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The first thing ChatGPT reminded me of was the précis in Neuromancer. `Panther Moderns,' he said to the Hosaka, removing the trodes. `Five minute precis.' `Rea
by keiferski 4y ago
The first thing ChatGPT reminded me of was the précis in Neuromancer.
`Panther Moderns,' he said to the Hosaka, removing the trodes. `Five minute precis.' `Ready,' the computer said.
It wasn't a name he knew. Something new, something that had come in since he'd been in Chiba. Fads swept the youth of the Sprawl at the speed of light: entire subcultures could rise overnight, thrive for a dozen weeks, and then vanish utterly.
`Go,' he said. The Hosaka had accessed its array of libraries, journals, and news services. The precis began with a long hold on a color still that Case at first assumed was a collage of some kind, a boy's face snipped from another image and glued to a photograph of a paint-scrawled wall. Dark eyes, epicanthic folds obviously the result of surgery, an angry dusting of acne across pale narrow cheeks. The Hosaka released the freeze; the boy moved, flowing with the sinister grace of a mime pretending to be a jungle predator. His body was nearly invisible, an abstract pattern approximating the scribbled brickwork sliding smoothly across his tight onepiece. Mimetic polycarbon.
I guess we’re still months/years away from it stitching together an intelligent sequence of video clips, though.
- paulette449 4y agoSorry for going off topic but how do people pronounce "Neuromancer"? Of course it's a deliberate play on words and the obvious thing is to pronounce it Neuro-mancer but to me it has always been "New Romancer". Maybe because I grew up in the late 70s and early 80s when the new romantics [1] were popular (and this book was written). Aside to my aside - William Gibson turns 75 in a few days. Insane. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Romantic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Romantic
- keiferski 4y agoI’ve always just said Neuro-mancer (like necromancer) but your phrasing sounded familiar so I looked into it: Norman Spinrad, in his 1986 essay "The Neuromantics" which appears in his non-fiction collection Science Fiction in the Real World, saw the book's title as a triple pun: "neuro" referring to the nervous system; "necromancer"; and "new romancer." The cyberpunk genre, the authors of which he suggested be called "neuromantics," was "a fusion of the romantic impulse with science and technology," according to Spinrad. https://williamgibson.fandom.com/wiki/Neuromancer https://williamgibson.fandom.com/wiki/Neuromancer
- mst 4y agoWhen speaking it out loud, I tend to weight the 'neu' slightly more than the 'ro' but little enough that I think the double interpretation is probably still audible - certainly saying it out loud to myself now I can hear both.
- dredmorbius 4y agoHere's how one guy says it: <https://yewtu.be/watch?v=5DFSvbkQaD0&t=42 https://yewtu.be/watch?v=5DFSvbkQaD0&t=42> (time mark: 42s)
- lproven 4y agoNEW-roe-manse-er. It's a pun on "neuro-" as in neurological, meaning of the nervous system and brain, and "necromancer", as in a black magician, one who summons the dead.