neuromancer and pre-ubiquitous web Cyberpunk reads weirdly because it was written in an information-scarce world. Versus the information-excess world we now live in. In the former, I remember concepts being so much bigger and more concrete. E.g. the "War on Drugs" or "Reaganomics". These were things that existed because powerful people said they did. And there was debating, but ideas were still clearly defined. So even though CP authors were imagining our future, it was a pretty fundamental shift to go from books-at-libraries to everything-anywhere-all-of-the-time. Now, every concept seems to have much fuzzier conceptual edges. Because there are a million opinions about it circulating publicly and loudly.
  - pmoriarty 4y ago
    "I'd imagine looking back, a lot of Neuromancer and pre-ubiquitous web Cyberpunk reads weirdly because it was written in an information-scarce world." There's just as much scarcity of valuable information today... it's just that now it's buried under a mountain of garbage which is more accessible than ever before.
    - rektide 4y ago
      That information glut, if it does so exist, leads more towards dis-belief imo & skepticism, especially in the main. Yeah there's a lot of meme-viruses, num shrubs, other ways to go wrong or really wrong. Radicalization happens. Before we didnt used to be connected enough to see this shit, and the asymetric nature of the loud & shitty versus the peaceful/coherent/quiet/skeptical mainstream means the delusional & extremists have outsized visibility. The disbelief keeps growing. We dont need Adbusters as much because the thin transparency of the world, of being sold garbage mounds of low-grade content is well known, we understand how shallow things are. And disbelief keeps rising. In contrast to the higher trust, respected mainstream media, the limited availability of information which came before. Which gel'ed the world into place, which created shared beliefs & allowed agendas to be driven. Where-as now the all-defector anti-agenda is the default mode for many.
pmoriarty 4y ago
The BBC made a fantastic radio play out of Neuromancer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S89BHnaxULo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S89BHnaxULo
the__alchemist 4y ago
I finished reading Neuromancer a week ago. I'd played Cyberpunk 2077 recently, and Dystopia further back. So many of the concepts from those games appear to come directly from Neuromancer! I stumbled upon articles implying they were indirectly influenced; Neuromancer evidently created a whole genre! Btw, compared to hard scifi like Stephenson (relevant comparison due to Snow Crash), Neuromacer isn't really there; its strengths are outstanding creativity, world-building, character development (including top-notch implied backstories), personal interactions, and artful descriptions.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Mike Pondsmith (and the R. Talsorian Games authors) basically picked up the then-recent Blade Runner (82) and Neuromancer (84) threads and ran with them in CP88. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_2020 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_2020
- newsclues 4y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Chrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Chrome
- throw1234651234 4y ago
  Gibson pioneered the genre - you have to give him that. He is very much off on a lot of details though. For example, in his other books, his descriptions of mercenaries are comical at best for anyone who has a passing familiarity with the topic. Nonetheless, I place him up there with Stephenson. All this DESPITE the fact that Stephenson stands in a league of his own - he pioneered "post cyberpunk" with Diamond Age and went from having as much style as Gibson to as much scientific grounding as Asimov. With that said, Stephenson's latter books are all science, no char dev, no (interesting) story. I really can't think of an author who can stand with Stephenson. Vernor Vinge comes close, but not there on style. Then there are authors with a single good idea that are worth reading, but nowhere near Stephenson's level (e.g. the author of The Forever War). P.S. Obviously I am not so subtly fishing for people to argue with me and give me book recommendations. Just not the Tri-body Problem please - it falls in with The Forever War - cool concept, cool (very long) intro, not much else.
ychompinator 4y ago
A great and terrible book, Gibson repeatedly throwing you in to mountains of not yet explained language and concepts before dragging you out of confusion a chapter later is frustrating and tiresome, however I could not help coming back for more. I regret nothing.
- criddell 4y ago
  I have to read his books twice. The first time I just plow through, confused the entire time. The second pass is where I can enjoy it, but there are still a lot of times where I read a sentence and struggle with parsing it.
  - shon 4y ago
    His new books are the same. I love it! =D
  - mindcrime 4y ago
    Gibson's works definitely demand multiple reads, IMO. I have read Neuromancer around 5 times now, and I'd say I "get it" a little bit more each time I read it. Even now, 30+ years after I read it the first time, it still fascinates on a re-read.
sho_hn 4y ago
I was in a bookshop in Germany the other day, and saw a "Neuromancer" cover with a cool stylized photograph of Seoul, South Korea, in the background. The most perfect metaphor for the West's present switch-over from Japanmania to the Korean Wave. Similarly now have the modern Korean alphabet bleed into the neon signs of Cyberpunky streets of more recent movie productions where in the past you had Japanese or Chinese writing systems. The shifting representation of Asia in Western exoticism/escapism content is fascinating to observe. Edit: Photo of the cover: https://eikehein.com/stuff/neuromancer_seoul.jpg https://eikehein.com/stuff/neuromancer_seoul.jpg
- throw1234651234 4y ago
  "The most perfect metaphor for the West's present switch-over from Japanmania to the Korean Wave." if this is a thing, it has been largely unnoticed. I think educated people think of SK as one of the few countries competing with US tech income (others being Australia, Japan, Singapore, and some (but very few) parts of England (London Finance), Germany (not sure on this one), and Switzerland (banking )). Other than that, Korea goes mostly unnoticed by the west.
  - sho_hn 4y ago
    We're talking in a pop culture context here, where even just in 2020-2022 Korea and Korean culture/heritage has had significant soft power success in a number of markets/media: - Export of majorly successful pop music (e.g. BTS, Blackpink - those hits are often penned by Western composers however, so a bit murky on what product is flowing there) - Ditto TV (e.g. Squid Game setting TV records with a lot rooted in Korean schoolyard games) - Ditto cinema (Parasite, a story about social mobility woes in Korean society, winning all the Oscars) - Ditto gaming (PUBG, other MMOs) - Ditto literature (bestellers including "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982", again on social issues in the country) - Ditto cosmetics exports, beauty trends ("Korean Week" in malls, say), etc. - Even some Western productions focussing specifically on Korean diaspora/ethnicity (e.g. most recently the expensive "Pachinko" on Apple TV+ (and the novel it's based on), or stuff like Kim's Convenience) I think you can definitely make a case that Korea is the Asian-country-du-jour among the Western audience (and that's before you get into, say, Latin America, which is far deeper into Korean TV content, also bleeding over into Latin minorities in the USA).
scrapheap 4y ago
If you liked Neuromancer then you should read True Names by Vernor Vinge.
- alphabetting 4y ago
  Thanks for rec. Neuromancer is an all time fave. Amazing how well it has held up
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  I went on a Vinge binge when I'd heard that he was the originator of the singularity concept. Didn't like any of his work, including True Names. I liked Neuromancer and Count Zero way more.
- kemayo 4y ago
  It's impressive because it's ~3 years before Neuromancer, and in many ways it's a better predictor of "the internet" as a cultural thing. It nails a lot of the social aspects of online forums, for instance. It lacks the raw style of Neuromancer, alas.
  - pmoriarty 4y ago
    E. M. Forster predicted something like the internet and online forums in 1909 in The Machine Stops.
  - themadturk 4y ago
    It helps that Vinge is a computer scientist; he probably had a better view of what was coming down the pike than Gibson did. And no, he's a solid writer, but not the stylist Gibson was (and, actually, still is).
- ngc248 4y ago
  Cyberpunk and head crash by bruce bethke is also good
the_af 4y ago
One thing I read somewhere -- and it might have been an interview with Gibson or with someone else talking about his work -- is how much William Gibson despises derivatives of cyberpunk in the books, videogames and movies that followed. Specifically, he dislikes the focus on the aesthetic, neon lights, mirror shades, etc. I think Gibson really dislikes Cyberpunk 2077, for example. Gibson argued they are missing the point, staying shallow and forgetting the "message", which was PUNK: a rebellion and a rejection of the mainstream state of affairs. Gibson was a punk writer, and his writing was a critique of Reaganomics and the direction the world was going back then. I think he means we need a different kind of critique now, not anchored to neon lights and vaguely Japanese inspired retrofuturistic aesthetics which look like what the 80s thought the future would be. And nothing can be more conformist and anti-punk than lazily copying a now classic aesthetic and doing nothing else with it. That said, I love that aesthetic myself, and have no problem being stuck in the past. But I see his point.
- notreallyserio 4y ago
  Ironically, focusing criticism on the aesthetics is itself "staying shallow". Much cyberpunk media does serve as a critique of the status quo or an imagined future dystopia, as I assume he would prefer, but with some neon on the surface.
  - the_af 4y ago
    I don't think Gibson minds the aesthetic in particular; what he is saying, if I understand him correctly, is that nobody cares about cyberpunk except for the aesthetic. There's nothing beyond it. If there is something, it's the same old tropes about big bad evil 80s-style corporations, usually with a vague Japanese or Asian theme. Everything that was novel about cyberpunk has now been absorbed into the mainstream and has become just another trope to be used by videogame/movie/anime authors. It's as lazy as it gets, and definitely not punk.
    - pmoriarty 4y ago
      "It's as lazy as it gets, and definitely not punk." Reading is not very punk, though arguing what punk is is definitely punk.
runesofdoom 4y ago
Anyone interested in the roots of cyberpunk might also be interested in John Brunner's 1968 novel *Stand On Zanzibar*.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Not his 1973 novel "The Shockwave Rider"?
  - mindcrime 4y ago
    The Shockwave Rider should definitely be considered something like "proto Cyberpunk" IMO. And regardless of that, I'd absolutely recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it yet. I just picked up a copy of Stand on Zanzibar, looking forward to getting into that soon.
    - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
      The film "Heavy Metal" from 1981 also had some of this aesthetic. So did the magazine counterpart (still in print!)
      - mindcrime 4y ago
        You know, I feel silly admitting this, but I still haven't ever watched "Heavy Metal". Now I'm thinking I should make that my top TODO item after work tonight. That's been on "the list" for, like, forever.
        TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
        The Josan Gonzalez “Deathburger” images on the article could be lifted directly the Heavy Metal movie. And Gonzalez did artwork for the Heavy Metal magazine. When Musk launched a Tesla into space, there was a lot of speculation that he was inspired by the opening scene in the Heavy Metal film [0] [1]. This film was Ivan Reitman before he did Ghostbusters and same year he did Stripes, and became really famous. A film like this could never be made today; there are way too many unpolitically correct scenes. Just don't bother with "Heavy Metal 2000", the 2nd film that came out 20 years later -- it was not good at all and had no involvement from the original creators as I understand. [0] https://www.scalemodelnews.com/2018/02/did-heavy-metal-inspire-elon-musks.html https://www.scalemodelnews.com/2018/02/did-heavy-metal-inspi... [1] https://bleedingcool.com/movies/spacex-elon-musk-use-falcon-heavy-greatest-heavy-metal-reenactment-space-ever/ https://bleedingcool.com/movies/spacex-elon-musk-use-falcon-... More great art from Josan Gonzalez: https://www.heavymetal.com/tag/josan-gonzalez/ https://www.heavymetal.com/tag/josan-gonzalez/
JKCalhoun 4y ago
> When Gibson penned his opening line ‘the sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel’ he merged reality and the digital in a way that seems almost prophetic today It feels like Gibson was riffing on the vibe created by John Foxx's "Metamatic" [1] in 1980 (never mind his "Ultravox!" [2] in the years before that). Maybe it was Foxx though that claimed he was channelling the mood of novels like Ballard's "Crash" [3] from 1973. Computerization, synthesized music, alienation were a part of the zeitgeist of the 70's, 80's. [1] https://youtu.be/dgaLF2F5LWg https://youtu.be/dgaLF2F5LWg [2] https://youtu.be/3vy4eZ69Tj8?t=71 https://youtu.be/3vy4eZ69Tj8?t=71 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_(Ballard_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_(Ballard_novel)
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  Blade Runner was a much more obvious influence.
- mindcrime 4y ago
  Regarding J.G. Ballard, my understanding is that the early Cyberpunk authors were all absolutely heavily inspired by his works. Somebody (I forget who) said something to the effect of "We were all competing to see who would out-Ballard who".
jmyeet 4y ago
I was honestly underwhelmed by Neuromancer. Maybe because so many people raved about it or that I read it many years after it was written. I honestly don't know. It was... OK. But amazing? I don't see it. I love science fiction. One thing you have to realize about science ficiton is that it is a product of the time it was written. It may share many of the aesthetics, themes, philosophies and politics of that time. Like it's hard not to look at the original Star Wars and not see the impact of 70s aesthetics. Cyberpunk as a genre stems from xenophobia, ultimately. There was a pervasive fear in the 1980s that the Japanese were "taking over". The depiction of a dystopian future dominated by megacorps mirrors fears of Japanese culture and influence. 40 years later this dystopian future still hasn't eventuated.
- RobertoG 4y ago
  I read it again recently and I found it still pretty interesting. From a SF aficionado point of view, Neuromancer world has: -An economy that rely on ubiquitous computer networks. -Colonization of low orbit. -An AI rebelling and doing its own thing. -Digital downloads of personalities. In 1984.. I mean, OK, the concepts already existed, but it really break with most of the SF that was being done until then. It's the beginning of a really dark SF, that I suppose was the point: "If we follow the current path, the future will look like corporate feudalism". By the way, from a political point of view, the fear of the Japanese taking over is now the fear of the Chinese taking over. I will let the "dystopian future dominated by megacorps" comment as an exercise for the reader.
  - bpiche 4y ago
    Have you seen Elysium? It's basically Neuromancer: The Movie, starring Matt Damon.
- omarhaneef 4y ago
  Also true of Lord of the Rings, or watching Star Wars etc if you didn't read/watch it early on (either when it first came out to the world, or early on in your life when you were new to the genre). I won't speculate on why this is the case, but some people claim its because the innovations are copied so quickly the original becomes just another copy of itself.
horsestaple 4y ago
I couldn't finish the book, it just had too much unexplained fictional techno-jargon to be able to enjoy for me. I know thats the style of immersion he was going for, but it didn't click for me, even though I'm a big sci-fi reader.
KaiserPro 4y ago
I read Neuromancer a few years back, I liked it. I do don't normally read scifi as it tends to annoy me. However this didnt. One thing that really stuck out for me was that _everyone_ had memory foam mattresses. The slums, the really slick holiday homes, everyone.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  > One thing that really stuck out for me was that _everyone_ had memory foam mattresses. The slums, the really slick holiday homes, everyone. Interesting; I guess it could be explained in-universe by economies of scale, that is, (memory) foam mattresses being faster and cheaper to produce than other types of mattresses. I'm thinking of spring mattresses, which actually have parts and different materials, whereas foam can be just a single block I think? And when you think about logistics, memory foam can be compacted and vacuum sealed for transport.
btbuildem 4y ago
I quite appreciate the author's use of Death Burger art as illustration in the article. For me it captures the aesthetic of modern cyberpunk quite well.
- henriquecm8 4y ago
  Death Burger is probably my favorite artist
- alx__ 4y ago
  I was stoked to see the Necromancer poster used as the header image. Have a print of that in my house. Love the artist's style. https://citadel9.com/ https://citadel9.com/
mmaunder 4y ago
I’m constantly amazed at how Metaverse aficionados quote Snow Crash and and other 1990s works as cornerstones of cyberspace, when Gibson invented the term and Neuromancer was written in 1984. Gibson is the original. The passage where Case connects to the matrix (also a Gibson term) again for the first time once his nervous system is repaired is heartbreakingly beautiful. I relate to it as a young phone phreak growing up in South Africa in the 80s and 90s when I would bluebox the home country direct phone trunks to connect to BBSs in the USA. When I could not get through, usually because they were filtering my seize tones, I felt the same deprivation. And when I finally connected I felt the same elation Case feels in this scene… “Please, he prayed, now— A gray disk, the color of Chiba sky. Now— Disk beginning to rotate, faster, becoming a sphere of paler gray. Expanding— And flowed, flowered for him, fluid neon origami trick, the unfolding of his distanceless home, his country, transparent 3D chessboard extending to infinity. Inner eye opening to the stepped scarlet pyramid of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority burning beyond the green cubes of Mitsubishi Bank of America, and high and very far away he saw the spiral arms of military systems, forever beyond his reach. And somewhere he was laughing, in a white-painted loft, distant fingers caressing the deck, tears of release streaking his face.”
- sneak 4y ago
  To be honest, the descriptions of the metaverse are the parts of Neuromancer that hold up least well. The dirtbags, crime, sex, and drugs are all still perfect, and I imagine will remain so.
  - pmoriarty 4y ago
    "the descriptions of the metaverse are the parts of Neuromancer that hold up least well" I'd be interested in reading descriptions of cyberspace that are better than Neuromancer's. So far I haven't found any.
    - jvanderbot 4y ago
      The commentary I've read (and agree with), is that the metaverse itself just didn't hold up. The internet did not become a new reality. Instead, our own reality is melding with the internet through always-on devices and miniaturized sensors and wide wireless networks. Instead of some kind of digital lovecraftian portals hidden away in parts of realspace that connect to this magical deadly realm, the modern vision of cyperbpunk should probably have included something more like an ethereal plane -- a perfect mirror of the real world that happens to ignore its physical constraints and provide ways to manipulate and bypass the realspace.
jandrusk 4y ago
I just start reading Neuromancer on my Kindle last night and then this post pops up on HN. :)
nathias 4y ago
Gibson's failiure was the failiure of punk in general, it was too cool and not edgy enough and was easily incorporated into mainstream.
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  Is that a failure or a success?
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    success if you're trying to make money failure if you're trying to make change
vmoore 4y ago
Cyberpunk aesthetics are mostly hidden IMHO. I saw a few Youtube videos of chip factories that make flash drives, SSDs and integrated circuits, etc and was amazed at the efficiency & precision of the robots that make them. If you want to be reminded we're living in the future, visit some of these factories, they're mind blowing.
Apocryphon 4y ago
Has anyone read his Bridge trilogy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_trilogy > The trilogy derives its name from the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, which was abandoned in an earthquake and has become a massive shantytown and a site of improvised shelter. Seems sadly two heartbeats into the future for today’s Bay Area
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  Honestly, this sounds a bit like some of Philip K Dick's work, which was set in the Bay Area after a nuclear war... he wrote it about 50 years before Gibson, though I'm sure Gibson must add something original to the mix. I once asked Gibson whether he was influenced by Philip K Dick, and he said that he didn't read Dick when he was young, and was more influenced by Pynchon instead. Still, despite his denial, he seems to be retreading a lot of ground first covered by Dick himself.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    I just started reading Bleeding Edge, which very much reads like a cyberpunk book in terms of dropping dozens of unelaborated references and allusions, or maybe like Douglas Coupland. Though I’d say it feels more like one of Bruce Sterling’s lighter works- Zeitgeist in particular- than something more like classic cyberpunk. (I’ve always associated the genre with brand-dropping, though that happens a ton in John Brunner’s work, which predates Gibson.) Independently, Pynchon also does that often, even in his novels not about high technology.
- mindcrime 4y ago
  Funny you would ask: I just finished All Tomorrow's Parties about a week ago, as the end of a massive read/re-read of William Gibson. I started with Neuromancer and read the Sprawl Trilogy and the Bridge Trilogy back to back. I'd read everything at least once before, except Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties, so this was a chance to kinda do it all at the same time, finish the stuff I had not read, and kinda have all this William Gibson in my head at more or less the same time. Having done all that, I'll add this; if you've only read Neuromancer, or even only read just the Sprawl Trilogy, definitely consider giving the Bridge Trilogy a shot. It's markedly different in many ways, but still very Gibsonesque and definitely worth reading. The big differences, IMO, are that the Bridge Trilogy books are less "futuristic" and have less focus on tech technology qua technology, and focus more on the people and their interactions and choices, etc.
stakkur 4y ago
The 80's were my 20s. It's hard to explain to younger folks how the 80s (especially early 80s) felt, culturally. The whole 'Japan, Inc.' thing was in full swing, and the general feeling was that Japan was eating the world. 'Tech' was this fresh, semi-mystical thing, still opaque to much of the public. Gibson latched onto that cultural wave and took it into a possible future, and it was exciting to me. Today it's interesting to see that technofuture both commoditized and idolized. Now in my 50s, it's still interesting but seems a bleak and not-terribly-human place that I don't want to live.
- mindcrime 4y ago
  It's hard to explain to younger folks how the 80s (especially early 80s) felt, culturally. The whole 'Japan, Inc.' thing was in full swing, and the general feeling was that Japan was eating the world. 'Tech' was this fresh, semi-mystical thing, still opaque to much of the public. I'm just a little younger than you then, but I remember the 80's pretty much the same way. Japanese manufacturers (especially of cars and consumer electronics) were sort of "eating the world" and computers and high-tech were still seen as very mysterious and mesmerizing and had a real mystique about them. Interestingly, for me, the mystique and mystery of high-tech largely persisted up until about 2010 or so. Maybe a little later, maybe 2015 even. It's only been in the last few years that it seems to be wearing off. Not sure if that's just a reflection of my becoming older and more cynical and harder to impress, or if its down to changes in society/culture at large, or what. But my recent re-reading of the Sprawl and Bridge trilogies was, in part, I think an attempt to recapture some of that. Not sure if it worked or not, but it was fun reading all that stuff. Now in my 50s, it's still interesting but seems a bleak and not-terribly-human place that I don't want to live. There are aspects of the "cyberpunk future" that still seem appealing in some regards, but it doesn't necessarily feel like the exact world I'd want to live in, that's for sure.
- cwkoss 4y ago
  Japanese 80s City Pop is one of my favorite musical genres - an outgrowth of the huge economic growth happening in Japanese cities. Big funky happy instrumentals and lyrics often alluding to glamorous lifestyles, social isolation and an unquenched loneliness. It was a very interesting time in Japan's history, which I personally think has a lot of parallels to the current west-coast tech bubble. Check out: Fantasy - Meiko Nakahara https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kt8HP1VEPU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kt8HP1VEPU 真夜中のドア/Stay With Me - Miki Matsubara https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEe_yIbW64w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEe_yIbW64w I Can't Stop The Loneliness - ANRI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bALJxjL8jw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bALJxjL8jw 4:00 A.M. - Taeko Onuki https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sOKkON_UnQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sOKkON_UnQ
EugeneOZ 4y ago
I’ll write my comment to outweigh the negativity towards the game. I’m still enjoying the game, still riding through Night City, finding new details every day: in the roads, tunnels, on the walls. A random pedestrian might have some link to a book or a movie - you just need to check their clothes and phrases. So exciting. REDEngine is great - of course, performance is awful, but the idea of ray-traced lights is great and it looks amazing. Also, the details level and the skin rendering - are truly amazing. Of course, the game needs more, much more work - to make it more entertaining, deeper. But still, it's an interesting world, and I’m pretty sure the price was fair. One of the most interesting and entertaining parts for me: Cyber Engine Tweaks. Some days I spend more times for hacking than playing:)
- kemayo 4y ago
  I think you're being too specific. This article, I'm pretty sure, is about the aesthetic of the entire genre of cyberpunk, rather than the video game Cyberpunk 2077.
  - EugeneOZ 4y ago
    Yes, my first line mentions it.
    - kemayo 4y ago
      Ah, I see what you were going for. It's a bit confusing that you didn't put this in the thread about Cyberpunk 2077, so I assumed you were commenting on the article itself.
shon 4y ago
Gibson is still telling the same story. If you read his more recent works, like The Peripheral, you'll see it. It's still Cyberpunk. The aesthetic has been modernized. It's less neon and more black and a little too familiar, but the message is the same: Even in an overtly corrupt world, knowledge and information are supremely powerful. Because of this, an underdog can beat the system change everything. As a 16 year old kid back in 1990, this message meant everything to me. It inspired me and gave me hope. His new stuff has less neon but is just a great to read and feels the same to me today.
sbisson 4y ago
Amusing to see that the last line of the piece refers to "sci-fi on speed", as amphetamines were the drug of choice for the spiritual forefather of the movement, Philip K Dick...
smm11 4y ago
The sleeper was a thing once upon a time. Might still be.
kemayo 4y ago
> When Gibson penned his opening line ‘the sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel’ he merged reality and the digital in a way that seems almost prophetic today Tangentially, I find the generational aspect of that line fun. Depending on how old the person you're talking to is, this will mean (as originally meant) a gray/staticy color, or a searingly vivid blue, (or, I guess, something else like a graphical "no signal found" screen in the most modern interpretations). As with much sci-fi, it's a story of "the future" that's thoroughly grounded in the present day it was written in.
- Tarragon 4y ago
  Such a vivid line of description in both interpretations but also a radical change to interpretation.
syngrog66 4y ago
I reread Neuromancer recently and it was surreal reading all the refs in it to The Matrix. literally I'm rereading Snow Crash now and you cant go 10 pages without reading about The Metaverse. and so much of its VR world reminds me of Ready Player One everything old thats good seems to get endlessly reinvented, riffed on, or just blatantly ripped off? lol
- WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
  > I reread Neuromancer recently and it was surreal reading all the refs in it to The Matrix. literally Given how time goes, I'd say it was the other way around with the references.
  - syngrog66 4y ago
    yes, one would think so go read Neuromancer. then come back here. I'll wait :-)
    - WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
      Wait, you speak of the matrix, not the Matrix, those are tad different.
leach 4y ago
I just got into the sprawl series over the past couple of months. Finished Neuromancer and count zero, now blazing through Mona Lisa overdrive. It's such an amazing series, it so good I find myself trying to pace myself while reading it so I can gestate more of the world and think about it for a while. I rarely find a book or series that captivates me to this level so I'm basically in love with the sprawl trilogy right now. After I'm done ill probably read Gibsons other stuff because he is really good.
- ad-hominem 4y ago
lawrenceyan 4y ago
I wonder what the greybeards that grew up on this science fiction, now in their 40s/50s?, think of the world we live in today.
- mindcrime 4y ago
  I wonder what the greybeards that grew up on this science fiction, now in their 40s/50s?, think of the world we live in today. As one of them (I'll be 49 in a couple of months), I expect there is a pretty diverse range of opinions among us. Me? Relative to cyberpunk fiction specifically? I think the old adage "the future is here, its just unevenly distributed" rings very true. Clearly in certain sense we are living in "the cyberpunk future". But by the same token there are obviously regards in which we are not (so far as we know). I continue to see Cyberpunk as stimulating and fascinating in terms of thinking about the potential of technological developments, while continuing to be a warning about the dangers of certain paths that we might go down (and in some cases, are arguably already headed down). While I'm not as anti-advertising in the general sense as many HN'ers, I will say I dislike the way so much of what we call "tech" has become all about finding ways to serve more ads to more people, more efficiently - as opposed to working on finding better ways to purify water, sequester carbon from the atmosphere, etc. And I believe that there are company executives out there who would actually authorize the deployment of Max Headroom style "blipverts" even if they were exactly as flawed as described in Max Headroom. Not all would, of course, but I expect they exist. My relationship with cyberpunk is a bit weird though, because I also don't share the broadly anti-capitalist sentiments often associated with "punk" ideology. In fact, I'm very much an an-cap[1]. So while I enjoy this fiction, I don't always interpret the political bits the way some others might. And as much as I see mega-corporations as an affront to human values, human decency, freedom, etc., I see governments as equally so (or more so). Both are just ways to concentrate power and oppress people in my book. shrug Anyway, speaking more generally, I think the world we livein today is amazing in many ways, and kinda sucks in quite a few ways. I see Khan Academy, Youtube, Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, inexpensive but crazy powerful computers, ubiquitous bandwidth, hand-held computers (smart phones) that are basically straight out of science fiction, etc. as adding so much to our world and enabling so many things. But at the same time, you can't ignore climate change, pollution, poverty, rising sea levels, the recent surge in something resembling what you might call "right wing populist fascism", etc. and not be a bit bothered. We can put men on the moon, but we have people living in cardboard boxes. It's frustrating because I'm convinced we can do better. sigh Sorry for the long rant. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism
danielodievich 4y ago
So I really like this book and reread it every other year. High octane fun that tickles my programmer's fancy. I like really well made books, so the edition I have is the Easton Press https://www.eastonpress.com/signed-editions/william-gibson-neuromancer-a-signed-edition-3120.html https://www.eastonpress.com/signed-editions/william-gibson-n..., from Ebay although mine is unsigned. There is an a Suntup Editions version that is to drool over https://suntup.press/neuromancer https://suntup.press/neuromancer, especially the Numbered Editions. Completely impossible to get except for thousands of dollars on Ebay. I have a Suntup Edition 451 Fahrenheit and it's amazing, so I can only imagine what this one looks like. And the circuit design has an Easter Egg, although I don't know what it is. High quality rare books can be an expensive hobby...
- bpiche 4y ago
  Go get it signed at one of his talks..
- TranquilMarmot 4y ago
  High quality?! No way, the best way to read Neuromancer is a shitty, beaten up, half-ripped copy you bought from a used bookstore a decade ago.
  - harry8 4y ago
    Or reading a book whose battery is nearly flat forcing you to unplug your cigarette to free up a port so you can keep reading.
Ninjinka 4y ago
I read Neuromancer a few weeks ago, and couldn't get into it. I love books like Snow Crash and The Three Body Problem, but didn't track what was happening Neuromancer half the time and the other half I didn't care. I realize this is probably a personal defect, as so many others laud it as a masterpiece.
TranquilMarmot 4y ago
The Sprawl trilogy is my favorite series of books. Probably the only books that I've read over and over... and over.
nahuel0x 4y ago
William Gibson was inspired by Jean “Moebius” Giraud, check this quote from the man himself: > “So it’s entirely fair to say, and I’ve said it before, that the way Neuromancer-the-novel “looks” was influenced in large part by some of the artwork I saw in ‘Heavy Metal’. I assume that this must also be true of John Carpenter’s ‘Escape from New York’, Ridley Scott’s ‘Blade Runner’”, and all other artefacts of the style sometimes dubbed ‘cyberpunk’. Those French guys, they got their end in early.” In particular, "The Long Tomorrow" by Moebius/Dan O'Bannon published in 1977 on Heavy Metal magazine was very influential to Gibson.
- layer8 4y ago
  Also Star Wars: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/meet-the-man-who-helped-define-how-science-fiction-looks-180959080/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/meet-the-man-who-h...
arrakis2021 4y ago
I love both Snow Crash and Neuromancer. I recall someone saying that Neal is a great hacker but not a great writer - but that Gibson is a great writer / but not a great hacker. I guess the comparison isn’t perfect but I get what it means. Snow crash made more technical sense but reads like a disaster. Neuromancer reads like a dopamine drip but misses the mark on some of the tech.
butterisgood 4y ago
Neuromancer has dot matrix printers. Just like the airports!
Terry_Roll 4y ago
And yet we still dont have a film! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer#Film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer#Film Thing is, who could even do such a book justice as a film?
deleted 4y ago
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magnetowasright 4y ago
blooalien 4y ago
Anyone remember the videogame? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer_(video_game)
ilaksh 4y ago
What came after cyberpunk? Did anyone find a convincing way out?
- krapp 4y ago
  Post-cyberpunk, steampunk, solarpunk, etc. It became an aesthetic that birthed other aesthetics. But there's no convincing way out. In reality the system wins and eats everything, and your only choice is the end in ice or fire.
DrWumbo 4y ago
No mention of Vernor Vinge's "True Names" from 1981. I'd say it's as close to the metaverse as Snow Crash

gh0st, if you're watching this, I'm still looking for the rabbit hole.

Snow Crash is funny and short. I didn't like it at first but after forcing through the first 30 pages the anarcho-libertarianism ad absurdum took hold and I was laughing my socks off. I have yet to read another Stephenson novel. Neuromancer is more intense and some of the passages are hard to follow, but I enjoyed it pretty much from the get-go. Different books. I wish there was less apparent competition between them. Also I wish the sense of humor of Snow Crash was better understood. It really is a laugh-out-loud read and otherwise reads like a comic book (in a good way). I think some of the Americanisms irk British and Euro readers. I'm not usually one for audio books but I have heard the Snow Crash audio book carries the tone perfectly.

motohagiography 4y ago

Funny, I read it and then studied it at an alternative high school in the early 90's, and see Neuromancer as just a presumed part of my culture. I read this post as a bit like someone saying when we talk about poverty in rich western countries as "Dickensian," there was a real person named Dickens who actually wrote stories of some renown about those themes. However, what fiction, art and comics were to us in a time before we could see pictures on the internet of literally everything, travel everywhere, and read the thoughts of random strangers on every conciavable topic, is what cyberpunk signifies now. Gibson seemed to escape the category of genre and get treated "seriously," as "literary," fiction that is usually character driven, (vs plot driven and didactic fantasy sci-fi) but in Neuromancer's case the technology was so alive it became a character, or so the conversation at the time was about the book. Literary fiction was a way to extend your experience by developing an empathy for complex characters and exercise it in a way that could be applied to relationships with real people. You could tell when someone had read Catcher and the Rye because it was like they had adopted the mannerisms of another friend you hadn't met. The idea and aesthetic of being or becoming cyberpunk - an anti-hero with super power competence at manipulating the tech substrate of your environment and system you both existed in and were against - was what a generation of young hackers adopted from Neromancer the way boomers read 'Catcher'. At the time, Neuromancer's Case, Artimage, and Molly replaced the Holden Caulfields, Sebastian Flytes, and Larry Darell (characters from different famous literary novels) as character archetypes a lot of young readers oriented their aspirations and identities around, where relationships with these characters often set them on a real life trajectory. If you read Neuromancer and became a hacker, it's a lot like reading Brideshead Revisited and accepting your sexuality, or reading Razor's Edge and dropping out and living in an ashram. Fiction before the internet did that, where it was personal experience of a relationship with characters and it had downstream effects on the culture. Post-internet on instagram or a blog someone follows, the characters are literally more real because these are people sharing their lives, but also less complex because the text and images are still representations created by people who aren't deeply thoughtful and practiced writers, and by being real, they don't provide ideals or open aesthetics. Internet people/characters don't provoke and leverage imagination that lets the reader create new and beautiful things, rather, they create concrete symbols to imitate and compare with directly. When I read the article I was nostalgic, but thought it's not so much cyberpunk that is the artifact of the past, it's that the aesthetics and experience of fiction as a perfect, distant, and open ended ideal that draws out the readers imagination to create something new themselves that feels gone. As in I don't miss cyberpunk so much as I miss fiction being meaningfully upstream of culture the way it seemed to be before the internet. Anyway, piqued.

Gravityloss 4y ago

I was sick at home and finally picked up the Neuromancer which had been sitting in the bookshelf for years. It was an experience indeed. At many points, very high concept (which of course has been copied to death). At other points, naive. Surprisingly few things felt old fashioned. The biggest let down was the unrealistic behavior and motivation of people. It felt very much like an adventure game where everything revolves around the main character. EDIT: To clarify, I liked the book very much.

karpierz 4y ago
The protagonist is so addicted to the Internet that he's willing to do literally anything to be able to use it again. If that's not a relatable motivation, I don't know what is.
- ugl 4y ago
  don't forget the speed addiction!
  - idontwantthis 4y ago
    I think he got addicted to speed so he wouldn’t have to dream about the internet as much
  - nirav72 4y ago
    We have adderall now. Speed with a PG rating
    - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
      I don't think that's a very kind thing to say about the medications for people for who ADHD medications like amphetamines and methylphenidates have meant a huge improvement in quality of life.
      - InitialLastName 4y ago

daedalus_f 4y ago

I love neuromancer and its sequels, and like this blogs aesthetic, but good god the tracking makes it hard to read.

wanda 4y ago
Reader view? The reader view really highlights how short the article is, now that I'm looking at it. I think tracking is letter spacing right? It is pretty rough. I think you can enforce fonts and at least in Firefox and Safari you can add custom CSS to help with that sort of thing. I don't think Chrome offers the same feature without an extension.

q_andrew 4y ago

The Sprawl trilogy and its fashion/world is formed a lot by politics. Gibson himself says that Neuromancer is an exaggerated critique of Reaganomics and the problems it exasperated (or, at the very least, failed to address). The rampant drug abuse, sovereign corporations, the ever increasing gap of poverty and technology -- I think a lot of derivative media adopts these elements to look cool (without actually understanding their context or meaning).

ethbr0 4y ago
I'd imagine looking back, a lot of Neuromancer and pre-ubiquitous web Cyberpunk reads weirdly because it was written in an information-scarce world. Versus the information-excess world we now live in. In the former, I remember concepts being so much bigger and more concrete. E.g. the "War on Drugs" or "Reaganomics". These were things that existed because powerful people said they did. And there was debating, but ideas were still clearly defined. So even though CP authors were imagining our future, it was a pretty fundamental shift to go from books-at-libraries to everything-anywhere-all-of-the-time. Now, every concept seems to have much fuzzier conceptual edges. Because there are a million opinions about it circulating publicly and loudly.
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  "I'd imagine looking back, a lot of Neuromancer and pre-ubiquitous web Cyberpunk reads weirdly because it was written in an information-scarce world." There's just as much scarcity of valuable information today... it's just that now it's buried under a mountain of garbage which is more accessible than ever before.
  - rektide 4y ago
    That information glut, if it does so exist, leads more towards dis-belief imo & skepticism, especially in the main. Yeah there's a lot of meme-viruses, num shrubs, other ways to go wrong or really wrong. Radicalization happens. Before we didnt used to be connected enough to see this shit, and the asymetric nature of the loud & shitty versus the peaceful/coherent/quiet/skeptical mainstream means the delusional & extremists have outsized visibility. The disbelief keeps growing. We dont need Adbusters as much because the thin transparency of the world, of being sold garbage mounds of low-grade content is well known, we understand how shallow things are. And disbelief keeps rising. In contrast to the higher trust, respected mainstream media, the limited availability of information which came before. Which gel'ed the world into place, which created shared beliefs & allowed agendas to be driven. Where-as now the all-defector anti-agenda is the default mode for many.

pmoriarty 4y ago

The BBC made a fantastic radio play out of Neuromancer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S89BHnaxULo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S89BHnaxULo

the__alchemist 4y ago

I finished reading Neuromancer a week ago. I'd played Cyberpunk 2077 recently, and Dystopia further back. So many of the concepts from those games appear to come directly from Neuromancer! I stumbled upon articles implying they were indirectly influenced; Neuromancer evidently created a whole genre! Btw, compared to hard scifi like Stephenson (relevant comparison due to Snow Crash), Neuromacer isn't really there; its strengths are outstanding creativity, world-building, character development (including top-notch implied backstories), personal interactions, and artful descriptions.

ethbr0 4y ago
Mike Pondsmith (and the R. Talsorian Games authors) basically picked up the then-recent Blade Runner (82) and Neuromancer (84) threads and ran with them in CP88. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_2020 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_2020
newsclues 4y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Chrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Chrome
throw1234651234 4y ago
Gibson pioneered the genre - you have to give him that. He is very much off on a lot of details though. For example, in his other books, his descriptions of mercenaries are comical at best for anyone who has a passing familiarity with the topic. Nonetheless, I place him up there with Stephenson. All this DESPITE the fact that Stephenson stands in a league of his own - he pioneered "post cyberpunk" with Diamond Age and went from having as much style as Gibson to as much scientific grounding as Asimov. With that said, Stephenson's latter books are all science, no char dev, no (interesting) story. I really can't think of an author who can stand with Stephenson. Vernor Vinge comes close, but not there on style. Then there are authors with a single good idea that are worth reading, but nowhere near Stephenson's level (e.g. the author of The Forever War). P.S. Obviously I am not so subtly fishing for people to argue with me and give me book recommendations. Just not the Tri-body Problem please - it falls in with The Forever War - cool concept, cool (very long) intro, not much else.

ychompinator 4y ago

A great and terrible book, Gibson repeatedly throwing you in to mountains of not yet explained language and concepts before dragging you out of confusion a chapter later is frustrating and tiresome, however I could not help coming back for more. I regret nothing.

criddell 4y ago
I have to read his books twice. The first time I just plow through, confused the entire time. The second pass is where I can enjoy it, but there are still a lot of times where I read a sentence and struggle with parsing it.
- shon 4y ago
  His new books are the same. I love it! =D
- mindcrime 4y ago
  Gibson's works definitely demand multiple reads, IMO. I have read Neuromancer around 5 times now, and I'd say I "get it" a little bit more each time I read it. Even now, 30+ years after I read it the first time, it still fascinates on a re-read.

sho_hn 4y ago

I was in a bookshop in Germany the other day, and saw a "Neuromancer" cover with a cool stylized photograph of Seoul, South Korea, in the background. The most perfect metaphor for the West's present switch-over from Japanmania to the Korean Wave. Similarly now have the modern Korean alphabet bleed into the neon signs of Cyberpunky streets of more recent movie productions where in the past you had Japanese or Chinese writing systems. The shifting representation of Asia in Western exoticism/escapism content is fascinating to observe. Edit: Photo of the cover: https://eikehein.com/stuff/neuromancer_seoul.jpg https://eikehein.com/stuff/neuromancer_seoul.jpg

throw1234651234 4y ago
"The most perfect metaphor for the West's present switch-over from Japanmania to the Korean Wave." if this is a thing, it has been largely unnoticed. I think educated people think of SK as one of the few countries competing with US tech income (others being Australia, Japan, Singapore, and some (but very few) parts of England (London Finance), Germany (not sure on this one), and Switzerland (banking )). Other than that, Korea goes mostly unnoticed by the west.
- sho_hn 4y ago
  We're talking in a pop culture context here, where even just in 2020-2022 Korea and Korean culture/heritage has had significant soft power success in a number of markets/media: - Export of majorly successful pop music (e.g. BTS, Blackpink - those hits are often penned by Western composers however, so a bit murky on what product is flowing there) - Ditto TV (e.g. Squid Game setting TV records with a lot rooted in Korean schoolyard games) - Ditto cinema (Parasite, a story about social mobility woes in Korean society, winning all the Oscars) - Ditto gaming (PUBG, other MMOs) - Ditto literature (bestellers including "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982", again on social issues in the country) - Ditto cosmetics exports, beauty trends ("Korean Week" in malls, say), etc. - Even some Western productions focussing specifically on Korean diaspora/ethnicity (e.g. most recently the expensive "Pachinko" on Apple TV+ (and the novel it's based on), or stuff like Kim's Convenience) I think you can definitely make a case that Korea is the Asian-country-du-jour among the Western audience (and that's before you get into, say, Latin America, which is far deeper into Korean TV content, also bleeding over into Latin minorities in the USA).

scrapheap 4y ago

If you liked Neuromancer then you should read True Names by Vernor Vinge.

alphabetting 4y ago
Thanks for rec. Neuromancer is an all time fave. Amazing how well it has held up
pmoriarty 4y ago
I went on a Vinge binge when I'd heard that he was the originator of the singularity concept. Didn't like any of his work, including True Names. I liked Neuromancer and Count Zero way more.
kemayo 4y ago
It's impressive because it's ~3 years before Neuromancer, and in many ways it's a better predictor of "the internet" as a cultural thing. It nails a lot of the social aspects of online forums, for instance. It lacks the raw style of Neuromancer, alas.
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  E. M. Forster predicted something like the internet and online forums in 1909 in The Machine Stops.
- themadturk 4y ago
  It helps that Vinge is a computer scientist; he probably had a better view of what was coming down the pike than Gibson did. And no, he's a solid writer, but not the stylist Gibson was (and, actually, still is).
ngc248 4y ago
Cyberpunk and head crash by bruce bethke is also good

the_af 4y ago

One thing I read somewhere -- and it might have been an interview with Gibson or with someone else talking about his work -- is how much William Gibson despises derivatives of cyberpunk in the books, videogames and movies that followed. Specifically, he dislikes the focus on the aesthetic, neon lights, mirror shades, etc. I think Gibson really dislikes Cyberpunk 2077, for example. Gibson argued they are missing the point, staying shallow and forgetting the "message", which was PUNK: a rebellion and a rejection of the mainstream state of affairs. Gibson was a punk writer, and his writing was a critique of Reaganomics and the direction the world was going back then. I think he means we need a different kind of critique now, not anchored to neon lights and vaguely Japanese inspired retrofuturistic aesthetics which look like what the 80s thought the future would be. And nothing can be more conformist and anti-punk than lazily copying a now classic aesthetic and doing nothing else with it. That said, I love that aesthetic myself, and have no problem being stuck in the past. But I see his point.

notreallyserio 4y ago
Ironically, focusing criticism on the aesthetics is itself "staying shallow". Much cyberpunk media does serve as a critique of the status quo or an imagined future dystopia, as I assume he would prefer, but with some neon on the surface.
- the_af 4y ago
  I don't think Gibson minds the aesthetic in particular; what he is saying, if I understand him correctly, is that nobody cares about cyberpunk except for the aesthetic. There's nothing beyond it. If there is something, it's the same old tropes about big bad evil 80s-style corporations, usually with a vague Japanese or Asian theme. Everything that was novel about cyberpunk has now been absorbed into the mainstream and has become just another trope to be used by videogame/movie/anime authors. It's as lazy as it gets, and definitely not punk.
  - pmoriarty 4y ago
    "It's as lazy as it gets, and definitely not punk." Reading is not very punk, though arguing what punk is is definitely punk.

runesofdoom 4y ago

Anyone interested in the roots of cyberpunk might also be interested in John Brunner's 1968 novel *Stand On Zanzibar*.

JKCalhoun 4y ago
Not his 1973 novel "The Shockwave Rider"?
- mindcrime 4y ago
  The Shockwave Rider should definitely be considered something like "proto Cyberpunk" IMO. And regardless of that, I'd absolutely recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it yet. I just picked up a copy of Stand on Zanzibar, looking forward to getting into that soon.
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    The film "Heavy Metal" from 1981 also had some of this aesthetic. So did the magazine counterpart (still in print!)
    - mindcrime 4y ago
      You know, I feel silly admitting this, but I still haven't ever watched "Heavy Metal". Now I'm thinking I should make that my top TODO item after work tonight. That's been on "the list" for, like, forever.
      - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
        The Josan Gonzalez “Deathburger” images on the article could be lifted directly the Heavy Metal movie. And Gonzalez did artwork for the Heavy Metal magazine. When Musk launched a Tesla into space, there was a lot of speculation that he was inspired by the opening scene in the Heavy Metal film [0] [1]. This film was Ivan Reitman before he did Ghostbusters and same year he did Stripes, and became really famous. A film like this could never be made today; there are way too many unpolitically correct scenes. Just don't bother with "Heavy Metal 2000", the 2nd film that came out 20 years later -- it was not good at all and had no involvement from the original creators as I understand. [0] https://www.scalemodelnews.com/2018/02/did-heavy-metal-inspire-elon-musks.html https://www.scalemodelnews.com/2018/02/did-heavy-metal-inspi... [1] https://bleedingcool.com/movies/spacex-elon-musk-use-falcon-heavy-greatest-heavy-metal-reenactment-space-ever/ https://bleedingcool.com/movies/spacex-elon-musk-use-falcon-... More great art from Josan Gonzalez: https://www.heavymetal.com/tag/josan-gonzalez/ https://www.heavymetal.com/tag/josan-gonzalez/

JKCalhoun 4y ago

> When Gibson penned his opening line ‘the sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel’ he merged reality and the digital in a way that seems almost prophetic today It feels like Gibson was riffing on the vibe created by John Foxx's "Metamatic" [1] in 1980 (never mind his "Ultravox!" [2] in the years before that). Maybe it was Foxx though that claimed he was channelling the mood of novels like Ballard's "Crash" [3] from 1973. Computerization, synthesized music, alienation were a part of the zeitgeist of the 70's, 80's. [1] https://youtu.be/dgaLF2F5LWg https://youtu.be/dgaLF2F5LWg [2] https://youtu.be/3vy4eZ69Tj8?t=71 https://youtu.be/3vy4eZ69Tj8?t=71 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_(Ballard_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_(Ballard_novel)

pmoriarty 4y ago
Blade Runner was a much more obvious influence.
mindcrime 4y ago
Regarding J.G. Ballard, my understanding is that the early Cyberpunk authors were all absolutely heavily inspired by his works. Somebody (I forget who) said something to the effect of "We were all competing to see who would out-Ballard who".

jmyeet 4y ago

I was honestly underwhelmed by Neuromancer. Maybe because so many people raved about it or that I read it many years after it was written. I honestly don't know. It was... OK. But amazing? I don't see it. I love science fiction. One thing you have to realize about science ficiton is that it is a product of the time it was written. It may share many of the aesthetics, themes, philosophies and politics of that time. Like it's hard not to look at the original Star Wars and not see the impact of 70s aesthetics. Cyberpunk as a genre stems from xenophobia, ultimately. There was a pervasive fear in the 1980s that the Japanese were "taking over". The depiction of a dystopian future dominated by megacorps mirrors fears of Japanese culture and influence. 40 years later this dystopian future still hasn't eventuated.

RobertoG 4y ago
I read it again recently and I found it still pretty interesting. From a SF aficionado point of view, Neuromancer world has: -An economy that rely on ubiquitous computer networks. -Colonization of low orbit. -An AI rebelling and doing its own thing. -Digital downloads of personalities. In 1984.. I mean, OK, the concepts already existed, but it really break with most of the SF that was being done until then. It's the beginning of a really dark SF, that I suppose was the point: "If we follow the current path, the future will look like corporate feudalism". By the way, from a political point of view, the fear of the Japanese taking over is now the fear of the Chinese taking over. I will let the "dystopian future dominated by megacorps" comment as an exercise for the reader.
- bpiche 4y ago
  Have you seen Elysium? It's basically Neuromancer: The Movie, starring Matt Damon.
omarhaneef 4y ago
Also true of Lord of the Rings, or watching Star Wars etc if you didn't read/watch it early on (either when it first came out to the world, or early on in your life when you were new to the genre). I won't speculate on why this is the case, but some people claim its because the innovations are copied so quickly the original becomes just another copy of itself.

horsestaple 4y ago

I couldn't finish the book, it just had too much unexplained fictional techno-jargon to be able to enjoy for me. I know thats the style of immersion he was going for, but it didn't click for me, even though I'm a big sci-fi reader.

KaiserPro 4y ago

I read Neuromancer a few years back, I liked it. I do don't normally read scifi as it tends to annoy me. However this didnt. One thing that really stuck out for me was that _everyone_ had memory foam mattresses. The slums, the really slick holiday homes, everyone.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago
> One thing that really stuck out for me was that _everyone_ had memory foam mattresses. The slums, the really slick holiday homes, everyone. Interesting; I guess it could be explained in-universe by economies of scale, that is, (memory) foam mattresses being faster and cheaper to produce than other types of mattresses. I'm thinking of spring mattresses, which actually have parts and different materials, whereas foam can be just a single block I think? And when you think about logistics, memory foam can be compacted and vacuum sealed for transport.

btbuildem 4y ago

I quite appreciate the author's use of Death Burger art as illustration in the article. For me it captures the aesthetic of modern cyberpunk quite well.

henriquecm8 4y ago
Death Burger is probably my favorite artist
alx__ 4y ago
I was stoked to see the Necromancer poster used as the header image. Have a print of that in my house. Love the artist's style. https://citadel9.com/ https://citadel9.com/

mmaunder 4y ago

I’m constantly amazed at how Metaverse aficionados quote Snow Crash and and other 1990s works as cornerstones of cyberspace, when Gibson invented the term and Neuromancer was written in 1984. Gibson is the original. The passage where Case connects to the matrix (also a Gibson term) again for the first time once his nervous system is repaired is heartbreakingly beautiful. I relate to it as a young phone phreak growing up in South Africa in the 80s and 90s when I would bluebox the home country direct phone trunks to connect to BBSs in the USA. When I could not get through, usually because they were filtering my seize tones, I felt the same deprivation. And when I finally connected I felt the same elation Case feels in this scene… “Please, he prayed, now— A gray disk, the color of Chiba sky. Now— Disk beginning to rotate, faster, becoming a sphere of paler gray. Expanding— And flowed, flowered for him, fluid neon origami trick, the unfolding of his distanceless home, his country, transparent 3D chessboard extending to infinity. Inner eye opening to the stepped scarlet pyramid of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority burning beyond the green cubes of Mitsubishi Bank of America, and high and very far away he saw the spiral arms of military systems, forever beyond his reach. And somewhere he was laughing, in a white-painted loft, distant fingers caressing the deck, tears of release streaking his face.”

sneak 4y ago
To be honest, the descriptions of the metaverse are the parts of Neuromancer that hold up least well. The dirtbags, crime, sex, and drugs are all still perfect, and I imagine will remain so.
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  "the descriptions of the metaverse are the parts of Neuromancer that hold up least well" I'd be interested in reading descriptions of cyberspace that are better than Neuromancer's. So far I haven't found any.
  - jvanderbot 4y ago
    The commentary I've read (and agree with), is that the metaverse itself just didn't hold up. The internet did not become a new reality. Instead, our own reality is melding with the internet through always-on devices and miniaturized sensors and wide wireless networks. Instead of some kind of digital lovecraftian portals hidden away in parts of realspace that connect to this magical deadly realm, the modern vision of cyperbpunk should probably have included something more like an ethereal plane -- a perfect mirror of the real world that happens to ignore its physical constraints and provide ways to manipulate and bypass the realspace.

jandrusk 4y ago

I just start reading Neuromancer on my Kindle last night and then this post pops up on HN. :)

nathias 4y ago

Gibson's failiure was the failiure of punk in general, it was too cool and not edgy enough and was easily incorporated into mainstream.

pmoriarty 4y ago
Is that a failure or a success?
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  success if you're trying to make money failure if you're trying to make change

vmoore 4y ago

Cyberpunk aesthetics are mostly hidden IMHO. I saw a few Youtube videos of chip factories that make flash drives, SSDs and integrated circuits, etc and was amazed at the efficiency & precision of the robots that make them. If you want to be reminded we're living in the future, visit some of these factories, they're mind blowing.

Apocryphon 4y ago

Has anyone read his Bridge trilogy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_trilogy > The trilogy derives its name from the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, which was abandoned in an earthquake and has become a massive shantytown and a site of improvised shelter. Seems sadly two heartbeats into the future for today’s Bay Area

pmoriarty 4y ago
Honestly, this sounds a bit like some of Philip K Dick's work, which was set in the Bay Area after a nuclear war... he wrote it about 50 years before Gibson, though I'm sure Gibson must add something original to the mix. I once asked Gibson whether he was influenced by Philip K Dick, and he said that he didn't read Dick when he was young, and was more influenced by Pynchon instead. Still, despite his denial, he seems to be retreading a lot of ground first covered by Dick himself.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  I just started reading Bleeding Edge, which very much reads like a cyberpunk book in terms of dropping dozens of unelaborated references and allusions, or maybe like Douglas Coupland. Though I’d say it feels more like one of Bruce Sterling’s lighter works- Zeitgeist in particular- than something more like classic cyberpunk. (I’ve always associated the genre with brand-dropping, though that happens a ton in John Brunner’s work, which predates Gibson.) Independently, Pynchon also does that often, even in his novels not about high technology.
mindcrime 4y ago
Funny you would ask: I just finished All Tomorrow's Parties about a week ago, as the end of a massive read/re-read of William Gibson. I started with Neuromancer and read the Sprawl Trilogy and the Bridge Trilogy back to back. I'd read everything at least once before, except Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties, so this was a chance to kinda do it all at the same time, finish the stuff I had not read, and kinda have all this William Gibson in my head at more or less the same time. Having done all that, I'll add this; if you've only read Neuromancer, or even only read just the Sprawl Trilogy, definitely consider giving the Bridge Trilogy a shot. It's markedly different in many ways, but still very Gibsonesque and definitely worth reading. The big differences, IMO, are that the Bridge Trilogy books are less "futuristic" and have less focus on tech technology qua technology, and focus more on the people and their interactions and choices, etc.

stakkur 4y ago

The 80's were my 20s. It's hard to explain to younger folks how the 80s (especially early 80s) felt, culturally. The whole 'Japan, Inc.' thing was in full swing, and the general feeling was that Japan was eating the world. 'Tech' was this fresh, semi-mystical thing, still opaque to much of the public. Gibson latched onto that cultural wave and took it into a possible future, and it was exciting to me. Today it's interesting to see that technofuture both commoditized and idolized. Now in my 50s, it's still interesting but seems a bleak and not-terribly-human place that I don't want to live.

mindcrime 4y ago
It's hard to explain to younger folks how the 80s (especially early 80s) felt, culturally. The whole 'Japan, Inc.' thing was in full swing, and the general feeling was that Japan was eating the world. 'Tech' was this fresh, semi-mystical thing, still opaque to much of the public. I'm just a little younger than you then, but I remember the 80's pretty much the same way. Japanese manufacturers (especially of cars and consumer electronics) were sort of "eating the world" and computers and high-tech were still seen as very mysterious and mesmerizing and had a real mystique about them. Interestingly, for me, the mystique and mystery of high-tech largely persisted up until about 2010 or so. Maybe a little later, maybe 2015 even. It's only been in the last few years that it seems to be wearing off. Not sure if that's just a reflection of my becoming older and more cynical and harder to impress, or if its down to changes in society/culture at large, or what. But my recent re-reading of the Sprawl and Bridge trilogies was, in part, I think an attempt to recapture some of that. Not sure if it worked or not, but it was fun reading all that stuff. Now in my 50s, it's still interesting but seems a bleak and not-terribly-human place that I don't want to live. There are aspects of the "cyberpunk future" that still seem appealing in some regards, but it doesn't necessarily feel like the exact world I'd want to live in, that's for sure.
cwkoss 4y ago
Japanese 80s City Pop is one of my favorite musical genres - an outgrowth of the huge economic growth happening in Japanese cities. Big funky happy instrumentals and lyrics often alluding to glamorous lifestyles, social isolation and an unquenched loneliness. It was a very interesting time in Japan's history, which I personally think has a lot of parallels to the current west-coast tech bubble. Check out: Fantasy - Meiko Nakahara https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kt8HP1VEPU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kt8HP1VEPU 真夜中のドア/Stay With Me - Miki Matsubara https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEe_yIbW64w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEe_yIbW64w I Can't Stop The Loneliness - ANRI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bALJxjL8jw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bALJxjL8jw 4:00 A.M. - Taeko Onuki https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sOKkON_UnQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sOKkON_UnQ

EugeneOZ 4y ago

I’ll write my comment to outweigh the negativity towards the game. I’m still enjoying the game, still riding through Night City, finding new details every day: in the roads, tunnels, on the walls. A random pedestrian might have some link to a book or a movie - you just need to check their clothes and phrases. So exciting. REDEngine is great - of course, performance is awful, but the idea of ray-traced lights is great and it looks amazing. Also, the details level and the skin rendering - are truly amazing. Of course, the game needs more, much more work - to make it more entertaining, deeper. But still, it's an interesting world, and I’m pretty sure the price was fair. One of the most interesting and entertaining parts for me: Cyber Engine Tweaks. Some days I spend more times for hacking than playing:)

kemayo 4y ago
I think you're being too specific. This article, I'm pretty sure, is about the aesthetic of the entire genre of cyberpunk, rather than the video game Cyberpunk 2077.
- EugeneOZ 4y ago
  Yes, my first line mentions it.
  - kemayo 4y ago
    Ah, I see what you were going for. It's a bit confusing that you didn't put this in the thread about Cyberpunk 2077, so I assumed you were commenting on the article itself.

shon 4y ago

Gibson is still telling the same story. If you read his more recent works, like The Peripheral, you'll see it. It's still Cyberpunk. The aesthetic has been modernized. It's less neon and more black and a little too familiar, but the message is the same: Even in an overtly corrupt world, knowledge and information are supremely powerful. Because of this, an underdog can beat the system change everything. As a 16 year old kid back in 1990, this message meant everything to me. It inspired me and gave me hope. His new stuff has less neon but is just a great to read and feels the same to me today.

sbisson 4y ago

Amusing to see that the last line of the piece refers to "sci-fi on speed", as amphetamines were the drug of choice for the spiritual forefather of the movement, Philip K Dick...

smm11 4y ago

The sleeper was a thing once upon a time. Might still be.

kemayo 4y ago

> When Gibson penned his opening line ‘the sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel’ he merged reality and the digital in a way that seems almost prophetic today Tangentially, I find the generational aspect of that line fun. Depending on how old the person you're talking to is, this will mean (as originally meant) a gray/staticy color, or a searingly vivid blue, (or, I guess, something else like a graphical "no signal found" screen in the most modern interpretations). As with much sci-fi, it's a story of "the future" that's thoroughly grounded in the present day it was written in.

Tarragon 4y ago
Such a vivid line of description in both interpretations but also a radical change to interpretation.

syngrog66 4y ago

I reread Neuromancer recently and it was surreal reading all the refs in it to The Matrix. literally I'm rereading Snow Crash now and you cant go 10 pages without reading about The Metaverse. and so much of its VR world reminds me of Ready Player One everything old thats good seems to get endlessly reinvented, riffed on, or just blatantly ripped off? lol

WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
> I reread Neuromancer recently and it was surreal reading all the refs in it to The Matrix. literally Given how time goes, I'd say it was the other way around with the references.
- syngrog66 4y ago
  yes, one would think so go read Neuromancer. then come back here. I'll wait :-)
  - WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
    Wait, you speak of the matrix, not the Matrix, those are tad different.

leach 4y ago

I just got into the sprawl series over the past couple of months. Finished Neuromancer and count zero, now blazing through Mona Lisa overdrive. It's such an amazing series, it so good I find myself trying to pace myself while reading it so I can gestate more of the world and think about it for a while. I rarely find a book or series that captivates me to this level so I'm basically in love with the sprawl trilogy right now. After I'm done ill probably read Gibsons other stuff because he is really good.

ad-hominem 4y ago

lawrenceyan 4y ago

I wonder what the greybeards that grew up on this science fiction, now in their 40s/50s?, think of the world we live in today.

mindcrime 4y ago
I wonder what the greybeards that grew up on this science fiction, now in their 40s/50s?, think of the world we live in today. As one of them (I'll be 49 in a couple of months), I expect there is a pretty diverse range of opinions among us. Me? Relative to cyberpunk fiction specifically? I think the old adage "the future is here, its just unevenly distributed" rings very true. Clearly in certain sense we are living in "the cyberpunk future". But by the same token there are obviously regards in which we are not (so far as we know). I continue to see Cyberpunk as stimulating and fascinating in terms of thinking about the potential of technological developments, while continuing to be a warning about the dangers of certain paths that we might go down (and in some cases, are arguably already headed down). While I'm not as anti-advertising in the general sense as many HN'ers, I will say I dislike the way so much of what we call "tech" has become all about finding ways to serve more ads to more people, more efficiently - as opposed to working on finding better ways to purify water, sequester carbon from the atmosphere, etc. And I believe that there are company executives out there who would actually authorize the deployment of Max Headroom style "blipverts" even if they were exactly as flawed as described in Max Headroom. Not all would, of course, but I expect they exist. My relationship with cyberpunk is a bit weird though, because I also don't share the broadly anti-capitalist sentiments often associated with "punk" ideology. In fact, I'm very much an an-cap[1]. So while I enjoy this fiction, I don't always interpret the political bits the way some others might. And as much as I see mega-corporations as an affront to human values, human decency, freedom, etc., I see governments as equally so (or more so). Both are just ways to concentrate power and oppress people in my book. shrug Anyway, speaking more generally, I think the world we livein today is amazing in many ways, and kinda sucks in quite a few ways. I see Khan Academy, Youtube, Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, inexpensive but crazy powerful computers, ubiquitous bandwidth, hand-held computers (smart phones) that are basically straight out of science fiction, etc. as adding so much to our world and enabling so many things. But at the same time, you can't ignore climate change, pollution, poverty, rising sea levels, the recent surge in something resembling what you might call "right wing populist fascism", etc. and not be a bit bothered. We can put men on the moon, but we have people living in cardboard boxes. It's frustrating because I'm convinced we can do better. sigh Sorry for the long rant. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

danielodievich 4y ago

So I really like this book and reread it every other year. High octane fun that tickles my programmer's fancy. I like really well made books, so the edition I have is the Easton Press https://www.eastonpress.com/signed-editions/william-gibson-neuromancer-a-signed-edition-3120.html https://www.eastonpress.com/signed-editions/william-gibson-n..., from Ebay although mine is unsigned. There is an a Suntup Editions version that is to drool over https://suntup.press/neuromancer https://suntup.press/neuromancer, especially the Numbered Editions. Completely impossible to get except for thousands of dollars on Ebay. I have a Suntup Edition 451 Fahrenheit and it's amazing, so I can only imagine what this one looks like. And the circuit design has an Easter Egg, although I don't know what it is. High quality rare books can be an expensive hobby...

bpiche 4y ago
Go get it signed at one of his talks..
TranquilMarmot 4y ago
High quality?! No way, the best way to read Neuromancer is a shitty, beaten up, half-ripped copy you bought from a used bookstore a decade ago.
- harry8 4y ago
  Or reading a book whose battery is nearly flat forcing you to unplug your cigarette to free up a port so you can keep reading.

Ninjinka 4y ago

I read Neuromancer a few weeks ago, and couldn't get into it. I love books like Snow Crash and The Three Body Problem, but didn't track what was happening Neuromancer half the time and the other half I didn't care. I realize this is probably a personal defect, as so many others laud it as a masterpiece.

TranquilMarmot 4y ago

The Sprawl trilogy is my favorite series of books. Probably the only books that I've read over and over... and over.

nahuel0x 4y ago

William Gibson was inspired by Jean “Moebius” Giraud, check this quote from the man himself: > “So it’s entirely fair to say, and I’ve said it before, that the way Neuromancer-the-novel “looks” was influenced in large part by some of the artwork I saw in ‘Heavy Metal’. I assume that this must also be true of John Carpenter’s ‘Escape from New York’, Ridley Scott’s ‘Blade Runner’”, and all other artefacts of the style sometimes dubbed ‘cyberpunk’. Those French guys, they got their end in early.” In particular, "The Long Tomorrow" by Moebius/Dan O'Bannon published in 1977 on Heavy Metal magazine was very influential to Gibson.

layer8 4y ago
Also Star Wars: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/meet-the-man-who-helped-define-how-science-fiction-looks-180959080/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/meet-the-man-who-h...

arrakis2021 4y ago

I love both Snow Crash and Neuromancer. I recall someone saying that Neal is a great hacker but not a great writer - but that Gibson is a great writer / but not a great hacker. I guess the comparison isn’t perfect but I get what it means. Snow crash made more technical sense but reads like a disaster. Neuromancer reads like a dopamine drip but misses the mark on some of the tech.

butterisgood 4y ago

Neuromancer has dot matrix printers. Just like the airports!

Terry_Roll 4y ago

And yet we still dont have a film! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer#Film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer#Film Thing is, who could even do such a book justice as a film?

deleted 4y ago

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magnetowasright 4y ago

blooalien 4y ago

Anyone remember the videogame? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer_(video_game)

ilaksh 4y ago

What came after cyberpunk? Did anyone find a convincing way out?

krapp 4y ago
Post-cyberpunk, steampunk, solarpunk, etc. It became an aesthetic that birthed other aesthetics. But there's no convincing way out. In reality the system wins and eats everything, and your only choice is the end in ice or fire.

DrWumbo 4y ago

No mention of Vernor Vinge's "True Names" from 1981. I'd say it's as close to the metaverse as Snow Crash